President Barack Obama, with his forceful State of the Union address, won the week. At least according to Official Washington's pundit class.

Buoyed by an improving economy, Obama stood in the House chamber and ticked off a list of domestic initiatives he believes the American people support. The speech was one part, as the kids say, a "sorry not sorry" defense of Democrat­ic priorities and one part bridge to Hillary Clinton's likely presidential campaign.

But something else happened last week in Washington before and after Obama's big speech: Congress re-engaged on national defense and foreign policy in a big way.

Be it House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Senate Armed Services Committee member Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., or House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Congress collectively plunged into the fight last week.

Thornberry was the first, delivering a muscular defense — no, explanation — of the legislative branch's constitutional power of the purse. Don't like that lawmakers often block Pentagon proposals on weapon programs? Tough, Thornberry said, that's how the Founding Fathers wanted it.

Menendez and Graham were the next to flex their muscles.

Defense News reporter John Bennett at Gannett Government Media in Springfield, Va., on Wednesday, May 14, 2014. (Mike Morones/Staff)

John T. Bennett

Photo Credit: Mike Morones

Graham returned a bit of old-school Washington deal-making to the defense and foreign policy arena, suggest­ing lawmakers drop legislation that would slap new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear ambitions for an up-or-down vote on any deal the Obama administration strikes with Tehran.

And Menendez not only broke anew with the administration over Iran, he roared his disapproval, accusing the White House of using "talking points straight out of Tehran."

Yikes. That's more than posturing, folks. That's raw human anger.

Without running it by the White House, Boehner invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to give a speech from the very podium Obama delivered his State of the Union address. In Washington, that's tantamount to a politi­cal gesture involv­ing a certain finger.

And then there's new SASC Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., who just about everyone in Washington expects to relentlessly — and loudly — skewer Obama's defense and foreign policy agenda.

If last week proves more than an aberration, two narratives postulated by many inside the Beltway likely are cooked.

The first is that Obama, his domestic agenda all but dead after Republicans captured the Senate in the midterm elections, would focus his legacy-building on defense and foreign policy.

The second goes like this: In the post-9/11 era, congressional oversight of things like the military, intelligence community and big foreign policy has been pushed aside by ever-expanding executive-branch power.

On issue after issue, members are frustrated enough to join members of the other party to re-assert Congress' role in defense and foreign policy. (And like it or not, those roles are described, sometimes vaguely, right there in the Constitution.)

"Why is it possible that Tehran will treat its Parliament better than the administration in the greatest democracy is willing to treat its Congress?" Menendez roared last week. "It just boggles my imagination!"

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