In the wake of Biden’s air strikes against Syria, many of his opponents are returning to statements he and Kamala Harris made critical of Trump for similar kinds of strikes. Although I understand the inevitable politics of these things, I would suggest that we’re witnessing the separation of powers succeed. As President, Biden has a different set of responsibilities than he did as a presidential candidate or as an opponent of the past President. Given this difference, it shouldn’t surprise us that he is behaving differently. The Constitution itself induces and even encourages such hypocrisy. Senators have certain kinds of concerns and responsibilities that naturally lead them to oppose aggressive presidential action. It’s better for our constitutional system that they not adopt the executive perspective and concern themselves only with security. They ought adopt a legislative perspective that checks presidential aggression by criticizing it. We should hope that Republicans who might have supported Trump’s military actions are now critical of Biden’s. Presidents ought to be aggressive in ways they might not have imagined prior to holding office; their opposition ought to be critical in ways they might not have been previously. To preserve our security, we sometimes need that executive aggression; to preserve our security, we also need vigorous criticism of executive aggression.