With the conclusion of the 117th Congress rapidly approaching, it is highly unlikely the report of the Jan. 6 Select Committee will include testimony from the 45th president of the United States. Donald Trump’s dismissal of the House committee’s subpoena for his testimony about the events leading up to and on the day of the worst attack on the Capitol in two centuries is not surprising.
Nor was former President Harry S. Truman’s 1953 decision not to comply with a subpoena issued by the House Committee on Un-American Activities who sought his response to a charge he had knowingly appointed an official while president who was a Russian spy.
Why then do congressional inquisitors even bother seeking the testimony of a former president? Is it merely an empty political gesture or because history shows that their appearance can elucidate a question or issue?
Often forgotten are the subpoenas issued to John Quincy Adams, John Tyler and Theodore Roosevelt after leaving office. Unlike Truman who declined to testify and Trump, who filed a lawsuit to avoid cooperating, Tyler and Roosevelt testified, and Adams provided a deposition relating to their tenure as president.
In 1846, Tyler’s testimony and Adams’s deposition proved decisive in exonerating Secretary of State Daniel Webster of possible misconduct while a member of their cabinets. The Senate committee before whom Roosevelt appeared in 1912 to refute charges he had approved somewhat questionable corporate contributions during his 1904 presidential campaign never published a report.
While Truman in 1953 was unwilling to comply with a subpoena, he later voluntarily testified several times before committees to voice support for the United Nations; stress the importance of not drastically cutting foreign aid appropriations; secure an appropriation to catalogue, index, and microfilm the 2.7 million papers of 23 former presidents at the Library of Congress collections; and offer suggestions on how to improve federal-state-local relations.
Truman also used the witness chair to lobby for tax cuts for middle and lower income groups, extension of unemployment benefits, increased social security benefits, increased loans to communities for local public works projects, investment capital for small businesses and repeal of the 22nd Amendment that limits presidents to two terms.
Congress has also benefited from voluntary testimonies of William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover and Gerald R. Ford after they left the White House. They were not called upon to discuss matters relating to their tenure as president, but their diverse experiences made them a valuable resource.
Prior to becoming chief justice in 1921, Taft championed legislation to empower the Supreme Court with the authority to unify federal judicial procedure, argued against granting the Philippine Islands its independence and urged adoption of a national budget system.
After joining the court, Taft, besides testifying in support of judiciary appropriations, sought a reorganization of the federal judiciary, reduction in the Supreme Court’s jurisdictional workload, additional circuit court judges, a lessening of the naturalization case burden of district courts, a new judicial circuit and a new home for the Supreme Court.
Taft’s persuasiveness as a congressional witness is clearly evident in the enactment of the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, Judiciary Act of 1925 and the 1928 decision to move the Supreme Court from the old Senate chamber in the Capitol to a new building across the street. His imprint as well is on the Rules Enabling Act, which Congress passed in 1934, four years after his death.
Following Pearl Harbor, former President Herbert Hoover’s firsthand experience as head of the U.S. Food Administration during World War I The New York Times stressed, did “a good deal” to set at rest the fears of those “in and out of Congress who have distrusted price-control legislation.” Subsequently, while head of the President’s Famine Emergency Committee in 1946, many of Hoover’s recommendations to Congress were incorporated into legislation that improved the efficiency of postwar relief efforts, and greatly enhanced them.
After Hoover became head of the bipartisan Commission on the Organization Executive Branch of Government in 1947, his insights as a witness were incorporated in legislation that granted the president authority to propose reorganization plans for all executive branch agencies, increased the salaries of the president and vice president, provided top government officials their first pay raise since 1925, created a new pay schedule for federal employees, and granted the Secretary of Defense authority and control over the military.
Many of the 41 reorganization plans Truman subsequently submitted to Congress “were designed either to implement recommendations of the Hoover Commission or to apply the principles set forth in the commission’s reports.”
When Congress in 1978 availed itself of the opportunity to draw upon the knowledge of President Gerald R. Ford, he was asked about the work of the Warren Commission on which he had served as a member. Five years later, Congress sought Ford’s advice on how to prepare for the bicentennial celebration of the Constitution in 1987.
Ford’s voluntary testimony, like those of Taft, Hoover and Truman before him, provided relatively little new information on the actual events of their incumbency, but his unique perspective, like those of his predecessors, addressed pertinent issues. Without question, there were occasions when personal motivations prompted their testimony, but the distinctive insights frequently gleaned proved very meaningful in several instances.
Should we expect anything less?
Stephen W. Stathis was a specialist in American history with the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress for nearly four decades. He is the author of “Landmark Debates in Congress from the Declaration of Independence to the War in Iraq” and “Landmark Legislation: Major U.S. Acts and Treaties.”