The people's voice., 1958-04-25

House and no doctor can foresee tn
chance of another illness, the stat
of the presidency must be judged b!
visible results. They are obvious anc
appalling.
Instead of government by presi
dency the nation now has government
by committees shifting congeries Of
committees set up to thrash out prob
lens as they arise and always with
the overriding instruction that they
must avoid worrying the president.
Even in his younger days Eisen
hover refused to work long hours
depending mainly on an elaborate ad-
ministrative machine like military
general staff. Now that he is unwell
and a scant year away from being
the oldest president in history he has
become a part-time president. He
drops in briefly on top committees
now and then, and settles only the
issues that cannot be further post
poned or settled otherwise.
The result is that many urgent is
sues drag on while committees seek
some compromise likely to suit the
president. Worse than that, the sub
presidential functionaries, fearing to
strain the president, tend to operate
on directives given in his earlier years
and now outdated by events.
The British system might manage
to function by committee methods,
given strong prime minister. The
American system cannot. This system
(which a healthy ex-president, Harry
Truman. calls the best invented by
MANI works well under strong presi-
dent but it assumes a world no longer
in existence.
SYSTEM NOW OUT-OF-DATE
1t was built in simple time, for a
society almost entirely rural and on a
set of theories almost unalterable. 1t
assumed that large group of men
would administer them. In this man
every atom of executive power was
vested. Within the law his power was
unlimited and, if he were strong, he
could stretch the law pretty far.
Thus the slightest failure in one
man is like the failure of one small
gear crippling great machine.
Weakness in the presidency cannot
be overcome by strength in the cabi-
net, in the legislature or in any alter
native agency. The power of the presi-
dency cannot be delegated to any
colleague, however able, since any
decision will be appealed
to the president.
The resulting burden was realized
in the first years of the Republic when
Washington uttered his famous cry of
anguish; he would rather be in his
grave than in the presidency.
AS the world of Washington was re-
placed gradually by a world of two I'll
tanic power blocs balanced on either
side of nuclear abyss, every decision
by the presidency moved like an cleo
trio current to the ends of the earth.
Today those currents are being |
That the Eisenhower of 1858 is not
the Eisenhower of 1852 need cause no |
surprise. The presidency always does
strange things to it's occupants. They
enter it one man and emerge another.
It turned a small-town lawyer into the
yiant named Abraham Lincoln. 1t
;urned Franklin Roosevelt, a dilet-
ANTE aristocrat, into social revolu-
,ionary and mastery maker of war.
t turned Truman, haberdasher from
Missouri, into perhaps the boldest
maker of foreign policy in American
history. But the presidency turned
a soldier of ruddy health,
nto a frail man three times close to
leath and haunted always by the risk
# a fourth illness.
This is not to say that a Democratic
PRESIDENT would have done any better.
That we can never know. Certainly it
S not to say that the politics of the
United States are any more confused
han those of Canada. They are, at
his writing, less confused.
IN
STATE OF FRUSTRATION"
l merely record that as a visitor to
Washington in the great depression.