Eisenhower Administrations - Eisenhower and Congress
Eisenhower and Congress
Eisenhower's first Congress, the Eighty-third, had Republican majorities in both houses. He treated it deferentially to conciliate the Senate majority leader, Robert Taft, nicknamed "Mr. Republican," who had expected to win the presidential election of 1952. Eisenhower was eager to win congressional Republicans over to a more internationalist foreign policy of the sort created by the Democratic presidents Roosevelt and Truman over the past 12 years (and stubbornly opposed by Taft). That job became easier when Taft, the last great Republican isolationist, died in 1953.
Eisenhower worked to prevent passage of the "Bricker Amendment," a proposed constitutional amendment introduced by Republican senator John Bricker of Ohio that would have severely restricted the president's right to negotiate treaties and make executive decisions on foreign policy. Bricker and his supporters were afraid that too many...
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