Newfound Nerve

Abstract

Congress' 1964 passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution represented the pinnacle of the legislature's conscious repudiation of its role as superintendent of America's foreign policy to the executive branch. Conversely, for most diplomatic historians, the passage of the 1973 War Powers Act marked Congress' reawakening to its supervisory role and the collapse of what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. termed the "Imperial Presidency." In fact, it was the 1970 repeal of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, a resolution that embodied everything Congress had abdicated and all the dangers that abdication represented, that actually served to announce Congress' unwillingness to acquiesce to presidential foreign policy. The repeal of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution had long-term implications for the exercise of America's cold war foreign policy, effects that were most keenly felt by President Gerald Ford when Congress refused to allow U.S. intervention in Angola despite Ford's personal pleas to both legislative branches.