Perspectives

...The compromise bill allowed the President to make long-term commitments, but required him to seek annual appropriations...

...the House has lost much of its prestige to the Senate, despite temporary appearances to the contrary...

...Meanwhile, in Great Britain, the House of Lords has atrophied and the House of Commons has become that country's sole organ of democracy...

...No government, it has been argued, which lacks confidence in the ability of the people to exercise a veto power over the oligarchies which necessarily "rule" them, can be called democratic...

...The ultimate source of wisdom in a democracy lies in the fact that the ordinary citizen knows when the shoe pinches better than the political cobblers who produce the shoe...

...It needs both legislative and bureaucratic elites with the wisdom to translate the real interests of the nation and its citizens into effective policy...

...A Senatorial elite, for example, does not merely record popular moods and fears as registered in the latest Gallup poll, but tries—in the fashion recommended by Edmund Burke—to translate the real interests of the people into enlightened political policy...

...The people cannot give their leaders absolute trust...

...Since the measure also carried money for essential Government expenses, there was nothing the Upper Chamber could do to prevent serious modification of President Kennedy's original foreign aid requests...

...In the rush to close the session, many Congressmen were not even aware that the final bill represented a de facto reversal of the Kennedy Administration's program for long-term spending, which they had previously approved...

...Ironically, while the Representatives drastically cut appropriations for foreign aid, they approved a number of expensive measures deemed necessary to maintain the support of their local constituents...

...Nevertheless, its ascendancy over the House is symptomatic of the movement in our political life, partly occasioned by the increased importance of foreign policy...

...It registers their moods more quickly...

...Clearly, a working democracy must maintain a constant tension between the democratic principle of rule by the majority and the oligarchic principle that the majority must avail itself of the competence and political wisdom of a minority...

...The President's proposal had fairly easy sailing in the Senate, which granted him almost all he had requested, including the fiveyear power...

...The British aristocratic House, once a potent engine of government, is now only an appendage because there was no way of infusing it with democratic spirit...

...It would be naive to regard the Senate as such an aristocracy...

...policies must be subject to periodic review and possible veto...

...According to constitutional procedure, the Senate-House conference committee laboriously ironed out the differences between the two bills...

...An over-equalitarian democracy which does not trust its leaders is bound to be embarrassed amid the dangers of our complex civilization...

...Our aristocratic House enhanced its prestige with the introduction of direct election of Senators...

...The high tide of anti-elite pure democracy was reached in 1912 when that rather unsentimental patrician democratic idealist, Theodore Roosevelt, pressed for initiative and referendum laws, the recall of Federal judges, and direct party primaries...

...The Senate, victim of a political maneuver by the House's fiscal conservatives, was confronted with a take-it-or-leave-it choice...

...Thus, both lack of experience and lack of freedom from democratic pressure inclines them to accept the mood of the citizenry rather than their own considered opinion of what is best for the nation...

...To many, this attitude may seem undemocratic because it lacks sufficient confidence in the wisdom of the people...

...Our Founding Fathers, though passionately devoted to the democratic cause, did not really trust the wisdom of the common man...

...The Lower House is presumably more responsive to the "will" of the people than the Senate...

...We know that we need the services not only of various political elites but of bureaucratic, technical and other elites as well...

...Of course, the author of the Declaration of Independence did declare as self-evident "That all men were created equal...

...they cannot afford to indulge in any long-range wisdom...

...Throughout its history the United States has fluctuated between "pure" democratic ideals ("The cure of democracy is more democracy") and democratic principles which allowed, and even insisted, that the will of the people be interpreted by a "wise oligarchy...

...The election of Senators by state legislatures, another oligarchic institution erected by our fore-fathers, was annulled at the beginning of this century by constitutional amendment...

...long an opponent of substantial foreign aid expenditure...

...But Kennedy was the first to push the issue and demand that Congress give him the power to make extended commitments...

...The recall of judges was a dubious venture in pure democracy because it threatened the independence of the judiciary, on which our fathers had wisely insisted...

...Its representatives must face re-election every other year...

...President Kennedy asked for the power to commit the nation's resources for a period of five years in order to undertake large-scale aid projects...

...Only the party primaries remained after the democratic wave subsided...

...Minnesota Democrat Hubert Humphrey charged the Senate had been duped by a "little group of willful men...

...But the House of Representatives was stubborn...

...the late Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was particularly emphatic about the necessity for such a policy...

...The electoral college, constitutionally empowered to elect the President, was one such body...

...The Lower Chamber unwisely bowed to the demands of Representative Otto E. Passman (D.-La...

...In the U.S...

...But Thomas Jefferson was, after all, a Virginia aristocrat and, what is more important, he believed in an aristocracy of competence and excellence...

...They erected all sorts of mediating institutions, calculated to filter the emotions of the common man and purify them into wisdom...

...In the area of foreign affairs, the vitality of democracy depends upon the highest possible wisdom of its citizens on the one hand, and a responsible elite or group of elites, bureaucratic and legislative, on the other...

...But sentimental democrats usually do not recognize that even the most consistent democracies are oligarchies, or utilize oligarchies in the sense that they avail themselves of the superior competence of various elite groups...

...The alternatives before the Senate were either to accept the entire bill or to kill it...

...But in foreign affairs it is somebody else whose shoe pinches, and direct experience can offer no help...

...Gradually, we are making our way back from Jacksonian democracy, which was generated on the frontier and reached its zenith at the beginning of this century, to a more Jeffersonian principle of government...

...The real moral of the story lies in the different attitudes toward foreign aid evinced in the Senate and the House...

...Previous administrations had often spoken of the desirability of long-term commitments...

...But the omnibus appropriations bill forced through by the House last week, allotting only $3.9 billion for foreign aid, makes clear the dangers our democracy faces...

...The average citizen has no direct experience of either foreign aid's uses and benefits or its vital relation to national security...

...We have assumed that the Senate, being free from immediate democratic pressures, has a wiser attitude toward foreign aid than the House...

...Majority leader Mike Mansfield of Montana openly admitted that the Senate had "taken a shellacking...

...At a time when technological society requires technical competence as well as moral good will, modern democracies are more dependent than ever upon competent elites— particularly, as we have noted, in the determination of foreign policy...

...Minority leader Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois termed the House action an "affront...

...He can only dimly appreciate the importance of assisting the underdeveloped nations achieve technical competence and economic viability...

...Yet the elite, possessing wisdom which the average citizen cannot possibly attain, must be trusted sufficiently to make its experience in government useful to the people...

...This dictum is especially important in regard to foreign policy...

...It is now no more than a quaint vestige of an earlier time...

...The necessities of democratic government in an age in which foreign policy is increasingly important are forcing us to move in the opposite direction...

...The tortuous course of the recent foreign aid bill through Congress reveals the hazards which a democracy faces in dealing with foreign problems...

...In addition, many Congressmen have not had the years of experience which Senators enjoy in dealing with foreign affairs...

...It reduced the total amount, and was particularly adamant in insisting on only annual grants...

...Strangely enough, this democratic measure tremendously increased the quality and prestige of the Senatorial oligarchy...

...The influence of a major world power such as the United States is felt in every part of the world...

...We have grown more democratic than our fathers, and no electoral college would presume to defy the popular mandate of the November election...