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Acheson vs. Congress
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
The age of the amateur in politics is over according to Dean Acheson. Up until the eighteenth century it was possible, owing to the nature and development of the arts and sciences, for a gifted amateur to hold his own with the experts in many fields, but in the twentieth century the amateur is no longer capable of mastering more highly specialized fields of knowledge. The expansion of knowledge has been so great that no amateur can hope to vie in competence with an expert in a given field. This point of view, while somewhat general and a priori, would arouse little opposition among philosophers and historians of ideas. Congress, according to Acheson, is composed primarily of amateurs, and collectively, it represents the point of view of the untrained and unspecialized. It is an eighteenth-century conception which has survived into the twentieth. If we make Acheson's argument explicit—which he diplomatically declines to do—we get the following: amateurs are not competent to formulate public policy under modern conditions. Congress is a collection of amateurs. Therefore, it follows, that Congress is not competent to formulate public policy. The executive branch, on the other hand, attracts the specialist, depends upon him, and uses him extensively. Congress, because of its situation, that is, its deficiency in specialized knowledge and because of its position as a competing power with the executive, is constantly trying to frustrate the executive. A fundamental problem for American democracy, according to Acheson, is to discover which tasks are suitable for the experts (the executive) and which for the amateurs (Congress) and to facilitate the appropriate performance of each accordingly.
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- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1960
References
1 Acheson's views on Congress are conveniently gathered in several books and articles written after he left office in 1953. See the following: Power and Diplomacy (Cambridge, 1958)Google Scholar; “Foreign Policy and Presidential Moralism”, Reporter, XVI (1957), 10–14Google Scholar; A Citizen Looks at Congress (New York, 1956–1957)Google Scholar; “Legislative-Executive Relations”, Yale Review, XLV (1956), 481–495Google Scholar; A Democrat Looks at His Party (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; “Parties and Foreign Policy”, Harper's Magazine, CCXI (1955), 29–34Google Scholar; “The Responsibility for Decision in Foreign Policy”, Yale Review, XLIV (1954), 1–12Google Scholar; “The United Nations Charter and Our Foreign Policy”, U. S. Department of State Bulletin, XIII (1945), 181–188Google Scholar.
2 Quoted in A Citizen Looks at Congress, pp. 86–87.
3 Ibid., pp. 61–124.
4 Acheson, , A Democrat Looks at His Party, pp. 104–105Google Scholar.
5 Acheson, , A Citizen Looks at Congress, p. 54Google Scholar.
6 Acheson, , A Democrat Looks at His Party, p. 105Google Scholar.
7 Acheson, , A Citizen Looks at Congress, p. 26Google Scholar.
8 Ibid., p. 61.
9 Ibid., pp. 39–40.
10 Ibid., pp. 40–41.
11 Ibid., p. 71.
12 Ibid., p. 40.
13 Ibid., pp. 81–82.
14 Ibid., pp. 84–85. “All that I have said about legislative-executive relations in the field of my experience can be summed up in a few sentences. It is not easy to conduct our foreign relations in the national interest with the limitations imposed by democratic political practices. A good deal of wear and tear will occur on the executive side, and it had best be liberally supplied with spare parts. Of all my principal assistants at the beginning of four years only one remained at the end. I found rest not unwelcome myself”.
15 Meyers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52, 293 (1926)Google Scholar; and quoted in Acheson, , A Citizen Looks at Congress, p. 53Google Scholar.
16 Compare the cases of Acheson, Brandeis, Charles Wilson, and Lilienthal.
17 New York Times, May 13, 1933, 3.
18 Ibid., 8.
19 Ibid.
20 “In his [Wherry's] philosophy, in fact, a dangerous radicalism is inherent in some of the ideas of such a person as his superior in the Republican hierarchy, Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, a man commonly counted a bit conservative himself”. White, William S., “Portrait of a Fundamentalist,” New York Times Magazine (01 15, 1950), 14Google Scholar.
See also Cope, Richard, “Kenneth Wherry, Negativist from Nebraska”, Reporter (04 17, 1951), 10–13Google Scholar.
21 New York Times, September 18, 1945.
22 See U. S. Department of State Bulletin, XIII (1945), 427Google Scholar, for a transcript of the President's press conference.
23 New York Times, September 28, 1945, IV, 3: “This week the State Department in Washington quarreled openly with the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, engaged in the occupation and demilitarization of Japan. The occasion was a statement made by General MacArthur in Tokyo which seemed to the War Department to infringe on its rights to make demobilization policy and appeared to the State Department to invade its role as our spokesman in foreign policy.
“The War Department, which did its blowing up in private, was battered at the time by members of Congress and the public for the pace and particulars of demobilization. So was the Navy, though not so audibly in the hall of Congress. The General's prophecy that in six months, if ‘nothing unforeseen’ arose, Japan could be policed by 200,000 men, permitting the return home of the veteran Pacific Forces, and that he assumed this number would be well within the capacity of the postwar regular army, excited the Pentagon for two reasons”.
“The big command was fearful that these remarks would produce such a storm of demands for more rapid demobilization that the United States would have to weaken its defenses disasterously in the critical postwar period. It was also incensed that General MacArthur should have speculated on the size of the postwar regular Army, a matter of policy for his superiors to decide”.
“The State Department, which did its blowing up in public, had other objections. Chief among these was that General MacArthur's optimistic guess would stimulate Japanese hopes of soft and forgiving American tactics in dealing with that people and encourage the militarists … there was also the delicate matter of invaded jurisdiction”.
24 U. S. Department of State Bulletin, XIII (1945), 427Google Scholar; New York Times, September 20, 1945.
25 U. S. Department of State Bulletin, XIII (1945), 479Google Scholar.
28 Ibid., p. 479.
27 The following were members of the Committee: Tom Connally, D., Texas, Chairman; Walter F. George, D., Georgia; Robert F. Wagner, D., New York; Elbert D. Thomas, D., Utah; James E. Murray, D., Montana; Claude Pepper, D., Florida; Theodore F. Green, D., Rhode Island; Joseph F. Guffy, D., Pennsylvania; Carter Glass, D., Virginia; James M. Tunnell, D., Delaware; Carl A. Hatch, D., New Mexico; Lister Hill, D., Alabama; Scott Lucas, D., Illinois; Hiram W. Johnson, R., California; Arthur Capper, R., Kansas; Arthur Vandenberg, R., Michigan; Wallace H. White, R., Maine; Henrik Shipsted, R., Minnesota; Warren R. Austin, R., Vermont; Styles Bridges, R., New Hampshire; and Alexander Wiley, R., Wisconsin.
28 Voting with Wherry were Homer Capehart, R., Indiana; George A. Wilson, R., Iowa; Arthur Capper, R., Kansas; Edward V. Robertson, R., Wyoming; Henrik Shipsted, R., Minnesota; Hugh Butler, R., Nebraska; Milton R. Young, R., North Dakota; E. H. Moore, R., Oklahoma; and Chapman Revercomb, R., West Virginia.
29 New York Times, December 7, 1950, 1.
30 Krock, Arthur, New York Times, 09 23, 1945, 3Google Scholar.
31 New York Times, March 19, 1947.
32 New York Times, January 8, 1949, 1.
33 Ibid.
34 New York Times, January 8, 1949, 3.
35 Ibid.
36 U. S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearing on Nomination of Dean G. Acheson, 81st Cong., 1st Sess. (01 13, 1949)Google Scholar.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 U. S., Congress, Congressional Record, 81st Cong., 1st Sess. (1949), XCIV, Part i, 460–461Google Scholar.
44 New York Times, January 19, 1949.
45 U. S., Congress, Congressional Record, 81st Cong., 1st Sess. (1949), XCIV, Part i, 460–461Google Scholar.
46 New York Times, January 29, 1950, 3.
Acheson and Franklin D. Roosevelt are interesting contrasts with respect to press relations and rhetoric as used by men in public office. FDR never hesitated to back out of an awkward situation. “One day, while instructing his agency chiefs on public relations, Roosevelt told them how he had handled an awkward query. A reporter had asked him to comment on a statement by Ambassador Bingham in London urging closer relations between the United States and Britain. If he had done the natural thing of backing Bingham, the newspapers would have made headlines of the President's statement with likely ill effect on naval conversations then under way with Japan. If he had said ‘no comment’ he would have sounded critical of Bingham's statement. So he simply said he had not seen it—although in fact he had”. Bums, James MacGregor, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (New York, 1956), p. 189Google Scholar.
47 New York Times, January 26, 1950, 14.
48 New York Times, March 1, 1950, 1.
49 U. S., Congress, Senate Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, Hearings, State, Justice, Commerce, Judiciary Appropriations, 1951, 81st Cong., 2nd Sess. (02 28, 1950), 636–638Google Scholar. The above arguments are based upon testimony delivered at these Hearings. The following extract from Acheson's testimony contains most of the arguments summarized above.
“It has been charged, for instance, that what I said indicated that I am not qualified for the office which I hold. I do not agree with this view, but it surely indicates that some persons believe that my views in this matter are relevant to the quetsion of my fitness for the office and that, therefore, the public is entitled to know my views. At any rate, the question which was put to me was directed toward bringing them out, and the issue was, therefore, presented whether I should state them or withhold them.”
“There were also personal reasons for stating my attitude. One must be true to the things by which one lives. The counsels of discretion and cowardice are appealing. The safe course is to avoid situations which are disagreeable and dangerous. Such a course might get one by the issue of the moment, but has bitter and evil consequences. In the long days and years which stretch beyond that moment of decision, one must live with one's self; and the consequences of living with a decision which one knows has sprung from timidity and cowardice go to the roots of one's life. It is not merely a question of peace of mind, although that is vital; it is a matter of integrity of character. This is the most fundamental of all considerations.”
“For these reasons it seemed, and still seems to me that there was no alternative to saying what I said.
“Third. The attitude which one who has known and worked with Mr. Hiss will take toward him in his deep trouble is a matter for the individual conscience (to) decide. It isn't a matter which a court, or public opinion, or the Government can decide for one. That is fundamental not only under our institutions of personal liberty and responsibility but under the Christian ethic. It is not true, for instance, in the Soviet Union. There, all those who have known or worked with a person who has been charged with the offenses which Mr. Hiss has been charged must flee from him as from the plague, if they would preserve even the safety of their lives. But that is not true of us; and, indeed, that difference between us and the Soviet Union goes to the very root of the issues which so deeply divide the free world from the Communist world.”
“Turning then to my personal attitude toward Mr. Hiss, I said that would be founded upon the principles as stated by Christ in the passage which I cited from the Gospel according to St. Matthew. These passages represent the tradition in which I have been bred, going back beyond the limits of memory. Mr. Hiss is in the gravest trouble in which a man could be. The outcome of his appeal can have little bearing upon his personal tragedy. The courts of appeals can either affirm the conviction and sentence, in which case he must go to prison, or, if it finds error in the proceedings below, it can reverse the judgment of the court and remand the case for still another trial in conformity with its opinion. It is in regard to a man in this situation that I referred to Christ's words setting forth compassion as the highest of Christian duties and as the highest quality in the sight of God”.
50 There were a few exceptions among Southern Democrats and Independents.
51 Letter to the New York Times, dated March 24, 1950, and published in the New York Times, March 27, 1950.
52 New York Times, July 23, 1950.
53 Congressional Quarterly Annual, VI (1950), 454Google Scholar.
54 Ibid.
55 New York Times, July 23, 1950.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid., September 14, 1950, 13.
60 Ibid., September 18, 1950, 16.
61 Ibid., September 24, 1950, 66.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid., October 13, 1950, 16. The full text of the resolution is included with the news story.
64 “The first step undoubtedly will be a rising Republican demand for the head of Secretary of State Dean Acheson”. White, William S. in the New York Times, 11 19, 1950, 12Google Scholar.
65 Quoted by Reston, James in the New York Times, 11 9, 1950, 28Google Scholar.
66 Davis, Elmer, “The Crusade Against Acheson”, Harper's Magazine, CCII (1951), 25Google Scholar.
67 New York Times, November 9, 1950, 28.
68 U. S. Departmnet of State Bulletin, XXIII (1950), 839–840Google Scholar, and also New York Times, November 18, 1950, 1 and 7.
69 New York Times, 11 26, 1950, IV, 3Google Scholar.
70 New York Times, November 26, 1950. Senators Hickenlooper, Ferguson, Brewster made similar statements during the month of November.
71 New York Times, November 19, 1950.
72 New York Times, November 22, 1950.
73 U. S., Congress, Congressional Record, 81st Cong., 2nd. Sess. (1950)Google Scholar.
74 New York Times, December 7, 1950, 1.
75 New York Times, December 8, 1950.
76 Davis, Elmer, “The Crusade Against Acheson”, Harper's Magazine, CCII (1951), 23Google Scholar.
77 New York Times, December 12, 1950, 26.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid.
81 Ibid., December 16, 1950, 1, 3.
82 Ibid.
80 Ibid.
83 Ibid.