Chapter 8 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.

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