Quote of the Day:

The Iran nuclear deal is going to be the ObamaCare of arms-control agreements—a substantive mess undermined by a failure to build adequate political support.

–Daniel Henninger in today’s Wall Street Journal

After ObamaCare was passed, we started to see what was in the bill and learned that a disaster had been foisted upon us by ramming this unread monstrosity through Congress by means of unsavory deals, novel parliamentary maneuvers, and arm-twisting. Thanks, Nancy!

Still, we'll have a chance sooner or later to come up with a better health care system for the U.S when ObamaCare comes tumbling down.

A similarly ill-considered deal, rubber stamped in a similarly tricky way, with a nuclear Iran will be even more difficult, if not impossible, to rectify, however.

And that is what we may face. Today’s must-read is Daniel Henninger’s “ObamaCare for Arms Control” in the Wall Street Journal.  

Next Tuesday is the deadline for completing the “political” terms of an agreement with Iran. “Technical” details arrive in June. From news reporting on the negotiations, it appears the agreement is turning into a virtual Rube Goldberg machine, a patchwork of fixes that its creators will claim somehow limits Iran’s nuclear breakout period to “a year.” Which is to say, it’s going to be another ObamaCare, a poorly designed mega-project others will have to clean up later.

Just as ObamaCare was a massive entitlement program enacted with no Republican support (unlike Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid), the administration’s major arms-control agreement is bypassing a traditional vote in the Senate. Instead, it will get rubber-stamp approval by, of all things, the U.N. Security Council.

U.S. presidents, except for this one, Henninger points out, have worked hard to build support for their projects because “political legitimacy is the coin of the realm in the American system.” But President Obama wants to find some fancy footwork–going to the U.N. to bypass Congress in what may be the most significant international agreement of a generation–rather than persuading or building support.

Like ObamaCare, this nuclear agreement will not attain political legitimacy.

Unfortunately, it will nevertheless have profound ramifications.

Henninger quotes Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief, telling the BBC, “If Iran has the ability to enrich uranium to whatever level, it’s not just Saudi Arabia that’s going to ask for that. The whole world will be an open door to go that route without any inhibition.”

If President Obama goes to the U.N. to trick us into joining in a horrible deal with Iran, the Cornhusker Kickback will look like a model for forward-thinking good government by comparison.