Where's Congress?

CONGRESSIONAL leaders knew something was afoot last Monday but they did not know what. With all the rumors buzzing of impending presidential action in Viet Nam, Senate Democrats asked at noon for a meeting with the President, but their request went unanswered. Not until late in the afternoon were congressional leaders given notice of an 8 p.m. briefing at the White House. When they arrived, the President gave them a crisp 15 minutes, then left abruptly to get ready for his announcement to the nation of a near-blockade of North Viet Nam Cabinet members and Pentagon brass stayed behind to answer questions fired at them by the irritated, frustrated Congressmen "There's no change in the pattern," grumbled Leslie Arends, House Republican whip since 1943. "I've yet to sit in on one of these conferences and hear the President say: What do you think we ought to do?' " A presidential aide remarked: "Well what the hell, I think they're used to it by now."

In many ways they are. They have suffered presidential control of foreign policy so long that they just about take it for granted. Now the President had mounted still another dangerous escalation of the Viet Nam War without so much as asking their opinion. It was the culminating humiliation of years of presidential neglect and indifference. The danger was that Congress had acquiesced in its inferior status. "There are members of Congress who are called 'the President's men,' " says Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. "In their view, everything a President recommends is right. Everything a President does is right. Any time the Congress, a coequal branch of Government, seeks to exercise the equality granted to us under the Constitution, we are accused of engaging in adversary proceedings."

This imbalance of powers is not the result of a deliberate plot conducted by power-happy Presidents. It more or less just happened helped along by circumstance. Named the Commander in Chief of the armed forces by the Constitution, partly to ensure civilian control of the military, the President has always had the power to act quickly when he needed to. Congress, a deliberative body, moves more slowly and cautiously. From Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase to Johnson's dispatch of troops to Viet Nam, with rare exceptions the President has taken the lead in foreign and military policy while Congress has tagged along often grumbling. When an earlier activist President, James K. Polk sent troops into Mexico and then demanded that Congress approve his action, Senator John C. Calhoun declared that the deed "stripped Congress of the power of making war, and what was more and worse, it gave that power to every officer nay, to every subaltern commanding a corporal s guard. As before and since, the President got away with it.

Now that the U.S. is embroiled in Viet Nam, Americans may wonder how the President could have acquired so much power Yet it was only a few short years ago that most liberals in politics and in the academy considered a strong presidency essential to democracy. A good case can be made for presidential power in foreign affairs. Diplomatic negotiations cannot be left to a many-headed Congress with myriad political commitments and conflicting personalities. America had to speak with one voice not many. As the U.S. role increased in world affairs, the President took charge of an ever-expanding military, diplomatic and intelligence Establishment. With annihilation of the nation a genuine possibility in the nuclear age, only the President could have the power to make quick life-or-death decisions. There seemed to be no other way.

But power in such quantity is an ever-present temptation. The line between constitutional and unconstitutional acts became blurred. Congressional power to declare war atrophied; in effect the President did it on his own--in Korea, in Viet Nam and to a lesser degree in a host of other places, like Lebanon and the Dominican Republic, where the President committed American forces momentarily. The process has a cumulative effect. Once the President has made a certain commitment of troops, he may feel compelled to send still more to protect his original investment. Viet Nam is the tragic outcome of a process that nobody really meant to start and nobody quite knows how to stop.

The question is how to correct the imbalance and restore to Congress its proper role in the conduct of foreign affairs. Congressmen quite naturally, are not of one mind on the war. Without a working hostile majority, they cannot put up solid opposition to the President's policies, and Nixon conquers partly by dividing Beyond that, once a war is undertaken and American lives are at stake, the President's men and others, too, are reluctant to jeopardize the war effort. It would be unpatriotic and politically hazardous. Hence the unwillingness of Congress to cut off appropriations for the war.

One promising approach is a law that would inhibit the President's warmaking powers by reinforcing the badly eroded constitutional right of Congress to declare and support a war. Several such bills have been introduced that would not apply to Viet Nam but to any future Viet Nams. Most discussed is the proposal of New York's Republican Senator Jacob Javits to limit unilateral military action by the President to specific instances where the U.S. or its armed forces have been attacked. The President could also take military action to protect American lives and property abroad or to carry out the terms of a treaty or other agreement ratified by Congress. But unless approved by Congress, hostilities would have to end in 30 days. Obviously, such a bill would not completely restrain the President, given his ample resources. But it would bring Congress into the decision-making process as never before.

So far Nixon has resisted all attempts to rebuild congressional power over foreign policy. Last November, Congress passed a military authorization bill with a watered-down version of the Mansfield amendment, which simply called for setting a date for the withdrawal of American forces from Viet Nam as soon as the prisoners of war are released. The President signed the bill into law while describing the amendment as being "without binding force or effect."

Yet Congress, properly informed, could be as much ot a help as a hindrance to the President, particularly in this time of travail over Viet Nam. By being brought into policymaking, Congress could share the responsibility as well as the blame for what happens there. Rather than rebuffing them, the President might welcome congressional efforts to formulate a peace offer to North Viet Nam. The Church-Case amendment omits a cease-fire as a condition for the withdrawal of American forces, but it does embody Nixon's offer of a total withdrawal in four months after the P.O.W.s are freed. Though Nixon dislikes congressional interference with his prerogatives, some such congressional resolution would increase his bargaining strength with North Viet Nam. It would demonstrate that Congress, the source of so much antiwar sentiment, is behind him.

No less than previous Presidents, Nixon has underestimated what Congress can do for him. It can, under certain circumstances save him from himself. The Senate, in particular, remains the repository of a worldly-wise skepticism--a quality not always found in the Executive bureaucracy, which defends to the death policies that it has initiated. The Administration has had to keep escalating in Viet Nam to protect its original position If the President had been required to report regularly to Congress, he might have found alternative strategies. To some degree the President has become the captive of the huge Establishment that has grown up around him. "A strong President," says Senator William Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, "has been regarded as not one who strengthens and upholds our constitutional system as a whole but as one who accumulates and retains as much power as possible in the presidential office itself." It is time not to weaken the President, but to make the U.S. stronger by sharing the abundant power of the presidency with Congress.

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