THE GREATEST COMMON DIVISOR OF MUCH LITTLENESS
We have a form of government suited to effect the will of a simple
primitive people, a people with one clear aim. When we are all of one
mind the government works. The executive represents the general
intention, Congress represents the same intention. The party in power
owes its position to the thoroughness with which it expresses the common
purpose. Or, if you go back further, the structure of business serves
the same social aim.
Now, under such circumstances, it makes little difference where
authority resides, whether there is government by business, or
government by parties, or executive domination, or whether Congress is
the ruling branch. The result is the same, the single purpose of the
community finds its just expression.
And so it was in the blessed nineties to which Mr. Harding would have us
return. The people were united upon one end, the rapid appropriation of
the virgin wealth of this continent and its distribution among the
public, and they had no doubt this was being admirably accomplished by
the existing business structure. Parties and governments were
subsidiary. The system worked.
In a pioneer society waste is unimportant; it may even be economy.
Forests are cut and all but the choicest wood thrown away. They are not
replanted. While they are so plentiful it would be a waste of time and
effort to use the poor timber or to replace the felled trees.
In a similar society faulty distribution, which is ordinarily a social
waste, is unimportant. There is plenty for all. And it may even be a
waste of time and effort, checking accomplishment, to seek better
adjustments. The object of society is the rapid exploitation of the
resources nature has made available. Everyone gains in the process.
Justice is a detail, as much a detail as is the inferior timber left to
rot.
We no longer have the unity of aim of a pioneer society, yet we have not
readjusted our actual government in conformity with the altered social
consciousness. Instead we are trying to readjust ourselves to a practice
that is outworn. Having ceased to be pioneers, becoming various and
healthily divided, instead of making our system express the new variety
in our life, and still function, we are trying to force ourselves by
heavy penalties and awful bugaboos back into that unity under which our
system does work.
And when I say that we have a form of government suited only to a
pioneer society, though we have ceased to be a pioneer society, let no
one think that I would lay a profane hand upon that venerated
instrument, the Constitution of the United States. I am thinking only of
the Constitution's boasted elasticity. A new stretching is required, to
fit a larger and more diversified society than that to which we have
hitherto applied it.
For a simple, primitive people, for a pioneer society with but one task
to accomplish,--the appropriation and distribution of the undeveloped
resources of a continent,--details of distribution being unimportant
where natural wealth was so vast, government by business or government
by parties as the agents of business served admirably. The essential
unity which is not to be found in our government of divided powers
existed in the single engrossing aim of the public.
For a temporary end, like the common defense, against an external enemy
or against an imagined internal enemy, concentration upon the Executive
also serves. The unity of purpose which the nation has is imported into
the government through elevating the President into a dominant position.
In the one case the government is made to work by putting all branches
of it under control of one authority outside itself; in the other, by
upsetting the nice balance which the Fathers of the Constitution set up
and, under the fiction of party authority, resorting to one man
Government.
But what happens when there ceases to be a single aim, when the fruits
of the earth are no longer sufficient to go around generously so that no
one need question his share, when a conflict of interests arises, when
classes begin to emerge, when in short we have the situation which
exists in America today?
Let us examine for a moment the Executive as a source of unity in the
government of such a divergent society. To make him executive minorities
must agree upon him. He must, to use Mr. Harding as an illustration, be
satisfactory to the farmers with one point of view and to Wall Street
with another, he must be acceptable to the Irish Americans and to the
German Americans and to several other varieties of Americans, he must
take the fence between those who believe in a League of Nations and
those who hate a League of Nations, he must please capital and at the
same time not alienate labor.
Mr. Harding gave a glimpse of his difficulties when he said during the
campaign, "I could make better speeches than these, but I have to be so
careful." The greatest common divisor of all the minorities that go to
making a winning national combination must be neutral, he must be
colorless, he must not know that his soul is his own. The greatest
common divisor of all the elements in the nation's political
consciousness today is inevitably a Mr. Harding. We shall probably have
a whole series of Mr. Hardings in the White House.
And when this greatest common divisor of all the classes and all the
interests, this neutral, colorless person to whom no one can find any
objection, enters the White House does he represent Labor? So little
that he will not have a labor man in his Cabinet. Does he represent
Capital? By instinct, by party training, by preference, yes, but capital
is so divided that it is hard to represent, and the President, like the
candidate, "has to be so careful." Does he represent the farmers? He
says so, but the farmers choose to be represented elsewhere, on the
hill, where they can find agents whose allegiance is not so divided.
And carefulness does not end upon election. Once a candidate always a
candidate. The entire first term of a president is his second candidacy.
His second term, if he wins one, is the candidacy of his successor, in
whose election he is vitally interested; for the continuance of his
party in power is the measure of public approval of himself. A president
who is the greatest common divisor of groups and interests "must always
be so careful" that he can never be a Roosevelt or a Wilson.
Recapitulating the experiences of other peoples with political
institutions, we have quickly, since our discovery of one man rule, run
upon the period of little kings. The Carolingians have followed close
upon the heels of the great Carl. The institution which in the first
decade of the twentieth century was a wonderful example of our capacity
to adopt the rigors of a written constitution to our ends, of the
practical genius of the American people, in the third decade of the
twentieth century is already dead.
The monarch with power, not the mere survival who satisfies the instinct
for the picturesque, for the play of the emotions in politics, is suited
to an undifferentiated people pursuing a single simple end; one end, one
man, many ends, many men is the rule. The greatest common divisor of
such masses of men as inhabit this continent, so variously sprung, so
variously seeking their place in the sun, is something that has to be so
careful as to become a nullity.
There is no reason why our presidents should not become like all single
heads of modern civilized peoples, largely ornamental, largely links
with the past, symbols to stir our inherited feelings as we watch their
gracious progress through the movies. Mr. Harding is headed that way and
if that Providence which watches over American destinies vouchsafes him
to us for eight years instead of only four, the Presidency under him
will make progress toward a place alongside monarchy under King George.
Already, in the habit of blaming every failure and disappointment upon
Congress, we see signs of the growth of the happy belief that the King
can do no wrong. When the King does nothing he can do no wrong.
There is no reason why we should not repeat the experiences of peoples
who have gone further upon the road of social differentiation than we
have and develop like them parliamentary government. By this I do not
mean to echo the nonsense that has been written about having the Cabinet
officers sit in Congress.
What is more likely to come is a new shift in the balance, a new
manifestation of our genius for the practical, which no written
constitution can restrain, which will place the initiative in the
legislative branch, whereas I have said, under Mr. Harding it is already
passing, and which will make Congress rather than the President the
dominant factor in our political life.
This process is already taking place.
When President Harding asked the advice of the Senate whether he should
revive an old treaty with Germany suspended by the war, pointing proudly
to the tenderness he was showing the partner of his political joys, he
conceded an authority in the legislative branch which neither the
Constitution nor our traditions had placed there. He took a step toward
recognizing the prospective dominance of Congress. It was one of many.
It is a long distance, as political institutions are measured, from
President Wilson's telling the Senate that it must bow to his will even
in dotting the i's and crossing the t's of the Versailles Treaty, to
Mr. Harding's asking the Senate what was its will regarding the old
German treaty. Foreign relations are precisely the field where the
executive power seems by the Constitution to have been most clearly
established, yet it is just here that the legislative branch has made
its most remarkable advance toward a dominating position; perhaps
because this topic gained a temporary importance from the war and it was
naturally in the most significant area that the conflict between the two
branches of the government had to break out.
When President Harding introduced the treaties and pacts resulting from
the Washington Conference into the Senate, he said that he had been a
Senator and knew the Senate views, and that all the agreements he was
offering for ratification had been negotiated with scrupulous regard to
the Senate's will. And he pleaded with the Senate not to disavow the
Executive and impair its standing in the conduct of foreign relations.
No more complete avowal could be made of the dominant position which the
Senate has come to occupy in the diplomatic affairs of the country.
In the field where he was supposed legally to have the initiative the
President became expressly the agent of the Senate. The Senate laid out
the limits of policy and the Executive scrupulously, so he said,
observed those limits.
This speech of Mr. Harding's, like his consulting the Senate in advance
upon the reviving of the German treaty, is one of the significant
evidences of the shift of power that is taking place, away from the
Executive toward the Legislative. It did not attract the attention it
deserved because our minds are still full of the past when the
Presidency was a great office under Wilson and Roosevelt. We read of Mr.
Harding's going to the hill to tell Congress what it must do, and we
ignore the fact that he always does so when Congress sends for him,
acting as their agent.
The King still makes his speech to Parliament, though the speech is
written by the ministers. They are his ministers, though Parliament
selects them. The power of the King is a convenient fiction. The power
of the President will always remain a convenient fiction, even if it
should come to have no more substance than that of the King.
In truth it has been the Senate not the Executive that has been
determining our foreign policy in its broader outlines for more than two
years. The Secretary of State works out the details. But the Senate says
"thus far shalt thou go and no farther." And when the Secretary of State
has gone farther, as in the case of the peace treaty with Germany, the
Senate has amended his work. So Senator Penrose did not exaggerate, when
he said apropos of Mr. Hughes's appointment, "It makes no difference who
is Secretary of State, the Senate will make the foreign policy." The
President has only recently declared that it has done so.
So gradual has been the extension of the Senate's prerogative that few
realize how far it has gone. So low had the Senate sunk in public
estimation during the war that it did not occur to President Wilson that
he might not safely ignore it in making peace. He appointed no Senators
to the delegation which went to Paris. He did not consult the Senate
during the negotiations nor did he ever take pains to keep the Senate
informed. He proceeded on the theory that he might sign treaties with
perfect confidence that the Senate would accept them unquestioningly.
And so impressed was the country at the time with the power of the
Presidency that Mr. Wilson's tacit assumption of dictatorial power over
Congress was generally taken as a matter of course.
All this was changed under Mr. Wilson's successor. One half of Mr.
Harding's delegation to the Washington Conference was made up of
Senators. At every step of the negotiation the Senate's susceptibilities
were borne in mind. No commitment was entered into which would exceed
the limits set by the Senate to the involvement of this country abroad.
Almost daily Mr. President consulted with Senators and explained to them
what the American Commission was doing. Practically the Executive became
the agent of the Senate in foreign relations and in the end he told the
Senate what a good and faithful servant he had been and how scrupulously
he had respected its will.
It was only superficially that Secretary Hughes was the outstanding
figure of the Conference. The really outstanding figure was the Senate.
Mr. Hughes was not free. Mr. Harding was not free. The controlling
factor was the Senate. The treaties had to be acceptable to the Senate,
whose views were known in advance. No theory of party authority, of
executive domination, would save them if they contravened the Senatorial
policy disclosed in the Versailles Treaty debate and insisted upon anew
to Mr. Hughes's grievous disappointment when the reservation was
attached to the separate peace with Germany. When it was realized that
Senate opposition to the Four Power Pact had been courted through the
inadvertent guaranty of the home islands of Japan, the agreement was
hastily modified to meet the Senate's views. President and Secretary of
State behaved at this juncture like a couple of clerks caught by their
employer in a capital error.
And even Mr. Hughes's prominence was half accidental. The Senate is
strong in position but weak in men. Mr. Hughes is vastly Mr. Lodge's
superior in mind, in character, and in personality. Suppose the
situation reversed, suppose the Senate rich in leadership, suppose it
were Mr. Aldrich instead of Mr. Lodge who sat with Mr. Hughes in the
Commission, then the Senate which had made the foreign policy in its
broad outlines would itself have filled in the details, and a Senator
instead of the Secretary of State would have been the chief figure of
the American delegation.
Where did Mr. Harding's plan of settling international affairs by
conferences originate? You will find it in a document which Senator Knox
brought out to Marion, Ohio, in January, 1921. Reports had come to
Washington that Mr. Harding's Association of Nations, which was being
discussed with the best minds was only Mr. Wilson's league re-cast. The
leaders of the Senate met and agreed on a policy. Mr. Knox took it to
the President elect. Instead of a formally organized association there
was to be nothing more than international conferences and the
appointment of international commissions as the occasion for them arose.
Mr. Harding's policy is the Senate's policy.
The Senate's victory has been complete. The United States did not ratify
the Versailles Treaty. It did not enter the League of Nations. It did
make a separate treaty of peace with Germany. It did not appoint a
member of the Reparations Commission--the Senate's reservation to Mr.
Hughes's treaty keeping that question in the control of Congress.
Senatorial control of foreign relations seems now to be firmly
established. No future president, after Mr. Wilson's experiences with
the Versailles Treaty and Mr. Harding's with the Four Power Pact, will
negotiate important foreign engagements without informing himself fully
of the Senate's will. And the principle has been established that the
Senate shall be directly represented on American delegations to world
conferences.
I recall this history of the recent conflict between the Executive and
the Senate over foreign relations to show how completely in this
important field the theory of presidential dominance has broken down and
been replaced by the practice of senatorial dominance. No amendment to
the constitution has taken place. The President still acts "with the
advice and consent of the Senate." Only now he takes the advice first so
as to be sure of the consent afterward, instead of acting first and
obtaining the advice and consent afterward.
The Senate has been aided in this conflict with the Executive by the
constitutional requirement of a two-thirds majority for the ratification
of a treaty. If a majority would suffice, a President, by invoking the
claims of party, by organizing public opinion, by judiciously using
patronage might put his agreements with foreign nations through. But a
two-thirds vote is not to be obtained by these methods; the only
practicable means is to accept the Senate's views of foreign policy and
conform to it.
As soon as foreign relations became sufficiently important to fight over
the conflict was inevitable and the victory of the Senate certain.
The conflict between the two branches of the Government will not stop
with this victory of the Senate. It has always been present and probably
always will be. The importance of the domestic problems that the war
left will cause Congress to insist upon a free hand to make domestic
policies. In the past Congress busied itself about little except the
distribution of moneys for public buildings and river and harbor
improvement. The handling of these funds the legislative branch kept out
of executive control.
Now public buildings and improvements have become relatively
unimportant. But the deepest economic interests of constituents are
involved. Formerly taxes were small and lightly regarded. Today their
incidence is the subject of a sharp dispute between classes and
industries.
Furthermore the use of government credit for certain economic ends, such
as those favored by the farmers, will cause a clash between sections,
groups, industries, and strata of society. Policies of large importance
will have to be adopted about which there will be a vast difference of
opinion. The divergent interests cannot be represented in the White
House, for the Presidency embodies the compromise of all the interests.
They will have to find their voice in Congress. When they find their
voice the great policies will be made. And where the great policies will
be made there the power will be.