O” or “Use, She-Wolf of the S.S.” The District ofnColumbia City Council quickly developed legislation tonforbid video stores from releasing information on the filmsntheir patrons rent, and given the probable tastes of MayornMarion Barry and the several members of his administrationnwho have been jailed for corruption since he entered office,nthe legislation was probably wise.nThe other main celebration of the Constitution by thenCongress was the now largely forgotten Iran-Contra hearings,nwhich raised to stardom Oliver North, Daniel Inouye,nFawn Hall, and other luminaries who today seem as distantnas Halley’s Comet, and which immersed itself in thenmetaphysics of something known as the Boland Amendmentsnand the mystery of why Col. North purchased hisnsnow fires. The distinguished chairman of the joint committee,nhailing from sun-drenched Hawaii, could not have beennexpected to understand the purpose of such paraphernalia,nthough one would have thought that living in the vicinity ofnWashington for some 28 years would have served to informnhim. My own guess as to the motives of the combatnofficer-turned-bagman — sadly disproved by subsequentnevents—was that he planned to necklace two members ofnthe committee when he finally appeared before it.nYet for all its irrelevance, the joint committee did broach ansubject of some significance for the republic. The attentivencitizen could discern, well-disguised by the protractedncaterwauling emitted by the senators, congressmen, andntheir flying squadrons of counsels and investigators, thenkernel of a constitutional crisis centering on the problem ofnwho—the President or the Congress — is properly inncharge of American foreign policy. The debate was dulynjoined in the national media, and if the hearings themselvesnwere not very helpful in answering the question, a good dealnwas learned from those writers who offered their own viewsnto public scrutiny.nIn general, the ideological breakdown of those whonexpressed themselves on whether the Congress or thenPresident should have authority over a foreign policy thatnseems to consist of the systematic violation or evasion ofntreaty commitments, the incremental massacre and abductionnof U.S. citizens and soldiers, the abandonment of allies,nthe gradual surrender of power and territory, and the highernbribery known as foreign aid was that conservatives almostnuniversally supported the claims of the presidency, whilenliberals equally unanimously upheld the rights of Congress.nDefenders of Mr. Reagan and his Central Americannpolicies held that the Boland Amendments, which sought tonrestrict or curtail U.S. funding of the Nicaraguan anti-nCommunist guerrillas, were unconstitutional invasions bynthe Congress into what they made out was a unilateralnpresidential prerogative of designing and implementingnforeign policy. Liberals, on the other hand, firmly upheldnthe legality and propriety of the amendments as well as ofnother congressional measures, such as the War Powers Actnof 1973, that constrain the ability of the President to carrynout a policy without congressional permission. The mostnarticulate of the progressive set murmured darkly aboutn”another Vietnam” and drew grim pictures of a WhitenHouse, National Security Council, and CIA once more outnof control, stampeding about the world in intrigues withnayatollahs, shady arms merchants, professional assassins, andnmiscellaneous desperadoes of the international demimonde.nCiven the partisan complexion of the Iran-Contra controversy,nthis breakdown was not surprising. Conservativesnunderstandably defended the propriety of Mr. Reagan or hisnlieutenants seeking to preserve a semblance of freedom innCentral America from a Congress that refuses to recognizenthe nature of a “peoples’ democracy” guided by commissarsnimported from Havana and Moscow, while liberals, whatevernideals remain in their jaded hearts, understandably soughtnto weaken their most powerful and successful foe to occupynthe White House in this century.n”To deal with Nicaragua as though it were bound bynthe rights and obhgations of U.S. law is indeed annabsurdity, but to determine who is ultimatelynresponsible for defending U.S. policy is an essentialnquestion that must be settled by law.”nWhat is perhaps more surprising about this breakdown isnthat it represents a complete reversal of the positionsnassumed by liberals and conservatives on the issue ofncongressional-presidential powers in foreign policy in then1950’s and 60’s. When, in September 1983, the U.S.nSenate debated the War Powers Act and its applicability tonMr. Reagan’s deployment of U.S. Marines in Lebanon,nSen. Barry Goldwater, defending the President’s power tondispatch troops without congressional permission, was reducednto the ignominy of citing Dean Acheson, HarrynTruman, and Franklin Roosevelt as authorities for his viewnthat “once the military forces are established and equipped,nit is for the President alone to decide how to deploy and usenthose forces.” Sen. Goldwater, in the later parts of hisncareer, never tired of excoriating the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sen.nJesse Helms, and kindred souls among his colleagues in thenSenate, and other figures of the “New Right” for theirnalleged deviations from conservative orthodoxy as definednby himself, although in the principal statement of thatnorthodoxy in 1960 he lamented that “The Achesons andnLarsons have had their way. . . . Inside the federal governmentnboth the executive and judicial branches have roamednfar outside their constitutional boundary lines,” and he hadncorrectly pointed out the intentions of the Framers inn”dispersing public authority among several levels andnbranches of government in the hope that each seat ofnauthority, jealous of its own prerogatives, would have annatural incentive to resist aggression by others.” As late asn1978, Sen. Goldwater’s name appeared as the author of anlearned study published by The Heritage Foundation thatnargued against the legality of President Carter’s claim to thenright of abrogating the Mutual Defense Treaty with thenRepublic of China.nYet it is not necessary to cite “Mr. Conservative” in hisndotage to show that American conservatives seem to havenexperienced an animadversion. Walter Berns, distinguishednneo-conservative writer and disciple of Leo Strauss, writingnin the Washington Times on June 3, 1987, expressed thenview that “The Framers . . . knew, what some members ofnCongress today seem unwilling to admit, that much as onenmight like to do everything by or by means of law, thenconduct of foreign affairs especially cannot be subjected tonnnMARCH 1988 / 13n