Congressional Leaders Try to Regain Old Consensus : Bipartisanship Sought in Foreign Policy

On a February morning in 1947, President Harry S. Truman summoned Sen. Arthur H. Vandenberg, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the most powerful critic of the Democratic Administration’s foreign policies, to ask support for a historic new policy of aid and alliances to contain Soviet expansion in Europe.

Vandenberg agreed, on one condition: that the President consult with the opposition in formulating his policies and not merely in carrying them out. “We have to be in on the takeoffs,” Vandenberg said, recalling a remark by Harold Stassen, “not just the crash landings.”

And, despite occasional disagreements on specific issues, the bipartisan approach that began with that White House meeting dominated the conduct of American foreign policy for more than 25 years--until the Vietnam War shattered the national consensus on containment and polarized the two major political parties.

Now, congressional leaders of both parties are seeking to regain at least some measure of the old consensus. They are making new efforts to strengthen the political center in foreign policy and restore the bipartisan atmosphere of what some describe as the almost halcyon days of the Cold War.

The bid for bipartisanship is coming in no small part from the Reagan Administration and some of its congressional supporters. The Administration, despite its roots in the most conservative wing of the Republican Party, has found that foreign policy initiatives cannot succeed without broad support in Congress.

Says I.M. Destler of Washington’s Institute for International Economics, a longtime student of Congress’ role in foreign policy: “Under the Carter Administration, we had a version of the left’s agenda; under the early Reagan Administration, we had a version of the right’s agenda. Both of them bumped up against reality and discredited themselves . . . and as a reaction you may be getting a move back to the center.

“It’s not at all certain yet. But it will be a major factor to watch for over the next four years,” he said, noting that “this Administration came to power with a clear commitment to repudiate what had previously been thought of as a bipartisan consensus on arms control, and it has backed away from that.”

In another indication of its new appreciation for the importance of broad congressional support, the Administration twice resorted to that old stand-by, the bipartisan commission, to deal with the divisive issues of Central America and the MX missile. Similarly, at the insistence of Senate Minority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), President Reagan last month agreed to a third bipartisan panel, this one composed entirely of senators, to oversee the newly resumed arms talks with the Soviet Union.

And on Thursday, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the conservative new chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, opened an ambitious series of hearings on the entire sweep of U.S. foreign policy--hearings aimed at nothing less than ending the polarization of the Vietnam era and returning to the bipartisan ways of earlier years.

“We will seek to find and to strengthen an American consensus for clear and achievable foreign policy,” Lugar said last week. “The United States has not yet fully recovered from the Vietnam War. . . . It is important to restore a greater degree of consensus about our interests and commitments around the world and about our willingness to defend them.”

Many Democrats agree. “Consistency in foreign policy is badly needed,” said Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), perhaps the most liberal member of the Foreign Relations Committee. “More bipartisanship would be helpful. And provided there’s some give and take, it can be done. . . . “

Lugar said he hopes his hearings, scheduled to last six weeks, can promote consensus by focusing first on areas where there is already some general agreement, such as the need for toughness toward the Soviet Union along with arms control talks. Only later will the hearings turn to such divisive issues as the use of force in Central America.

His first witnesses, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, will be followed by former Secretaries of State Henry A. Kissinger, Cyrus R. Vance and Dean Rusk.

The chances of success for the effort to recapture bipartisan consensus in foreign affairs are already a matter of private debate in the halls of Senate office buildings. Some Democrats have said they are skeptical that such broad hearings, in a committee with a fledgling chairman and strong-minded members ranging from Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) on the right to Cranston and Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) on the left, can bridge the gulf between the two parties.

Lugar himself, a former Rhodes scholar who has won a reputation as a low-key but effective advocate of Reagan Administration policies, acknowledges that he is undertaking an uncertain venture.

“We hope to . . . find some greater grounds for consensus than are evident presently,” he said in an interview, “but whether that turns out to be the case remains to be seen.”

A bipartisan outlook already exists on Soviet-American relations, Lugar believes. In recent years, he said, liberal Democrats have moved toward a more “realistic” view of the Soviet Union, while conservative Republicans have largely dropped their opposition to arms control talks. “The basic disagreement we have is on tactics to stop Soviet surrogates from picking apples off the table unobstructed,” he said.

Also, Lugar said, the Reagan Administration has overcome some of the problems that plagued its early foreign policy efforts regarding arms control, Central America and Lebanon and as a result already enjoys broader support on Capitol Hill.

“The President’s had four years to play out his role, and now there’s a lot more confidence,” Lugar said. “Things have moved reasonably well for the President on the big issues. . . . So maybe people (in Congress) have moved a little bit toward accommodation with the Administration, although not unquestioningly.”

Others say they see signs that Reagan, who clashed frequently with congressional Democrats over foreign policy during his first term, could be moving quietly toward the center in his second term. “You don’t have the problem of a new Administration trying to distinguish itself from its predecessor any more,” a congressional aide pointed out.

“In a second term you have more of a sense of continuity; you can get in the center and stay there,” he said.

Still, both Republicans and Democrats say the obstacles to consensus remain great. The two sides still blame each other for the breakdown of bipartisanship: Democrats say the uncompromising conservatism of the Reagan Administration is at fault, while Republicans charge that liberal Democrats too often act solely to obstruct Administration policies.

Parallel with those differences is a disagreement over what “bipartisanship” really means. Some Republicans, including Shultz, have described it mainly as more consistent support for Administration foreign policies once they are adopted.

“We (ought to) say, ‘All right, we had a big argument and there was a vote and we finally got that settled, and now we’ll go on and do it.’ But we can’t do it that way,” Shultz complained last year. “The people who lost continually plow over that ground. . . . It makes it very difficult to manage.”

A top White House aide also blamed the increasing independence of junior members of Congress, who feel free to break with their party’s leadership to make individual points. “There are a lot of people in Congress who are worn out by the partisanship associated with almost every foreign policy issue,” he said. “But you no longer can even hope to have a Vandenberg-type bipartisan approach to foreign policy on the (Capitol) Hill. You can’t get that, even if you work out something bipartisan with the leadership.”

Democrats, not surprisingly, put more emphasis on Vandenberg’s rule that the opposition be brought into policy formulation and say the key issue is whether the Administration will move toward the center during Reagan’s second term.

“It all depends on Reagan,” Cranston said. “If he takes Democratic views into account, especially on Central America, he can find bipartisan solutions. But it will take more restraint on his part than we’ve seen so far.”

“It will require more flexibility from the Administration than we have seen in the past,” agreed Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.), the panel’s senior Democrat. “It will also require more willingness to listen.”

And some contend that consensus for its own sake is not desirable.

“The democratic system requires the existence of a loyal opposition,” contends former Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.), who led the Foreign Relations Committee in its challenges to President Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam War. “It’s unrealistic to expect people to submerge their views in some ideal of bipartisanship. . . . You don’t really want a bunch of zombies over there who just support the President come what may. People who disagree shouldn’t be made to feel like skunks at a picnic.”