Power returns to Capitol Hill

AMERICA WILLIAM JANEWAY

Washington—Congress is alive and well and living in Washington. The significance of Con- gress's re-emergence as a crucial political power centre lies as much in the realm of appearance as in that of reality. That is, Congress never really did disappear, however much it may have seemed to at the apex of the New Frontier mystique in 1962 or of LBJ's miracle-working in 1964. For Congress's independent political existence is basic and continuing: it grows out of the hard facts of American electoral politics as much as out of the assertions of the Con- stitution. Yet the growth of the presidential apparat and of unilateral presidential policy- making since FDR'S accession in 1933 has been hard fact, too. Observers, particularly European observers, and above all British governmental observers, have all too easily concluded from the irreversible growth of the presidency that the power of Congress has irreversibly diminished part passe.

Unquestionably, Congress has at times relin- quished power to the president during the long generation of governmental activism ushered in by the depression. But what Congress gives, Congress can take away—as once upon a time the House of Commons could. Chosen quite independently of the executive's will, the mem- bers of Congress hold the purse strings of the executive. At the same time as Europeans were thrilling to JFK'S image, Congress was refusing to pass his legislative programme or approve his tax cut. While the British Cabinet was re- fusing to take issue with the seemingly all- powerful tat's Vietnam policy, Congress was totting up the costs of the war and thus laying the foundations for the destruction of that policy.

The events of 1968, that political minus tnirabiliv. underlie I969's reassertion of con- gressional authority. The decisive challenge over Vietnam came out of Congress, exemplified in their idiosyncratic ways by Senators Fulbright and McCarthy. As important was tafs demon- strated failure to win either of his wars: that against poverty in America as well as that against communism in Vietnam. The success- ful congressional challenge and the failure of executive activism are lessons that have been well learned in Washington, and in the country. They are reflected in congressional muscle- flexing in response to the new President's muted calls to action—as they are reflected in Nixon's very mutedness.

From the failure and abdication of his pre- decessor, President Nixon has drawn much relief. Disillusionment with what any president —even such a master-manipulator as LBJ—can accomplish in office has reduced the expecta [ions of Americans: Nixon has less to live ur to. His deliberate rejection of a 'first hundreo days' of activism proved popular; so did his

escape into statesmanship on his trip to Europe. The death of Eisenhower has allowed him another popular non-political non-event, one

that recalls the respectable side of his personal past. Yet Nixon can have little hope of per- manent escape from politics into a renewal of that bland, end-of-ideology 'era of good feel- ing' over which Ike, in retrospect, seems to have presided (despite the first McCarthy, despite civil rights, despite the arms race). Even to get to its threshold he would first have to emulate his dead chief in one all-important act: he would have to end the war.

By the end of last month America's dead in Vietnam had exceeded the number killed in Korea. The week before, the White House was picketed by anti-war demonstrators for the first time since un's departure, and not by long- haired drop-outs but by the middle-class house- wives of the Mothers' Strike for Peace. That week, too, Senator McGovern—Teddy Ken- nedy's last-minute stalking horse before the Democratic convention last year—made the first congressional attack on Nixon's do- nothing policy on the war.

There is an informed school of thought in Washington which holds that, confronted with the need to choose, Nixon will opt for unilateral

Vs troop withdrawals rather than re-escalate the war in one `final' effort to win. Certainly,

Secretary of Defence Laird, Nixon's tough guy

vis-a-vis both right wing critics and the Rus- sians, is by no means an unreconstructed hawk

anxious to bomb the North. But at the moment all that is clear is that 'escalation by stealth'— Lars formula for open-ended war-making be- hind everybody's back—is out of the question for Nixon. Congress and the country have learned the hard way where to look; and they are looking.

Nixon's hopes for ending the war appear to depend upon multi-level public and private negotiations—with the Russians playing the key role. Quite apart from whether the Russians can end the war for America, or would if they could, this strategy goes a long way towards explaining Nixon's decision-to-decide on the anti-ballistic missile, at least two months before Congress will get around to voting on the

matter. The Administration reckons that an ABM programme which looks like passing Congress,

as Lat's city-defence system did not, can be a bargaining counter with Moscow—even if, as Secretary Laird himself has privately admitted,

it cannot provide a real military defence.

(Further, Nixon's ABM programme puts Teddy Kennedy, the challenger-presumptive for 1972, on the political defensive, on the opposite side of the chimerical `missile gap' which his brother conjured up so successfully back in 1960.)

The ABM issue, on which Congress will have the final voice, indicates how even the highest level of presidential prerogative, that of national security negotiations with the. Soviets, has become subject to congressional authority. A similar message, with regard to NATO policy, is embodied in the Joint Economic Committee's call for full cash payments from host nations for the foreign exchange costs of American troops in Europe. Closer to home, tax reforms now and inflation in the future will give Con- gress all the handle it needs to keep the President respectfully attendant.

At present the Administration is acing to catch up with popular pressures, reflected in congressional proposals, for a thoroughgoing overhaul of the nation's tax structure to close loopholes for corporations and millionaires,

with the middle range of taxpayers as the bene- ficiaries. When the Administration's war of words plus the money market's ever higher interest rates fail to stop inflation, the big issue for the next session of Congress is likely to be an increase, rather than a mere extension, of LBeS tax surcharge. As could be expected, both Democrat and Republican congressional leaders have chosen to `wait and see' Nixon's specific legislative proposals, foreshadowed in Tuesday's mini `State of the Nation' message, before committing themselves. The White House has already made it clear that, even if pro- posed, anti-inflationary cuts in spending will require congressional agreement. In fact, the all-out public relations effort to stop inflation by executive word and legislative deed will give Congress the whip hand over the new administration's entire legislative programme.

In the midst of this recognised return of Congress to the centre of the arena, one great mystery in Washington is the state of the White House's relations with Congress. A mystery exists because those relations are terrible. Whether on patronage or on policy, the White House is not returning phone calls from Capitol Hill, let alone answering letters even from key Republican legislators. The office of one Republican Senator with a special respon- sibility for party fund-raising has let it be known that contributions won't be turned over to `the boys downtown' at national Republican head- quarters, run by the President's men, until `we have it in writing'—`it' being normal political access and accommodation.

The mystery is all the deeper because Nixon's chief aide for legislative relations is a man of long political, and specifically congressional, experience, Bryce Harlow. If the President is to have any chance of dealing effectively on matters of policy with a Congress determined on its separate and equal status as an arm of government, his first priority will be to clear the lines of communication on matters of politics. Those with an interest in how Wash- ington works, outside America as well as in the White House, are on notice to take note.