The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

on the World Today

WITH this session of Congress at last approaching its final weeks it is clear that the struggle for power between the President and Congress has been intensified and the reputation of neither enhanced. Although the overwhelming majority of the members of the House and Senate belong to the President’s party, the battle has gone on almost as if they were in opposition.

Congress, as always, listens intently to the most vocal elements at the grass roots and is much more inclined to exploit the fears and frustrations of the people than the Executive is. With the strong conservative feeling in the country, best expressed in the Goldwater boom, and with the apprehensions aroused by the civil rights struggle, the conflict between a President advocating action and a Congress disposed to caution is likely to grow.

The President has been unable to devise any new methods of legislative leadership. He has depended upon the traditional means of persuasion, conciliation, and compromise. The result has been a lengthy and disheartening exhibit of delay, stalemate, and half measures.

The Administration has become so accustomed to defeat that it claims a major victory when Congress approves a small part of an Administration recommendation. Of the several hundred presidential proposals sent to Capitol Hill this year, only a handful have been acted upon. Even though it passed easily in the House, the allimportant tax bill, which had its origins in a series of presidential-congressional negotiations in the summer of 1962, still faces uncertainties.

Americans are quick to throw up their hands in disgust over the inability of other governments to resolve issues quickly and logically. But we seldom fully appreciate how confidence abroad in the American system is undermined by congressional indecisiveness and the inability of a President to win approval of his programs. Friends ask repeatedly whether the American constitutional system, with its division of power, is capable of meeting the challenges of the times.

White House versus Congress

The problem always centers on the issue of presidential versus congressional power. Tens of thousands of words have been written on the subject without any clearly acceptable solution having been proposed to ensure a larger degree of party responsibility. The strong Presidents have relied on a variety of makeshift arrangements and canny displays of executive power. But even they have not always succeeded in overcoming the stalemates that seem to be an inevitable part of the checks and balances built into the American system — checks which the seniority system has sometimes made into massive roadblocks.

President Kennedy has wanted to be a leader of Congress without offending its members and without resorting to any but the accepted ways of dealing with it. This has been both a strength and a serious weakness. In some ways he has been more like his Republican predecessor, President Eisenhower, whom he bitterly assailed in the 1960 campaign, than like his most recent Democratic predecessor, President Truman. The rancor which characterized some presidential-congressional battles has been happily absent in this Administration. But great legislative achievements have been few in number.

The high promises of the Kennedy campaign, when he pledged a daring, energetic, and innovating presidency, have been blunted by successive congressional battles and the adjustments that Congress has exacted. Too often the initiative has been taken from the President as he has seemed to give way rather easily to recalcitrance and obstruction on Capitol Hill. Most surprising of all has been his unwillingness to go over the heads of the congressmen in direct appeals to the people. His addresses to joint sessions of Congress and his radio-television reports to the people have been disturbingly infrequent. His radio-television address to the nation on September 18, urging support of his tax bill, stands almost alone as an example of Kennedy’s use of the fireside chat to stimulate popular support for one of his legislative programs.

President Kennedy has disappointed many of his most ardent supporters by his failure to use as forums to explain his policies either his press conferences or the many occasions available to him to speak informally. No American correspondent would propose that the style of the De Gaulle press conference be adopted here, for the French President chooses the question he wishes to answer and then addresses himself to the chosen question at great length. But De Gaulle does use the opportunity in an elaborate way to explain fully his thinking on any given issue, sometimes taking more than thirty minutes to reply to a single question.

The President’s strategy

Although President Kennedy has failed in many instances as an educator, one effort on his part must receive high marks. He not only helped mobilize opinion, but he has succeeded in stimulating action on the civil rights front. His action, of course, came after the demonstrations and counter police actions had placed the issue squarely on his doorstep. But once it was there, he summoned his strength in a remarkably effective education campaign.

The President worked not through a series of public speeches but with a number of small groups in the privacy of the White House. Editors, governors, businessmen, lawyers, and labor and religious leaders were invited to the White House to hear the President appeal for action to end discrimination. These discussions stimulated important action on a variety of fronts throughout the country, and they helped focus national attention on the problem.

The President clearly prefers to act in this way, or on the telephone with individuals, rather than in a fireside chat, which he thinks he does not do well. In other words, he is more a direct actionist than a propagandist or an educator. He is convinced, for example, that a personal appeal to key congressmen is more productive than a series of public appeals for action. And because his quick mind grasps an issue easily, he is pained when he has to spend time slowly explaining and elucidating it to others.

This may be one of the reasons that the polls indicate the President’s personal popularity is higher than that of his Administration. He has succeeded in selling himself as an individual; he has not succeeded in selling his program either to the people or to Congress. This is a weakness that could be fatal to his reputation in the eyes of history.

In 1962, after the Senate defeated his medicalcare-for-the-aged program, the President went on television with a brief, sharp statement criticizing Republicans for opposing him and in effect appealing to the voters to support him. Again, this year, after the House sharply cut the foreign-aid authorization bill, the President made a partisan television attack on the opposition and appealed for public support.

Both these statements were made after defeats had been suffered, and both singled out Republicans for attack without acknowledging that if all the Democrats had supported him, he would have won in both instances. More public education before the votes and greater success in maintaining responsibility in his own party would have been more to the point than the attacks on the opposition after the event.

The Administration’s careful preparation of its case for the test-ban treaty and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s examination of witnesses proved that on vital matters the American constitutional system at times can be made to work extremely well. Secretary of State Dean Rusk has always been an effective and alert congressional witness. His brief for the treaty was applauded by members of both parties.

The next steps are not yet clear. It may be that negotiations to ensure against surprise attack will be undertaken, but this will also be a long process if the Soviets insist on tying such a pact into an agreement for nuclear free zones. A nonaggression pact, which the Soviets want, poses so many problems for the West that it seems very remote, and many Washington officials, in this instance at least, agree with President de Gaulle that it would have little value.

It may be that there will be renewed attempts to expand trade with Eastern Europe, something that the Eastern Europeans want very much indeed and something that would help free them from their present almost complete economic reliance on Moscow.

De Gaulle and Vietnam

One of the most extraordinary developments in America’s relations with the France of Charles de Gaulle was his suggestion that foreign influences be eliminated from Vietnam. The French have continued to maintain some contacts with the Ho Chi Minh Communists in Hanoi. Washington is inclined to believe Ho would like to free himself from his growing dependence on Peiping. For months he seemed to side with Moscow rather than Peiping in many of their disputes.

About two years ago, during the most critical phase of the Laotian crisis, the United States asked Prime Minister Nehru’s assistance in persuading Peiping and Hanoi to agree to a peaceful settlement in Laos. Nehru declined to appeal to Peiping. He did get in touch with Ho, who gave signs of wanting to take a more moderate position.

Since then relations between Peiping and New Delhi have worsened, and the Sino-Soviet conflict is causing the greatest possible anguish in those Communist states whose leaders have tried to maintain good relations with Moscow and Peiping. Ho is foremost among these. He may have no room at all to maneuver.

Nevertheless, like Ngo Dinh Diem in the south, Ho has reached a point where he may grasp at anything that offers salvation. De Gaulle has said, with his usual lack of concern for the sensibilities of his allies, that diplomatic negotiation is worth trying. Whether he was more interested in irritating or helping the United States is still not clear.

McClellan’s vendetta

After more than six months of heated exchanges between Defense Department officials and members of the McClellan subcommittee, tfie I status of the TFX contract is unchanged. If anything has been accomplished by the lengthy hearings, at which more than a million words were exchanged, it is not readily apparent.

The man who started the hearings and has relentlessly cross-examined all those who participated in the Defense Department decision is renowned on Capitol Hill for his abilities as a prosecuting attorney. Senator John L. McClellan of Arkansas embodies the strengths and weaknesses of a prosecutor determined to win his case. He wants to win, and he believes that there are devils in abundance. With such an approach, a senator can gain great power, but it is unlikely that he will ever be creative or achieve the position of a statesman. His approach is too negative.

Born in one of the most povertystricken areas of his state. McClellan struggled against heavy odds and many heartbreaks to his present high position. Instead of being softened by his early experiences, he appears to have been toughened by them, with the result that he is quick to attack any who stand in his way. The vendetta he has conducted against Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell L. Gilpatric has been inexcusable. No shred of evidence has been produced to raise doubts about Gilpatric’s ethics in the case, yet McClellan has repeatedly tried to make Gilpatric the villain. Many of Gilpatric’s most private papers have been spread out on the record in an attempt to embarrass him.

Former President Eisenhower often complained about how difficult it was to persuade successful executives to take government positions. Intemperate attacks on government officials like Gilpatric, who gave up a large income as a lawyer to serve the government, help explain their reluctance to accept appointments.

The Pentagon has been inept at times in its dealings with the committee and with the public. But McClellan must bear the major responsibility for the ill will his overzealous attempt to impute wrongdoing has generated. No one has won from the long hearings — not McClellan, not McNamara, not the companies that competed for the contract.