Doris Kearns Goodwin Quote

Debate and decision. Congress itself was not, in his view, equipped with the expertise, the time, or the type of coherent organizational structure needed to formulate and initiate programs of action on a regular and systematically related basis. Whenever my critics in the Congress talked to me about the responsibility of creating issues, I came back to the question of where in the hell they expected the issues to come from—from our heads? If an issue is not included in the presidential agenda, it is almost impossible—short of crisis—to get the Congress to focus on it. That’s the way our system works; but these fellows never understood that. They didn’t understand—with all their calls for Congress to have all sorts of expertise and classified information, in order to act in foreign affairs—that the congressional role in national security is not to act but to respond to the executive.9