The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

DIVISION of powers between the Executive and Congress was the dominant issue as the Eisenhower Administration began its second year. The struggle for authority between the A bite House and Capitol Hill was somewhat camouflaged during the honeymoon period in 1953. Congress was on its good behavior, and the President went out of his way to establish cordial relations with legislators. But the underlying contest is in terms of prerogatives rather than personalities, and there are signs that-it will break out in the open during this session of Congress.

There was an indication in the grumbling of Republican congressional leaders over the President’s assertion that the GOP ought to be judged by the broad and dynamic program he hopes Congress will enact. They, rather than the President, the legislators insisted, will determine what the program is to be. Another facet of the problem is the refusal of Senator Knowland, the majority leader, to take public issue with Senator McCarthy after his attack on Administration foreign policy. In this the principal legislative lieutenant failed to back up President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles.

The three-day legislative conference at the White House in mid-December was an effort by the President to establish a balance. But the 1954 congressional elections remain a distraction. Both parties are interested in making the session a short one. The Republican majority is paper-thin. The Democrats upon whom the Administration will have to depend for enactment of its program are themselves thinking of politics. Many Democrats sympathetic towards Ike were alienated by Attorney General Brownell’s attack on former President Truman. Thus most of the influences are working toward standpattism.

Secretary Benson and his advisers have labored diligently to come up with an alternative to subsidized surpluses. Some changes are in prospect on individual commodities over which the Secretary of Agriculture has discretionary authority, such as dairy products. But the congressional program of price supports pegged at 90 per cent of parity on basic commodities is popular in both parties, despite the criticisms. With the squeeze between lower prices and higher farm costs remaining a political factor, it will be difficult to persuade Congress to accept any radical departure from the present guarantees.

Last fall the Administration decided against asking Congress for new taxes to replace revenue lost in the 10 percent cut in income taxes and expiration of the excess profits tax. The emphasis has been on additional efforts to balance the budget through economies in defense spending. By reducing expenditures and avoiding new taxes, the Administration hopes to enlist congressional support for some changes in present excise taxes.

Statehood for Hawaii remains an important Administration objective and, because of the approval by the House last year, only the Senate must act. A hard core of opposition exists among Southern Democrats, however, and the statehood issue is particularly susceptible to filibusters and political horse-trades. Meanwhile the Administration has little disposition to press this year for revision of the Taft-Hartley Labor Law or for amendment of the MeCarran Immigration Act or the admission of additional iron curtain refugees.

The aim of the Bricker Amendment

A major issue before Congress will be the Bricker Amendment to limit, drastically the treaty-making power of the Executive department. In some ways this is the crux of the struggle between the Executive and Legislative branches. So far, despite the crippling effect which the amendment would have on the conduct of foreign relations, the Administration has mustered relatively little support in Congress for the Executive position.

Apart from the details of the amendment itself, the fact that such a proposal to erode Executive prerogatives has gained headway alarms many students of the Presidency. It is symbolic of the urge for congressional supremacy in a tripartite system. F.D.R., as a strong President who came into office at a time of emergency, was able to dominate Congress; and when his hold began to wane, the war re-established it. Truman had to contend with a reactionary Congress after the pressure was off; and the result was to leave Congress firmly in control. President Eisenhower, who tried at the outset for harmony and coöperation, finds his efforts construed as weakness.

Actually, the struggle is as old as the country. Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist papers that legislators ought to be wise enough not to hem in the Executive with restraints that experience teaches us cannot be respected in emergencies.

One former Cabinet member in the Truman Administration refers to the “Frenchification” of American politics, in the sense that we have not merely two main political parties, but three or four segments of each party, all of which must be conciliated. The danger of such compromise carried to extremes is aimless drift. The United States has had good government, he argues, only when strong Presidents have used all the powers of their office to induce Congress to accept what at the time may be unpopular legislation.

It is against this historical background — with the issue essentially the same as that faced when the Constitution, which created the Executive, superseded the Articles of Confederation — that President Eisenhower’s leadership will be tested. There are many indications that his concept of the Presidency is changing. When he took office he tended to regard his function as one of merely recommending measures for Congress to adopt. In his call early in December for a “dynamic” policy, however, he spoke of his “close associates” and “those who fight for the program” he submits.

The President versus McCarthy

There no longer can be any question that Eisenhower detests McCarthy and his methods, but it is not, yet clear what action the President will take. Eisenhower is still receiving conflicting advice. One of his close associates before the 1952 election has urged him to surround McCarthy with “nice guys”— a tactic which certainly has not worked in the past. There also is still some naïveté in White House reactions to McCarthy. One presidential aide was much impressed with the 50,000 letters and telegrams received in the first week after McCarthy’s exhortation, apparently completely unaware that in the past the While House several times has received 200,000 messages a week on a hot issue.

Complicating Eisenhower’s problem is the attitude of Republican politicians toward McCarthy. It is no secret that many Republicans in Congress, while keeping him at arm’s length, are completely cynical about him and are perfectly willing to use him so long as they think he will bring votes. Even the late Senator Taft remarked not long before he died that McCarthy is the greatest asset the Republican Party has. Taft, however, was able to hold McCarthy in line; and now there is no one in Congress with Taft’s prestige. This leaves the problem to President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon.

This much is certain: If Eisenhower expects to move the Republican Party away from its preoccupation with the past, and on to the support of his own programs, it will require more than mere persuasion. It will require Eisenhower to be in a sense his own majority leader. It will require the welding of coalitions for the enactment of specific legislation. It will require a willingness to take risks, where the President stakes his own prestige on the outcome. Most of all, it will require the use of the not inconsiderable powers of the Presidency — the power as party chief as well as chief executive, as the dispenser of patronage as well as the initiator of policy — to induce Congress to adopt and follow his program.

Dulles’s record

Unquestionably the Administration’s largest area of success, as it starts its second year, is in foreign relations. Some Cabinet members — notably Treasury Secretary Humphrey and Defense Secretary Wilson, and to a lesser extent Postmaster General Summerlield and Agriculture Secretary Benson - have been able to institute new policies in their departments with favorable results. But it is Secretary of State Dulles whose policies have been put to the most severe test.

Part of the reason is that foreign relations have railed for so many immediate decisions. The Korean truce, the tedious negotiations over the political conference, the exchanges with Moscow over the Big Four meeting, Trieste, the European Defense Community — these all have called for prompt action. In other departments of government, by contrast, the Administration has been able to rely on study commissions to assess old policies and recommend new ones.

Dulles, who will be sixty-six this month, looks tired. He shows the strain of innumerable conferences and tours of inspection. He tends to be impatient and to oversimplify — as in his private complaint that a mere matter of uniforms held up agreement between Britain and Egypt over the Suez Canal. But he speaks and acts with far more confidence than he did a year ago. This confidence in turn has brought him new respect and even affection from his foreign counterparts.

Certainly the start was faltering. Dulles, who in one sense had been training for the secretaryship all his life (he is the grandson of one Secretary of State and the nephew of another), had to expiate some of the exaggerations of the election campaign. In the process the State Department sustained some scars. Dulles appeared insecure and evasive at first. He was criticized as having no backbone. Senator McCarthy’s juvenile scouts, Cohn and Schine, were allowed virtually to decimate diplomatic staffs abroad, especially in Germany. The Foreign Service was further disrupted by the near-fanaticism of the new security officer, R. W. Scott McLeod.

Beginning with the Korean truce, however, the fortunes of the State Department began to change. The take-it-or-leave-it approach of Ambassador Lodge in the United Nations mellowed. There was less criticism of American inflexibility as the real difficulties of keeping Syngman Rhee in line while negotiating with the Communists became more apparent. Arthur Dean, Dulles’s former law partner in the New York firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, who was sent to Korea as a special ambassador, exhibited much skill and patience in working for the political conference.

Gradually there has emerged a new picture of Dulles as a man of great earnestness dedicated to the bit-bybit advancement of peace. Dulles understands that any successful foreign policy must have a strong political base. But he has stood up to McCarthy and refused to sanction a policy of browbeating our allies and he has reaffirmed American support of the UN. He has been willing to take calculated risks. Occasionally he has shown real eloquence, as in his impromptu definition of the test of a successful meeting with the Russians: “Are the Soviets willing to have any fresh breath of freedom touch any part of the area now behind the iron curtain?”

Perhaps the most vulnerable point in foreign policy as conducted by Dulles is the excessive dependence on the European Defense Community. EDC is viewed by Secretary Dulles and by President Eisenhower not as a mere military asset, but as the key to further political and economic unity in Europe. In recent months, however, it has become evident that the growth of NATO, the Europeanization of Germany, and indeed most of American policy toward Europe have been allowed to rest, on the ratification of EDC. This has strengthened the hand of the opponents of France, and it has led to the extraordinary inducements the United States now finds it necessary to place before the French Parliament. Even if EDC should be ratified and the tensions of the cold war should recede, Dulles’s road will not be smooth.

Humphrey and Wilson

From the beginning Treasury Secretary Humphrey has been the most popular member of the Cabinet. As one economist puts it, “ Even when he makes a mistake it is a mistake in judgment rather than an error caused by ignorance.” The criticism directed at Humphrey over higher interest rates and restricted credit has subsided as money has become easier. This is the result of Humphrey’s effort to employ selective fiscal controls.

Privately Humphrey was emphatic in denouncing the rigid limitation of the national debt, retained at Senator Byrd’s insistence, as a barrier that impeded Treasury operations and cost the country money. Apart from his moves to refund the debt on a longterm basis, Humphrey’s chief concern has been to approach a balanced budget by bringing down military costs to the point at which the country can support them indefinitely. In this he has had great assistance from Defense Secretary Wilson.

Perhaps Wilson’s principal achievement so far is his firm control of the budgetary process in the Pentagon. Wilson has made clear his determination not to impair combat strength. His plan is to reduce the total of noncombat, manpower in conjunction with the new strength figures, emphasizing air power, agreed to by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Many experts who have studied the armed forces agree that there is overstaffing — for example, the Army has the largest “division slice” of supporting troops of any army in the world.

Gradually Wilson too has won a corps of admirers. One of his most engaging trails is his frankness and his willingness to admit that he has been wrong. He has found a valuable asset in Fred Seaton, former Senator from Nebraska, who is the new assistant secretary for information and congressional relations. Seaton, incidentally, is a close confidant of President Eisenhower.

Mood of the Capital

President Eisenhower’s call upon principal nations to divert fissionable materials to a UN agency for peaceful development is acclaimed in the Capital as the most significant effort yet to move the international control of atomic energy off dead center. Its great virtue is that it abandons the all-or-nothing formula of the now outmoded Baruch Plan for an approach that takes the easiest part of the problem first.

It does not guarantee control of atomic weapons, but it points the way to coöperation that eventually may tiring such a result. It offers new hope for a relaxation of unnecessary atomic secrecy. It also holds the possibility of peaceful development of atomic energy in the free world even without Russian coöperation.

Inadequate access to information is still a complaint against the internal workings of the Eisenhower Administration. President Eisenhower and Secretaries Dulles and Wilson hold regular press conferences. Secretaries Benson and Humphrey and Attorney General Brownell hold occasional background sessions for reporters. But there is no system for regular dissemination of news, and the contact between most Cabinet members and the public is pretty much hit-or-miss. Consequently there is still a premium on “dope” stories, leaks, and rumors.