Congress Considers The Proposal
Republican Senator John W. Bricker, an attorney, had served as governor of Ohio and was Thomas E. Dewey's running mate in the 1944 campaign before winning a Senate seat in the 1946 Republican landslide. Author Robert Caro declared Senator Bricker to be "a fervent admirer" of Senators Robert Taft of Ohio, "whom he had three times backed for the presidential nomination," and Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, "whom he would support to the last," and stated that Bricker was "a fervent hater of foreign aid, the United Nations, and all those he lumped with Eleanor Roosevelt under the contemptuous designation of 'One Worlders'. He was the embodiment of the GOP's reactionary Old Guard," borne out by his voting record: Americans for Democratic Action gave him a "zero" rating in 1949, However, Bricker was not a doctrinaire non-interventionist; he had voted in favor of the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty.
President Eisenhower disagreed about the necessity of the Amendment, writing in his diary in April 1953, "Senator Bricker wants to amend the Constitution . . . By and large the logic of the case is all against Senator Bricker, but he has gotten almost psychopathic on the subject, and a great many lawyers have taken his side of the case. This fact does not impress me very much. Lawyers have been trained to take either side of any case and make the most intelligent and impassioned defense of their adopted viewpoint."
Historians describe the Bricker Amendment as "the high water mark of the non-interventionist surge in the 1950s" and "the embodiment of the Old Guard's rage at what it viewed as twenty years of presidential usurpation of Congress's constitutional powers" which "grew out of sentiment both anti-Democrat and anti-presidential." Bricker's pressing the issue, wrote Time just before the climactic vote, was "a time-bomb threat to both G.O.P. unity and White House-Congressional accord." Senator Bricker warned "the constitutional power of Congress to determine American foreign policy is at stake."
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