Debate on the Doctrine

"Why can we not vote?" cried New Mexico's Democratic Senator Dennis Chavez as the U.S. Senate's consideration of the Eisenhower Doctrine dragged into its eighth week. "I am ready to vote now."

So were most other Senators, but the helter-skelter attacks on the Middle East resolution continued, ranging from Oregon Democrat Wayne Morse's legalistic pedantry ("I am waiting for the opposition point of view to provide some answers before I proceed to rebuttal and surrebuttal and rebuttal of the surrebuttal") to Indiana Republican William Jennet's naked cynicism ("Here is the Walter Mitty dream plan for an easy, effortless world"). It remained for two Democrats, one seeking a drastic change in the resolution and the other making an eloquent plea for its adoption without amendment, to flag down the issues and get the Senate back on the tracks.

In the Poke? For almost the first time during the debate, the Senate chamber began to fill when Georgia's respected Senator Richard Russell rose to speak. Russell had introduced a substitute to the Administration's resolution. It would uphold the President in his right to use U.S. troops in fending off Communist aggression in the Middle East--but it would deny the Administration's request to spend some $200 million of already authorized funds in the Middle East without congressional restriction. Russell lost no time in using the foreign-aid provision of the Eisenhower Doctrine to attack the whole U.S. foreign-aid program. "I refuse to ... buy a pig in a poke without knowing its size or weight ... As a matter of fact, we do not even know if there is a pig in the poke . . . We must start tapering off the foreign-aid program if we ever hope to have a program of fiscal responsibility at home."

The "swollen" federal budget, he said, speaking from notes scribbled on a piece of yellow scratch paper, "is the greatest single inflationary force in the country today. I assert, without any fear that the statement can be refuted in any way, that we cannot bring down federal spending for domestic purposes so long as we increase our foreign-aid program."

In the Trenches. "A theoretician may figure it out on a mathematical basis, but when we get down to the political realities here in the legislative trenches, where men must make a record on which to run for reelection, we cannot prevent an increase in domestic spending so long as we increase the foreign-aid program.

"What is the average member of Congress to do when he goes home? Is he going to permit himself to be sliced to pieces by an adversary on the stump who says that the member voted to increase the funds for foreign countries but voted against the old folks at home; that he voted against the veterans; that he voted to give it away overseas, but he voted against every program to help the American people?"

This was back-home, facts-of-life talk from a political expert to an audience of political experts--and it had its effect. Such was the threat that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had letters fired off to the Senate warning that the Russell substitute would "destroy the value" of the Eisenhower Doctrine and promising that the Administration would not "enter into any commitments which would seem, morally or legally, to obligate the Congress to appropriate funds in the future." Even so, the spending section of the Middle East resolution remained in trouble--until unexpected help came from a small band of Democratic Senators led by Massachusetts' Jack Kennedy, and including Alabama's John Sparkman, Missouri's Tom Hennings and Stuart Symington, Colorado's John Carroll, Idaho's Frank Church and Rhode Island's John Pastore.

Kennedy shared many of Russell's doubts about the basic merits of the resolution. He agreed with most Senators in his belief that the Administration had botched the presentation of its case to Congress. But, he said, an Administration defeat would mean "we will have repudiated our Government on a major foreign policy issue before the eyes of the world. We will have demonstrated domestic dissension, disunity and a lack of confidence in our Chief Executive at the very time he is involved in critical negotiations with other nations. We will have blunted our warning to the Soviets to stay out of the Middle East, and dismayed those friendly Middle Eastern nations who favor this approach."

Thus, concluded Jack Kennedy,* it "seems to me that we are no longer able to consider this resolution on its merits alone. We have been forced by the President's action to consider also the effects of its passage or defeat . . . Many of us would prefer not to vote for this resolution but we dare not, under present world conditions, vote against it."

Ignored Danger. Where Kennedy left off. President Eisenhower himself took up in an open letter to California's Bill Knowland, the Senate minority leader: "We cannot wage peace with American arms alone. The pending [Russell] amendment ignores the danger of subversion. This we must not do. These nations need effective security forces, [and improved] economic conditions ... It is hardly reasonable to insist that these funds ... be spent only for programs approved [by Congress] before such drastic changes occurred . . .

Approval of the amendment would suggest that our country wants only to wage peace in terms of war."

With the President's firm voice added to Jack Kennedy's clear call to rise above back-home politics, the Senate voted down the Russell substitute by 58 (38 Republicans, 20 Democrats) to 28 (23 Democrats, 5 Republicans*) and cleared the tracks for the adoption of the entire Eisenhower resolution this week. But the victory by no means put out Dick Russell's warning light for the foreign-aid program, which will be up for appropriations in the spring. Unless the Administration can effectively present a carefully engineered foreign-aid program, it may yet face the really big fight of the 85th Congress.

*Who in this week's LIFE turns a shrewd political eye on 1960 and the prospects of the Democratic Party against its most likely opponent, Vice President Richard Nixon. Urging his fellow Democrats to "shape a responsible, progressive record with deeds that match our words," Kennedy says: "It will take more than abusive statements to beat Mr. Nixon--those he can read riding in the 1961 inaugural parade."

*Indiana's William Jenner, Nevada's "Molly" Malone, Arizona's Barry Goldwater, Nebraska's Carl Curtis and Roman Lee Hruska.

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