The President as Chief Educator on Foreign Affairs

HE TREATMENT of President Eisenhower's foreign-aid budget request during the first session of the Eighty-fifth Congress focused attention on the overriding importance of strong presidential leadership in foreign affairs. Congress was well along the path to emasculating the foreign-aid program before the President reached down for his ace-in-thehole and went to the with his arguments. In a day when the patronage is not as effective a weapon as in other eras, the President's ability to put indirect pressure on Capitol Hill through appeals for support from the people as a whole has become an indispensable weapon for effectuating a foreign policy program when congressmen and senators threaten to play politics with the national security. Much has been said and written about the institutions which allow the Senate to affect foreign policy in a negative fashion by altering and defeating treaties and the power of the purse by which Congress can cripple and destroy administrative programs in the foreign field. However, a greater danger may lie in the indirect control exercised by certain key congressmen and senators. This control consists of pressure, either expressed or implied by past actions, which causes the administration not to undertake specific measures or to water down its proposals because of fear of defeat or of alienating a group of senators who might then oppose the administration on other issues. Compromise is an essential aspect of politics, but there is a serious question as to its applicability to policies involving national security considerations. Of course, this type of indirect control occurs most frequently when a President occupies the White House. This is why the years from 1921 to 1933 produced the best examples of indirect control by Congress (in most cases, by the Senate). During that period, a group of men on Capitol Hill called the shots and their predominance to a great extent stemmed from the fact that senators such as Borah and Johnson were stronger characters and had a greater sense of mission than did those men who had charge of the Executive Branch. It was no surprise to anyone that Warren Harding turned out to be a weak President, for he had been chosen for the Republican nomination by his cronies in the Senate precisely because he was the type of individual who could be counted upon to defer to the leadership of the irreconcilable isolationists in the upper house. Perhaps the most succinct summation of Harding's attitude towards the presidency was given in his famous St. Louis speech on American membership in the World Court in June, 1923

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