Surprisingly, I agree with this essay by Victor Davis Hanson virtually in its entirety. If a president does something that their own side is more inclined to criticize, they can act almost with impunity. The key, though, is to have given your own side enough red meat not to rebel when you do it. Bush learned the hard way with Harriet Miers that the base will sometimes rise up. That was, though, a combination of her being an obvious crony appointment and social conservatives being an advanced state of paranoia due to having slavishly devoted themselves to the GOP for thirty years and gotten little to show for it. That's why I knew she was toast when the speech in which she sounded sympathetic to Planned Parenthood v. Casey started circulating the Internet. Twenty-four hours later she was no longer the nominee.
Adding to that, in international matters the president doesn't really need to run anything by Congress unless they want to launch a full-scale ground invasion. War is one area where the Court tends to stay out of the fray as much as possible, probably because if it didn't it would probably get nobbled in one way or another. The War Powers Act is more honored in the breach than in the observance.
Thus it's entirely possible that Obama would bomb Iran. The fallout would be severe though. I suspect we'd end up with a ground war, since Iran could retaliate by blocking the straight of Hormuz causing economic catastrophy for the world. We'd probably need to wage full-scale war to clear it and keep it clear.
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