A MODERN CONGRESS
STRATTON, OWEN
A Modern Congress A Citizen Looks At Congress, by Dean Acheson. Harper. 124 pp. $2.50. Reviewed by Owen Stratton THIS is a hard book to review briefly. The trouble is not its length, for it has...
...He will keep in touch with his colleagues, particularly his own party colleagues, and have a pretty sound idea that what he agrees to back will have the needed support when the time for voting comes...
...Finally, overwhelming complexity tends to produce mental weariness expressed in "kick-the-problem" solutions, of which the most bizarre and dangerous is the idea of preventive war, "the ultimate simplification, surrender to the urge toward self-destruction...
...One result is the persistent Congressional belief that foreign peoples are like personally known individuals who can be expected to be grateful for gifts, who can usefully be chided, and who can be managed by threats to withhold favors...
...Can it confine itself to the one and resist temptation to engage extensively in the latter...
...He must be able to think vigorously about new problems, though he need not have an original cast of mind...
...Such a man usually stands well with the opposition also...
...Another result is to attribute unpleasant occurrences originating in circumstances of great intricacy (revolution in Asia is an example) to the incantations of witches, usually Communist witches in the State Department and elsewhere...
...What he requires as a condition of support will be frankly stated...
...A central truth, he says, is that "relations between the executive and legislative branches of our government were not designed to be restful...
...He will, of course, be a politician...
...Democratic government requires that executive policy be criticized and modified by legislators...
...In the face of this complexity, Congressmen tend to retreat into simplifications, which conceal from them the real depth of their ignorance...
...We must not be disturbed and think that things have gone amiss when power striking against power, and being restrained, produces sparks...
...This is a task that Congress can do well, as it inevitably does badly when it tries to initiate policy and direct its execution...
...What is needed on the Congressional committee's side, he says, "is a chairman or senior minority member who is widely respected and trusted in his own party...
...He will protect the interests of his party, and perhaps of himself, so that what he becomes convinced is in the national interest is not done so as to injure his party or aggrandize its opponent...
...Acheson is not optimistic, partly because such restraint requires "two quiet qualities, not much touted in politics, humility and disinterestedness...
...On the executive side what is needed is a man who can speak for the Administration because he knows it and is trusted by it...
...But he will not be tricky...
...An example of the difficulty is Acheson's description of the conditions for maximum Congressional contributions to policy making...
...His great function is to bring suggestions within the realm of the possible, to use method as a means of molding a proposal to make it politically feasible...
...The trouble in reviewing the book in so short a space is that Acheson says so much that is wise, and wisdom is as hard to condense as water...
...He, too, must keep in touch, be frank and not tricky, and must pursue the main objective without being deflected by the non-essential...
...The trouble is not its length, for it has only 124 pages, and the type and margins are large...
...These two men must have confidence in one another...
...There is much like this in the book, evidently the product of an intelligent, unusually sane man thinking hard about the meaning of long experience...
...Acheson is disturbed, however, by the effects of the almost incredible complexity of modern foreign policy and military problems...
...Nor is there so much in it that is new: others have pointed out that Congress is a collection of independent committees, that it has little ability to initiate and direct the execution of policy, that it requires Presidential leadership, and that the function it performs best is approval, modification, or veto of Presidential policies...
...These are also qualities, it might be added, that are virtues in a Secretary of State, and it may be some measure of Acheson's modesty that he refrains from suggesting that they are not now as prominent as we could wish in this day of massive retaliation, brinkmanship, and dynamic peace...
Vol. 21 • June 1957 • No. 6
