"Secondary Responsibility"

Michigan's Arthur H. Vandenberg rose in the Senate last week to plead for the confirmation of Dean Acheson as Secretary of State. What made it news was not his support of Acheson, for the Republican champion of the bipartisan foreign policy had often carried the ball for the Democrats, but the qualification he attached to his support. Said Vandenberg:

". . . It is impossible to ask him [Acheson] or any other nominee precisely what policies he will pursue, because he or any other nominee will pursue whatever policies are directed by the President. Only the President himself can answer the question, and the answer may sometimes be quite impromptu and unpredictable. We cannot control foreign policy through our action on this or any other nominee. I want to make that plain. Therefore, it should be made wholly obvious that we do not underwrite the results, in terms of foreign policy, which will flow from our confirmation of this or any other nominee."

Acheson was confirmed, 83 to 6. But Vandenberg's speech reflected a change in the bipartisan foreign policy wrought by the election. Before the election, a Republican Congress and a Democratic Administration had shared the responsibility for foreign policy. Now that the Democrats had their own majority, the Republicans, as one of their Senate leaders put it, had only a "secondary responsibility."

On major programs, such as the North Atlantic alliance and additional Marshall Plan funds, for which Vandenberg had led the fight, he could again be expected to help out. But Harry Truman could not expect Vandenberg to support any "impromptu and unpredictable" foreign policy the President might embark on.

Last week the man who would carry much of the "primary responsibility" was sworn in. Vandenberg was there, and so was Acheson's omnipresent old Harvard professor and busybody friend, Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter of the U.S. Supreme Court, with whom he walks to work each day (see cut). Acheson's text for the day, taken from the First Book of Kings: "Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off."

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