J.W. Fulbright once called it "American Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century Under an Eighteenth Century Constitution." In no other policy sphere has our governing charter generated as much anxiety about its suitability to the modern world. Can a system with divided authority, with two major foreign policy decisionmaking institutions, meet the need for united national action on life-or-death matters like, for example, the control and deployment of nuclear arms?
There are those who would deny the problem through simple assertion of presidential predominance. Citing authorities from John Marshall (as federalist Congressman) through Woodrow Wilson (as Constitutional scholar) to Edwin Meese (as presidential counselor), executive branch practitioners and even scholars assert repeatedly that, on foreign policy, the president reigns supreme (or at least ought to).