Master of the Senate (106 page)

With Richard Russell, the personal paled before the patriotic. Russell, who had studied the generals of Rome, considered Eisenhower a great military leader, and was happy to rely on his judgment in defense matters. And, as Evans and Novak were to write, this “old-fashioned patriot” was “genuinely worried about the impact on the rest of the world if the Democratic Congress should be openly hostile to the Republican President.”

Convincing the rest of the senatorial Democrats was more difficult. Hour after hour, with senator after senator, repeating the arguments over and over again ten times, twenty times, in a single day, Lyndon Johnson tried to make them understand how popular Eisenhower was, and that, as Reedy puts it, “to announce right at the start that, by God, we’re going to give Eisenhower a battle down the line would have been just suicide,” whereas if they supported the hero, they would be on the popular side, and if they supported him more firmly than the Republicans, the Republicans would, as Reedy puts it, “look cheap and partisan, whereas the Democrats would resemble statesmen willing to put petty issues of partisanship aside to battle for the public good.” “He spent hour after hour in personal conferences” trying to make them understand that the popularity of the man who had vanquished the Democrats could mean not doom but hope for the Democrats, that it could in fact be the very key to a Democratic resurgence. When the Democrats gathered in a group—at the January 2 caucus, at which they elected him Leader—the acceptance statement he read to them repeated these arguments. “I have never agreed … merely to obstruct,” he said. Instead, he said, the Democrats should support “a program geared not just to opposing the majority but to serving America.” When, in his State of the Union address on February 1, Eisenhower said that foreign policy “must be developed and directed in the spirit of true bipartisanship,” Johnson had Reedy draft a response which he read to the Policy Committee at its February 3 luncheon. “Americans everywhere have been gratified by the President’s call for ‘true bipartisanship,’” it said. “The issues of war and peace are far too serious to be settled in the arena of narrow, partisan debate. They can be solved only by the united wisdom and efforts of all Americans regardless of political affiliations.” The Policy Committee approved the statement unanimously. It wouldn’t be merely in the Foreign Relations Committee that the Democrats
were going to line up on Ike’s side. All-out defense of the international agreements, of NATO, was going to be the stance of the Senate Democrats on the floor as well.

Foreign policy was indeed the area on which the Republican Old Guard focused first—and the very first target in their sights was Yalta.

Isolationism was back on Capitol Hill, and it was back strong. Journalists who remembered the America First Committee filling the Senate galleries in 1940 and 1941 saw what Richard Rovere called a “resurgent isolationism” in the way the galleries were filled in 1953 when Joe McCarthy was scheduled to speak. The thunderclap of Pearl Harbor may have demolished in an instant the arguments of the Borahs and Nyes, the thunderclap of Hiroshima may have made it even clearer that in an age of nuclear weapons and modern air forces, the oceans were no longer moats; but those thunderclaps seem to have been heard only faintly in Senate Republican councils, in which the views of quite a sizable bloc (including, of course, the Republican leaders, the defiantly isolationist Taft and the suavely isolationist Bridges) sometimes seemed to resemble the views of the Republican senators who had helped Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. defeat the Treaty of Versailles.

Yalta gave these throwbacks a focus for their rage, for it symbolized so much of what they detested and feared: the usurpation of the sacred constitutional powers of Congress by the hated Roosevelt; the “softness” on Communism that had left Eastern European nations under Stalin’s heel; not to mention the treachery implicit in those “secret” agreements that they were certain existed. The isolationists had dreamed for years of having the Senate repudiate the public agreements, unearth the secret ones, and initiate the constitutional amendment process that would prohibit any future President from ever entering into such agreements. And they wanted action (“the form of which,” as Ambrose comments dryly, “was unspecified”) to liberate the enslaved satellites. As Sam Shaffer,
Newsweek’s
chief congressional correspondent, was to recall years later, “It should have been so easy for Republicans … to translate the dream into reality…. All that was needed to make the dream come true was a sweep in which a Republican Congress and a Republican President could join hands in repudiating the Yalta Agreements as soon as possible after taking the oath of office on inaugural day. It is difficult to comprehend today how intensely the Republican politicians clung to this article of faith.” Now their faith had been rewarded; the sweep had occurred; it seemed in the weeks following the November elections that nothing could stop them from realizing the dream—and thereby, they felt sure, becoming, once again, America’s majority party.

During the campaign, despite his role as implementer of Roosevelt’s agreements, Eisenhower had let the Old Guard believe that he acquiesced in their hard line, but as President he was not disposed to continue doing so, particularly after the State Department reminded him that it was at Yalta that the Allies had been given their occupation rights in Berlin and Vienna, and that if
America could repudiate the agreements, so could Russia. His attempts to explain this to the Old Guard met with a response so stony that, on February 7, the new President noted in his diary, “Republican senators are having a hard time getting through their heads that they now belong to a team that includes rather than opposes the White House.” Nonetheless, he would not give them what they wanted. Instead of disavowing the Yalta accords, the resolution he proposed to Congress on February 20 merely rejected “interpretations” of the accords that “have been perverted to bring about the subjugation of free peoples.” On the subject of freeing the satellites, the President only “hoped” that they would “again enjoy the right of self-determination.” The Republicans’ new President did not even mention the “secret” agreements that they had for so long been certain existed; Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had investigated, and had found that they simply didn’t exist.

As congressional Republicans realized that Eisenhower was not repudiating the accords but only accusing the Russians of subverting them, their fury boiled over. Taft proposed an amendment that said, “The adoption of this resolution does not constitute any determination by Congress as to the validity or invalidity of any of the provisions of the said agreements,” and Taft’s allies on the Old Guard-controlled Foreign Relations Committee—Hickenlooper, Langer, Ferguson, and Knowland—were planning to offer other amendments, far harsher than Taft’s, in a closed-door committee hearing that had been scheduled for February 24.

On the eve of that meeting, however, a new voice was suddenly heard—a Democratic voice, the voice of the Senate’s Democratic Leader. Late that evening, Lyndon Johnson telephoned William White of the
Times
to say that the resolution the Democrats wanted was the resolution Eisenhower had proposed—without any changes. Senate Republicans, he said, would face a fight from the Democrats if they tried to amend it. He read White a statement: “President Eisenhower’s proposal to serve notice on the world that the United States will not acquiesce in the Soviet enslavement drive is one that all Americans can embrace. There is in the President’s resolution no trace of the partisanship that could lead to discord and disunity. Congress should be able to respond in the same high spirit. It is to be hoped that the resolution—as written by the President and his advisers—will receive the unanimous approval of the Senate and thereby serve to notify mankind that Americans are united against Soviet tyranny.”

Pointing out at the Foreign Relations hearing that “it would not be in the national interest to repudiate agreements such as those establishing American rights to be in Berlin or providing free elections in Poland,” Dulles pleaded for a unanimity behind the Eisenhower resolution that would present a united front to the Russians. “If the resolution is going to be controversial, if it were to pass the Senate by a narrow margin, it would be an absolute detriment to what we are trying to do,” he said. The committee adopted the Taft Amendment nonetheless.
Telephoning Johnson in an effort to head off harsher amendments that would dramatize to the public the deep rift between the White House and the Republican Old Guard, Dulles attempted to persuade him and the Democrats to support the Taft Amendment—which was, after all, relatively mild—but got a flat refusal. It was Eisenhower, not Taft, whom Johnson wanted to be supporting. “How can we criticize the Russians for perverting understandings if we refuse to admit their validity?” he asked Dulles.

Stalin’s death on March 4 was providential for the Republicans, since it allowed them to declare that in such unsettled times it served no useful end to pass a resolution that would make it harder to establish a relationship with the new Soviet leadership. When Eisenhower told a news conference that all “I really want to do is put ourselves on record … that we never agreed to the enslavement of peoples that has occurred,” Taft admitted that it was probably better “to forget the whole thing.” But the Republican rift had been revealed; it could no longer be papered over. And neither could the fact that the Democrats were on the President’s side of the rift. Johnson had positioned his party precisely as he—he alone—had wanted it positioned, and the wisdom of his strategy was dramatically apparent. Grand in scale, this overarching political plan that he had conceived down on the ranch in a flash of inspiration had proved to be a political masterstroke. As George Reedy was to say: “The picture before the public was that of a great war hero and a very popular President under attack by a disruptive Republican Party while a constructive Democratic Party was rushing to his defense.” In addition, by creating an issue on which most Senate Democrats were on the same side, Johnson had also increased his party’s unity and strength, particularly since the issue was one especially close to the hearts of the liberals who had been most suspicious of his leadership. And he had increased
his
strength. The forty-seven Democrats he led had—for a moment, at least—been a unified group.

The strategy had another, larger, result—one that, just a few weeks before, might have seemed all but impossible. Johnson had held back a rising isolationist tide that, had it washed away the Yalta agreements, might next have swept unchecked toward the Marshall Plan, NATO, the United Nations. In his first battle as Democratic Leader, Lyndon Johnson had scored a major triumph not only for himself and his party, but for his country as well.

A
ND THAT MAJOR VICTORY
was almost immediately followed by a minor one that nonetheless was significant in its own right.

If they couldn’t win on the broad Yalta front, the Old Guard seemed to feel, at least they could take revenge on someone associated with it—even though his association had been in one of the most innocuous roles possible. Charles (Chip) Bohlen, a career foreign service officer, had been only an interpreter at the Crimea conference. He had since become widely recognized as
one of America’s most knowledgeable experts on the Soviet Union, but when Eisenhower nominated him as Ambassador to Russia, his expertise was not what the Old Guard focused on. “Chip Bohlen was at Yalta,” Everett Dirksen said, shouting. “If he were my brother, I would take the same attitude I am expressing in the Senate this afternoon. He was associated with the failure. Mr. President, in the language of Missouri, the tail must go with the hide. I reject Yalta. So I reject Yalta men.” Despite a Foreign Relations Committee recommendation that the Senate advise and consent to the nomination, Bohlen’s name remained on the Executive Calendar for the next two months under the heading “Nominations Passed Over,” while on the floor Pat McCarran accused Secretary of State Dulles of concealing FBI files that would be damaging to the nominee, and Joe McCarthy, elaborating on that point, said that he had seen the files—and that they contained damaging information about Bohlen’s “family life,” a euphemism for homosexuality. He demanded that Dulles make the files available to the Senate.

Fearing it would set a damaging precedent, Eisenhower refused to open the files and also refused to retreat from his support of the nominee, dealing with the rumors in his own oblique fashion. Telling a press conference that Bohlen was “the best-qualified man for the post,” he added: “I have known Mr. Bohlen for some years. I was once, at least, a guest in his home, and with his very charming family….” And he refused to let Dulles retreat, informing him that he had checked, and was “confident that Bohlen had a normal family life.” When McCarthy responded to Dulles’ assurance that the FBI files contained no damaging material on Bohlen by demanding that the Secretary of State submit to a lie-detector test, Taft—in a rare event—chastised the Wisconsin senator and announced his support of the nominee. A compromise was worked out: one senator from each party, Taft and the Democrats’ John Sparkman, would be allowed to examine the files, and would then report back to the full Senate. Taft’s report gave the lie to Tail-Gunner Joe. “There was no suggestion anywhere by anyone reflecting on the loyalty of Mr. Bohlen in any way or any association by him with Communism or support of Communism or even tolerance of Communism,” he said. Nonetheless, when Bohlen’s nomination came to a vote, eleven members of Taft’s party continued to oppose him. Johnson had marshaled his troops into almost unbroken ranks, 45 to 2. The Republican vote was 37 to 11—which meant, as the press pointed out, that Democrats had lined up more solidly than Republicans in favor of the nomination made by the Republican President.

“T
HE HIGH-WATER MARK
of the isolationist surge in the 1950s came upon what was known as the Bricker Amendment,” George Reedy was to recall. John W. Bricker of Ohio, stately and handsome, possessed of a full head of meticulously waved senatorial white hair and a consciousness of his senatorial dignity
so profound that it was said that he always walked “as if someone was carrying a full-length mirror in front of him,” was a fervent admirer of Taft, whom he had three times backed for the Republican presidential nomination, and of McCarthy, whom he would support to the last, and a fervent hater of foreign aid, the United Nations, and all those he lumped with Eleanor Roosevelt under the contemptuous designation of “One Worlders.” He was the embodiment of the GOP’s reactionary Old Guard, and his amendment, introduced as a joint resolution—“S.J. Res.
I
”—at the opening of the Eighty-third Congress was the embodiment of the Old Guard’s rage at what it viewed as twenty years of presidential usurpation of Congress’s constitutional powers. And fueling the conservatives’ anger now was their fear that treaties and international agreements such as the United Nations Charter and Human Rights Covenant might not only provide a legal basis for the extension of federal control over matters previously regulated by the states, but might nullify specific state laws, such as the southern segregation laws. S.J. Res.
I
struck at the heart of executive activism by calling for a constitutional amendment to restrict the President’s power in foreign affairs.
*
Although the amendment would, in Ambrose’s words, go through “a complex and incomprehensible series of changes,” its continuing substance was that no international compact could be binding on the United States without the passage of positive legislation not only by Congress but in many cases by the legislatures of the individual states as well. Declaring that it would cripple an Administration’s ability to conduct negotiations with other nations by “making it represent forty-eight [state] governments in its dealings with foreign powers,” Eisenhower said privately that it was “stupid, a blind violation of the Constitution by stupid, blind isolationists.” In the American heartland, however, it touched a deep chord. The American Legion, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the
Chicago Tribune
, the Committee for Constitutional Government, all leapt to support it. A newly formed organization, Vigilant Women for the Bricker Amendment, quickly obtained more than half a million signatures on petitions, mail running nine to one in its favor was pouring into Congress, and sixty-three senators joined Bricker in sponsoring it, enough to give S.J. Res.
I
the two-thirds of the Senate needed for passage even if all ninety-six senators voted. Among the co-sponsors were not only forty-five of the Senate’s forty-eight Republicans but nineteen Democrats, including many of the party’s southern hierarchy. And although the names did not include Walter George, the Senate’s bellwether on foreign affairs felt that “Many of our people are fearful and suspicious of the way the treaty-making power and the President’s power to make executive agreements have recently been used,” and let it be known that while some refinements in S J. Res. 1 might be necessary, he was in agreement with the philosophy behind it; without some new constitutional
check, George was to say, the country might “one day know one-man rule.”