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The Marshall Plan by Benn Steil7/5/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() This was the first time I had experienced the classical dilemma, so eloquently described by Edmund Burke, that is faced at one time or another by almost any elected official in a democracy: how much should his voters register his constituents’ opinions, and how much should they represent his own views and convictions? After what I had seen in and learned in Europe, I believed so strongly in the necessity of extending economic aid that I felt I had no choice but to vote my conscience and then try my hardest to convince my constituents.” “I had taken a poll and found that 75 percent of my constituents in the 12th district were resolutely opposed to any foreign aid. “I learned a great deal from the Herter Committee trip,” Nixon later recalled. On July 30, 1947, then Congressman Nixon was selected by Speaker of the House Joe Martin to to be one of the nineteen members of a select committee headed by Congressman Christian Herter to make a trip to Europe and prepare a report in connection with the post -war foreign aid plan that Secretary of State George Marshall unveiled at Harvard University in June of that year. Benn Steil is author of “The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War” ![]()
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