Bayless Manning
Essay
Jan
1977
Over the past five years, there has been much debate about the proper respective roles of the President and the Congress in the field of foreign affairs. Most of the new interest in this topic is attributable to the conduct of a series of Presidents regarding Vietnam; a part of the interest arises out of the special aggravant of Watergate. As has happened periodically in American history when the people and the Congress have been unhappy with a President's performance, the pendulum of power has swung eastward on Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol. Out of the recent executive-legislative tug-of-war have come a new War Powers Act, undertaking to give the Congress a larger role in future commitments of U.S. forces, and legislation designed to provide a greater degree of congressional oversight over the activities of the intelligence community. The decline in presidential prestige has also made it easier for the Congress to stymie the executive branch on specific foreign policy issues, and made it possible for special interest subconstituencies to exert determining influence on national policy through local pressure on members of the Congress.
Essay
Jan
1976
A Commonly heard comment about American foreign policy these days is that the nation has lost its earlier sense of national goals and ideological objectives and that we should, as a nation, settle upon a new consensus as to our global moral objectives. This is a difficult subject, and, in my view, much of the discussion of it is made up of half-perceptions and half-truths.
