A Chastening of Presidential Power : System Will Be Stronger, Even if Hearings Were No Watergate

The Iran- contra hearings were Act Two of a drama that is still unfolding.

Act One was, of course, the actual happenings of 1985 and 1986 that set the stage for participation by the legislative and judicial branches of government. Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel, has been busy for many months preparing for Act Three. It presumably will involve the indictment and trial of at least some of the principal actors.

How will the second act be remembered? We are a little like the drama critic who is asked to write his review before the curtain has risen for the concluding act of the play.

Still, it is hard to say that Congress “bombed” in its investigative role. President Woodrow Wilson, who was also a congressional scholar, wrote a book entitled “Congressional Government” in which he said:

“It is the proper duty of a representative body to look diligently into every affair of government and to talk much about what it sees . . . . Unless Congress have and use every means of acquainting itself with the acts and the disposition of the administrative agents of the government, the country must be helpless to learn how it is being served; the informing function of Congress should be preferred even over its legislative function.”

History will show that the legitimacy of the congressional role, not only to inform but to provoke discussion and thereby to generate public opinion, has been significantly advanced by the hearings. This can serve to inspirit and energize the democratic process at a very time when it is common to decry public apathy. It can help to partly redress what has been the overweening influence of the executive in foreign affairs during the era of the modern presidency.

Yet recent events do not mean that in the future we will see a President who has been shorn of his plenary powers as the commander-in-chief or displaced from his more ill-defined role as the chief architect of our foreign-policy initiatives. They do portend that Congress will be emboldened to serve as a coadjutor with the President in the design and execution of foreign policy. The action of House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) in reportedly redrafting the Reagan Administration’s “peace plan” for Central America is a current and cogent example. It is the basically healthy tension between the two branches of government that has historically produced such a changed relationship. Obviously the degree of permanence of this resurgence of congressional influence in foreign policy will depend on the wisdom that it displays in its exercise of its new assertiveness.

When the history of the Iran-contra hearings is written some years hence, it will not record the dramatic denouement of a presidential resignation. However, the more subtle chastening of presidential power produced by the hearings can have an even more profound effect. The notion of presidential accountability has received a powerful impetus.

The likelihood of sweeping changes of either a constitutional or a statutory nature seems remote. Yet it does seem likely that intra-executive branch changes of significance will occur in any future Administration. We are entering an era in which Presidents and their appointees will be judged harshly for any derelictions. The hearings themselves will constitute a powerful deterrent to rogue operations.

Will history record that, just as following the hearings into the Watergate scandal, a heavy political price is exacted by the electorate?

Republican House leader Robert H. Michel has already labeled the hearings merely “interesting theater.” Sen. Bob Dole’s comment as the hearings concluded was: “I think for most of the American people the hearings ended 30 days ago.” There is more than a little political subjectivism in that disparagement. After Watergate, the 1974 mid-term elections produced 75 new House members. Two years later, 40% of Senate incumbents running for reelection were defeated and a Democratic President was elected for the first time in 12 years.

The Iran-contra hearings, as noted, did not force a President from office. The Republican Party has 15 months in which to recoup--not just three months to the next election, as was true in 1974. The political fallout of that year could also be traced to economic woes. While the publicity that was generated by the hearings has at the very least leveled the playing field for the Democrats, 1988 does not promise to be a politically explosive or realigning election.

What this latest chapter in executive-legislative antagonism hopefully will produce is something beyond partisanship. It will be a historic reminder that a President must not only purport to make policy in the broad field of foreign affairs. He must also communicate and defend it in such a way as to gain a consensus of support from both the people and their representatives.

Finally, comity between the branches of our government must be achieved and maintained through mutual tolerance and respect as we begin the third century of our Constitution.