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Since then the balance of power between President and Senate has been a subtle matter, only partly accounted for by party majorities. It was a Republican Congress that enacted Harry Truman's foreign policy program, although he was strongly opposed on domestic issues and the Senate forced on him several bills he did not want, notably the Taft-Hartley law. Dwight Eisenhower tried to stay totally aloof, refused even to express his choice for congressional leaders and told his Cabinet: ''We are not going to get into their business." He was the only President to have three Congresses during his Administration controlled by the opposition party. Yet, in the Eisenhower years the Senate attitude toward the President changed drastically, largely because Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson organized the Senate as it had never been organized before and gave Ike fullest cooperation in foreign affairs. As minority leader, Everett Dirksen has offered the same cooperation in foreign matters to both Kennedy and Johnson.
Men of Mettle
The Senate can still claim its old respect for the individual voice, for independence and for unlimited debate. Leadership in the Senate is achieved only through a combination of things—playing the game and doing the chores patiently but also showing individual courage and intellectual grasp. The Senate well remembers Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg in the midst of World War II announcing his abandonment of isolationism, or Ohio's Robert Taft rising coolly to block Truman's angrily conceived bill to draft the railroad strikers into the Army—a bill already whooped through the House by nearly unanimous vote, or Margaret Chase Smith at the height of the McCarthy hysteria denouncing "fear, bigotry, ignorance and intolerance."
No comparable moments have yet occurred during the Viet Nam debate, not because men of mettle are missing, but because it is less a confrontation of principles than a fretful discussion of tactics. Whether in the guise of the irresponsible Wayne Morse, who has no following whatsoever in the Senate, or the dogged Bill Fulbright, perhaps best described in T. S. Eliot's phrase as "the patient misunderstander," the opposition did not advance alternatives. It only expressed a temper of unease. To the extent that the hearings forced debate and reflection, they have been all to the good. But the issue between the President and the Senate is broader than Viet Nam. Events have eroded many specific senatorial functions. In the present world, major decisions in foreign policies are only rarely embodied in the formal treaties that require the Senate's advice and consent; diplomacy is apt to be not a matter of formal agreement but of shifting tactics that must be carried out by the executive. Wars are no longer declared; they happen.