THE CONGRESS: The Crack in the Constitution

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The great debates over slavery that preceded the Civil War were staged in the Senate rather than the House, which was fragmented over the issue. Yet even Abraham Lincoln, who emancipated slaves by fiat, sometimes deferred to Capitol Hill. Said he: "Congress should originate, as well as perfect, its measures without external bias."

The Civil War's divisions helped create a strong two-party system in which a succession of powerful House Speakers used positions of party leadership to restore the supremacy of that chamber. These men—first James G.

Blaine, then Samuel J. Randall, John G. Carlisle and finally Tom Reed—appointed committee chairmen, dictated legislative priorities, and then determined the fate of their bills by the simple power of whom to recognize on the floor. By 1890, Reed was so contemptuous of the White House that he spurned presidential invitations to discuss his congressional plans. It was Reed who told a colleague in 1892: "I have been 15 years in Congress and I never saw a Speaker's decision overruled, and you will never live to see it either." The apex of House rule was reached under TIME'S first cover subject, Speaker Joe Cannon (see box, page 13).

The first serious 20th century assault on congressional power was made by Theodore Roosevelt, who took the novel step of outlining his own Square Deal program, although he had no great success in getting it enacted. Without asking Congress, he intervened to protect the Panama Canal Zone from Colombian forces, boasting later: "I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate, and while the debate goes on, the Canal Zone does too." Yet when his successor, President Taft, had the temerity to have a bill drafted and presented to Congress, House Democrats haughtily objected to the notion that they should consider any legislation "drawn at the instance and aid of the President and declared to be the President's bill."

Woodrow Wilson was the first President to enjoy much success with a domestic legislative program of his own creation. But in foreign affairs, the field now so completely a presidential province, he was humiliated by the Senate's post-World War I rejection of his proposed League of Nations. Complained Wilson bitterly: "Senators have no use for their brains, except as knots to keep their bodies from unraveling." No President thereafter was able to mount a serious challenge to Congress until Franklin Roosevelt, who was aided immensely by the crisis urgencies of the Depression and World War II. Roosevelt appealed directly to the people in his fireside chats; radio, and later television, did much to focus the nation's attention on the presidency.

Acolyte. The notion of the Congress as the originator of legislation was reversed by Roosevelt, who began summoning Democratic leaders of both chambers to his office for weekly instructions. This made them political lieutenants of the President. Yet Congress could rebel, as when he tried to pack the Supreme Court. Strong congressional leaders still carried heavy weight after F.D.R., notably Lyndon Johnson in the Senate and Sam Rayburn in the House, but they held a more cooperative attitude toward the White House. Declared Rayburn at one point:

"I haven't served under anybody. I have served with eight Presidents."