AMERICAN NOTES: Last Carte Blanche

With only two dissenting votes, Congress in August 1964 passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which authorized the President “to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed forces,” to protect American units in Southeast Asia from attack and to aid U.S. allies there. It was the closest Congress ever came to making the nation’s longest war official, and it gave Lyndon Johnson support in escalating the American involvement in Viet Nam.

As opposition to the war increased, however, many legislators came to regret their original votes. This month, Congress quietly rescinded the Tonkin measure—tucking the provision, ironically, into a military aid bill. Last week, with similar discretion, Richard Nixon signed the repealer, and the resolution receded into history.

Nixon has long felt that the document was redundant, and that as Commander in Chief he already has all the authority summed up in the Tonkin resolution. Whatever the last word from constitutional experts may be on that point, the resolution had become pragmatically moot because U.S. forces are gradually withdrawing anyway. Its role in history may be not only that it further embroiled the U.S. in Viet Nam and raised loud voices of dissent at home, but that it probably marked the last time that the U.S. Congress would ever hand the President such a heady carte blanche with so little care.