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What chiefly disquieted Capitol Hill as the fighting dragged on was the fact that the U.S. has never formally declared war in Viet Nam, and that Johnson never sought congressional approval of the conflict beyond the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964.
Actually, the limits on the Chief Executive's power in foreign affairs have always been ill-defined. When it comes to warmaking, there are few formal checks and balances on a President beyond his own judgment and character. On at least 125 occasions, U.S. Presidents have intervened abroad without a congressional by-your-leave. Jefferson sought neither advice nor consent when he dispatched a naval force to fight the Barbary pirates in 1801. Neither did Polk when he skirmished with the Mexicans in Texas, or Franklin Roosevelt when he sent troops to Iceland in 1941, or Truman when he sent U.S. forces into Korea in 1950, or Eisenhower in the Lebanon crisis, or Kennedy at the Bay of Pigs. In modern times, the possibility of nuclear conflict has made swift decision-making by the President an imperative. Says Stanford's Historian Emeritus Edgar E. Robinson: "The growth of the powers of the President in foreign relations appears to be the most important phenomenon in modern history, inasmuch as the exercise of those powers by four Presidents in the past 20 years has determined de- velopments throughout the world."
Nor is Johnson the sort of President who would be likely to yield a jot or tittle of his authority. "The people of this country did not elect me to this office to preside over its erosion," he once declared. "And I intend to turn over this office with all of its powers intact to the next man who sits in this chair."
Beyond the overriding power wielded by a U.S. President in the nuclear age that of making war and peace is a grand galaxy of functions, some defined by the Constitution, some granted by tradition, some arrogated by the man in office. A President is at once head of state and leader of his party, Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and administrator of a vast bureaucracy, leading legislator and top diplomat, educator and economist, symbol and sage, ribbon cutter and fence mender. Because of his role in shaping legislation affecting the cities, in recent years he has also become "the Chief Executive of Metropolis," as Williams Political Scientist James Mac-Gregor Burns puts it.
Teacher-in-Chief. Nor is that all. Cornell Political Scientist Clinton Rossiter once noted that the President must also serve as a national "scoutmaster, Delphic oracle, hero of the silver screen [today, that would read 'TV tube'] and father of the multitudes." In addition, says Historian Sidney Hyman, he must possess "animal energy, a physical capacity for long and sustained attention to detail, the power to endure bores," as well as "a will to decide," and a "sense of tragedy" that results when men seek to do good, but inadvertently achieve evil ends.