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Subpanel VI - THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS IN THE UNITED STATES:
ITS CHALLENGE AND OPPORTUNITY

Summary and Conclusions

1. Subpanel VI centered its discussion and report around one major problem confronted by the democratic process in the United States: how can leadership in the making of national policy be improved.

2. This was judged a major issue because now, and over the foreseeable future, three aspects of the nation's environment require a heightened performance from our institutions of leadership if the national interest is to be protected and the quality of our society maintained and developed:

- We confront a world where the pace of change-technological and political -- is without precedent.

- We are irreversibly caught up in the destiny of all parts of the globe; and the protection of the nation's interest requires that the United States, as an effectively organized community, steadily play a role of world leadership.

- The successful management of our domestic affairs also requires that we perform increasingly as a community rather than merely as an open forum for the compromise of special interests: partly because many aspects of our domestic life must be disciplined within the requirements of external security; partly because many of our major

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domestic issues -- education, inflation, urban reconstruction, etc.

- can be solved by communal consensus and cannot be solved merely by reliance on the interplay of special interests.

Although the requirement for improved leadership in American life is general
this report is confined almost wholly to means for improving the national
performance in military and foreign policy where needs are most acute and the
costs of failure exceedingly high.

3. The democratic leader was seen to be at once the community's innovator; the keeper of its abiding constitutional rules and moral values; and the builder of consensus, as the basis for effective communal action. Specifically, he must perceive in good time the community's problems and their order of priority; he must organize the staff work required to expose alternative solutions to these problems of which the most creative minds of the community can conceive; he must boldly throw his weight behind those which are both efficient and harmonious with the community's abiding values; and he must be both the good educator and good politician in moving the community to prompt and effective action.

4. Although the role of the President is unique in its concentration of leadership functions, it is evident that in modern American leadership, even in the special domain of national policy, is a process rather than a job for one man: a process involving not merely the three branches of the national government, not merely the two political parties, but also those many private institutions and voluntary associations which give to the American community a

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special strength and depth. And, to a degree, on the great issues of national policy, every responsible individual citizen has an active role in the leadership process.

5. The selected recommendations that follow touch, therefore, upon aspects of the leadership process from the office of the President to voluntary organizations at the grass-roots, from the National Security Council to the popular view of the national interest; for if the quality of American leadership in national policy is to be strengthened, it must be strengthened not merely at the apex, but all along the line-in men's minds as well as in tables of organization.

## The Development of Consensus Concerning the National Interest

6. The United States has tended to recognize and respond to threats to the national interest only in the midst of grave crisis. This recurrent weakness in the national performance is, in part, rooted in alack of consensus concerning the character of the American interest on the world scene. The weakness does not take the form of a wise concord among an American elite frustrated by schism and ignorance among the citizens at large. American Cabinets in recent decades have been as badly split in this matter as the public. A fundamental task for the whole leadership process -- from the President and the NSC to the grass-roots -- is the development of a consensus concerning the national interest sufficiently concrete so that the nation is likely to recognize and respond to the dangers that confront it before they

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emerge as flagrant crises.

## The Strengthening of Staff Institutions in the Executive Branch

7. Two powerful forces argue that the balance between staff and line elements in the Executive Branch be shifted significantly in favor of the former: first, the pace of technological and political change makes it essential to strengthen the innovating forces at work in national policy and weaken the inertia innate in all operating bureaucracy, second, the need to interrelate many arms of national policy around specific defined purposes and the need to interweave the requirements of domestic and foreign policy make it essential to enlarge and strengthen those institutions of government charged to examine the nation's problems as a whole rather than specific operating segments of them. The National Security Council and its related institutions, although remarkably developed in the past decade, do not now meet the requirement for developing and enforcing within the Executive Branch a forehanded national policy. Similarly, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense do not now meet the requirement of developing and enforcing among the three services a forehanded and unified military policy. Although attached to no particular formulae for altering the security institutions of the Executive Branch, Sub-Panel VI agrees that the techniques of innovation and unification by inter-departmental committee is grossly inadequate to national needs; and that a purposeful strengthening of the quality and independence of the staff elements within these institutions is

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required.

## Personnel in the Executive Branch

8. The staff-work aspects of the leadership process in the Executive Branch place a new premium on drawing and holding first-rate men in the civil service and in posts of political appointment. With respect to the former we propose the creation of a Senior Civil Service category which would afford the possibility not only of new horizons of prestige and authority for the career man but also experience in more than one government department. Sub-Panel VI considered also the problem of recruiting and holding men of appropriate quality at the Assistant Secretary level. The difficulties here were seen to be serious and unlikely to yield to exhortation or to administrative gimmicks. Aside from the need to dramatize more effectively the challenges the nation confronts and the urgent character of the programs designed to meet them, two further requirements were defined:

- the allocation of more direct and personal responsibility to Assistant Secretaries;

- a change in attitude and in policy within the private institutions (notably, business, law, universities, and foundations) from which men of this rank are likely to be recruited, designed to ease, if not actively to encourage, their participation in politics and in political administration, as a legitimate part of their long term careers.

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Congress

9. Sub-Panel VI considered the familiar set of problems thrown up for the conduct of military and foreign policy by the sharply split responsibilities of the Executive Branch and the Congress under our Constitution. It explored sympathetically, but could not back with conviction various devices for strengthening within the Congress the voice and power of the national viewpoint and interest. Without backing any precise formulae, Subpanel VI agreed that the Congress should take steps to remedy three chronic weaknesses which affect the leadership process in military and foreign affairs:

- the lack of responsible and reasonably unified party positions;

- the separation (in powers, attitude, and even criteria for decision) between policy-making and appropriation committees;

- the rigid adherence to seniority in the allotment of chairmanships of committees concerned with military and foreign affairs.

The Subpanel was under no illusion that Congressional remedy was likely to be complete; on the other hand there are no grounds for assuming that Congress is incapable of reform. The Congress has demonstrated in the past decade a considerable capacity to improve its common law procedures in the interest of more effective national performance; and it has even been able to assume a role of constructive leadership in certain foreign policy matters.
With respect to military policy, Subpanel VI noted a dangerous degree of Congressional ignorance, apathy, and buck-passing. Although in the short-run

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this gave to the Executive Branch welcome degrees of flexibility and freedom, it was judged a major danger to the leadership process in American democracy. The situation was seen to stem from a lack of agreement and clarity concerning the fundamentals of national military strategy among the three services and generally within the Executive Branch, and from something less than candor in the presentation of the military budget and in the public exposition of the nation's military problems. More generally, the Subpanel noted that the Congress, on the basis of its performance since 1940, was unlikely to behave responsibly if the Executive Branch presented to the public, with conviction and unity, a well staffed policy. It was concluded, in short, that to an important degree, the Executive Branch had it within its capabilities to overcome the built-in difficulties of the Congress with respect to military and foreign policy.

## The President and His Office

10. However widely the leadership process is shared, the President bears unique, inescapable and personal responsibilities in the formulation and execution of national policy; and over the foreseeable future, his capacity to exercise national leadership should be strengthened in these three major dimensions:

- The President should have the right of item-veto.

- The Constitutional Amendment forbidding a third presidential term should be repealed.

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-Further limitations on the President's negotiating and treaty-making powers should be opposed.

In addition, the President should have permanent powers for governmental re-organization; and provision should be made for periodic reports to the Congress on Executive Branch organization and for outside surveys, at longer intervals.

Subpanel VI gave special attention to the organization under the President of military and foreign policy, recognizing that the scale and complexity of security affairs posed difficulties in maintaining these matters sensitively under the President's direct and personal control. The major recommendation here converged with that made on somewhat different grounds in paragraph 7, above; namely, that the size, quality, and independence of the staff of the National Security Council be increased; and that the authority of the post now held by the Presidential Assistant for National Security Affairs be recognized and confirmed. Whatever the President's administrative style, and whatever reliance and operational responsibility he may repose in the Secretary of State and his Department, the many-faceted character of the nation's current and foreseeable problems appear to require that the President have available to him staff work done independently of the operational vested interests of particular departments; and that this work be directed and its results articulated by a strong, independent figure in the President's councils.

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We noted, finally, that the scale and complexity of security affairs, and the powerful bureaucratic vested interests that inevitably grow up around their day-to-day operation, require the President to struggle unremittingly to avoid seeing his power of choice, of initiative, and of decision diluted, to the danger of the national interest.

## Public Opinion

American public opinion in military and foreign affairs is a complex phenomenon: it reflects attitudes ranging from a minority's apathy to a majority's continuing concern; it is broadly committed to uphold the nation's world position of power and responsibility; it is prepared to respond to the President's lead and accord him important degrees of flexibility, notably when his case is well made and presented with conviction; it has available a vast and regular flow of information, but only a small proportion of the public feels sufficient confidence in what they know to take a firm position, without further guidance; it looks for guidance not only to the President and to other political leaders, but also to trusted communal leaders, to the leaders of voluntary associations with whom the individual citizen is closely identified, and, in a limited measure, to experts outside the government. Sub-Panel VI was impressed with the demonstrated capacity of the American public to share widely in the taking of major decisions of military and foreign policy, at moments of acute crisis, such as the Lend-lease and Marshall Plan debates. In formulating its proposals, we posed the problem broadly in

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this form: how could the occasional performance of the American public
at its best, over the past twenty years, be made more steadily a part of the
national scene?

Whether or not the nation is likely to solve its problems and protect
its interest without relying on dangerous crises as a method for innovation
and change was seen to hinge substantially on the answer to this question.
SubPanel VI suggested the following:

- The President should use more fully and regularly his unique power to focus public attention on major problems of military and foreign policy. This should be done not only when the Executive Branch wishes urgently to take fresh action, but also when major issues are evidently just over the horizon. The President should be prepared to focus attention and to stimulate public discussion even before he and the Executive Branch as a whole have matured a clear policy position.

- The Executive Branch should adopt and sustain in military as well as foreign affairs a policy of candor. Information should be denied the public on grounds other than aid or comfort to the enemy only under the most rare and special circumstances, if ever. The public must be trusted, and the natural tendency of Washington to underestimate the public's wisdom and good sense endlessly combatted.

- As a special aspect of this policy the national budget should be

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presented to the Congress and to the country on a program basis,
designed to make as clear as the real and book-keeping complexities
allow the cost of specific courses of action and policy.

- Whenever possible issues should be presented to the public in the same terms as they are dealt with within the Executive Branch; that is, in the form of a tripartite statement of a factual situation, an array of alternative policies, and the case for the specific alternative chosen. A more effective public opinion requires not merely the availability of more authoritative information, but also a sense of sharing in the choice among alternative courses of American action.

- The President and the executive Branch should actively encourage voluntary groups of all kinds to study specific major issues of military and foreign policy; to examine the policy choices open to the nation; and to make their recommendations. Work of this kind is already going forward in the Council on Foreign Relations, the Committee of Economic Development, the Foreign Policy Associations, The American Assembly, the League of Women Voters, etc. This work should be officially encouraged, notably by having factual material and speakers made available by the Executive Branch; by bringing selected civic leaders to Washington for extended briefing; etc. Under no circumstances, however, should the relationship between the government and such groups be regarded as one of a channel for propaganda:

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the objective is the quite different one of inducing a widening range
of Americans to share the experience of examining alternative policy
positions on the basis of responsible information.

- None of these proposals requires or justifies the setting up of a new government agency for the domestic supply of information or opinion.

- Without commitment to a particular formula, there was a general sense that both the government and the public might benefit from a continuous study of the nation's basic problems, privately financed, drawing into its work not only the most competent staff work available, but also men and women of the widest experience and the highest wisdom, integrity, and public devotion.

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INTRODUCTION

The mission of Subpanel VI has been to examine the workings of the democratic process in the United States in relation to the problems that the nation now confronts and is likely to confront over the foreseeable future.

The agenda for such an examination is ample. We are caught up in a phase of American history which has irrevocably thrust us out onto the world scene; and our national survival demands that we sustain leadership of a global coalition in an environment of rapid change, full of dangers and potentialities for the American interest. Our sustained involvement in world affairs since 1945 has evidently strained and tested American democracy in many directions: from a tax rate that passes resources to the state at an unprecedented peacetime level to a painful reconsideration of the meaning of civil liberties under conditions of protracted communist assault on our society. Meanwhile, at home our national life has maintained its dynamic character; and, in consequence, we confront many new domestic problems--from the baby boom to the reconstruction of our cities. Like those problems we have solved in the past, the new emerging domestic challenges demand that we continue to adapt our ideas and ways of doing business if we are to remain a healthy society.

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It was clear, however, that the work of Subpanel VI could only be
useful if the range of its discussions and its report were sharply limited.
A process can only be examined in relation to concrete problems; and the
number of problems posing challenge or opportunity for the democratic process
in the United States far exceeded our competence and the time available to
us. We have, therefore, centered our field of discussion and recommendation
around the problem of leadership in the context of national policy.

Even when thus narrowed, the field was exceedingly broad. It was
broad because leadership in the continental democracy of the United States
is not a task for one man or for a narrow elite. It is a living process running
from the apex of the national government to the smallest communal gathering
at the grass roots. And the whole of this leadership process is--from time
to time, and to a degree-caught up in the making of national policy. National
policy is not made in the White House nor even in the Executive Branch as a
whole: it is made by a subtle and sensitive interaction among the Executive
Branch, public opinion, and the Congress. To this interaction our two-party
system imparts an extra cross-cutting dimension, as does the myriad private
voluntary groups which give to American communal life a unique inner strength
and depth. At every stage and in every dimension individual Americans take
those acts of responsibility in the face of communal problems we would
designate as part of the leadership process.

In the light of all this we have confined our report to three substantial
but reasonably clear matters:

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1. The meaning and function of national leadership in contemporary American democracy.

2. The possibilities of more effective leadership in the Executive and Congressional branches of the government.

3. The possibilities of more responsible intercommunication on national policy between the national government and the public.

We isolated the first of these issues because we found that the members of Subpanel VI felt it necessary to clear their minds on the meaning of leadership in a democracy; and it was thought possible that our exercise might have some general value and interest. We chose the second issue because we felt strongly that certain quite specific courses of action should be recommended which might improve the innovating function of leadership in the national government and thus reduce the likelihood that we would continue to rely on innovation by crisis, notably in the field of military and foreign policy. We chose the third issue because effective leadership in a democracy is a two-way street; and we felt strongly that the inter-communication on which shared responsibility in a democracy must be based is now inadequate.

This review of selected aspects of the democratic process in the United States not only excludes many areas of major importance to our national life but it also cuts across issues of substance which have been dealt with in other subpanels. We have not attempted to develop independent policy

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recommendations in these substantive overlapping fields. We have, however,
illustrated our argument at various points with reference to national problems
dealt with in other subpanels.

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# PART I:
THE MEANING AND FUNCTION OF LEADERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

## Why Leadership?

As discussions in Subpanel VI gathered momentum the question of leadership came increasingly to the center of attention. Whether we considered the democratic process in relation to military policy, to foreign policy, to the educational system, to desegregation, to inflation, the need for improved leadership in national policy emerged. While respecting the legitimacy of our common insight, we were, perhaps, embarrassed to find ourselves persistently placing so high a premium on a function not conventionally emphasized in discussions of the democratic process; for, in common discourse, the concept of leadership has a faintly undemocratic flavor. We were forced back, then, to first principles in order to clarify the role of leadership in the democratic process and to satisfy ourselves why it was that leadership seemed to be a major problem for contemporary American democracy.

## Liberty and Responsibility in Democratic Society

The essence of democratic society is a sober, calculated act of faith: a faith that individuals--properly nurtured, trained, and educated--are capable not merely of pursuing private advantage but also of assuming

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a degree of intelligent responsibility for the fate of the community. In the case of American democracy the act of faith was wholly conscious. The Constitution was made by a generation acutely aware--from the long historical past and from its own times--that men were capable of pressing their short-run interests to the disadvantage of their long-run interests, their special interests to the disadvantage of their communal interests. The Constitution was written and accepted in order to prevent the disintegration of the nation as a political and economic unit in the face of dangerous pressures generated both at home and from abroad. But the Founding Fathers could not--even if they would--guarantee national unity and security merely by constitutional means. In the end they left the nation's destiny substantially in the hands of a free electorate, on whose responsibility--as well as upon the checks and balances of the constitutional institutions--they counted.

This measured faith is the ultimate basis for our freedoms. Where the faith does not exist men live under one form or another of autocracy--or worse. Where the faith proves misplaced the independence of nations and the liberty of men are lost.

It is on this commitment to the responsible individual that all the fundamental non-political institutions of American society are built: our families, churches, and schools. And the democratic political process itself is merely one expression of the effort to balance individual liberty and communal responsibility. Our politics accepts the legitimacy of the voting majority and the legitimacy (as well as the inevitability) of special

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interests. But American government is not founded merely upon the proposition that the voting majority rules, nor upon the proposition that good policy consists merely in the compromised clash among special interests. The majority rules in the United States only within powerful moral and constitutional limits.

The moral limits of our common life suffuse the nation's legal and constitutional procedures; but they transcend them. Without a widespread and often inarticulate agreement on moral values--on what it is right for a man to do and what it is wrong for him to do--our constitutional and legal structure could not operate. Although as a nation we have placed great faith in written, constitutional law, we are more of a common law society--more governed by custom and traditional values--than we usually acknowledge.

In addition, of course, our formal legal and constitutional procedures set concrete rules for the democratic process. They limit the power of the majority over public policy; and they limit the sway of public policy over the individual. They provide for delegation of political power to duly elected or appointed officials; and they set limits on the degree and time such delegated power may be exercised. Above all, the Constitution, in protecting the life and private rights of the citizen, guarantees his right to speak, to write, and to organize not merely for the promotion of individual and group purposes but also for the purpose of expressing views as to how the country can best be governed--a privilege out of which Americans promptly fashioned that wholly extra-constitutional institution, the two-party system.

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In short, American society has sought to resolve the eternal dilemma of liberty vs. order by a subtle set of compromises. Formally the resolution has been accomplished through the institutions and procedures of the Constitution. But these institutions and procedures could never have survived the vicissitudes of one hundred and seventy years if they had not been operated by men who shared not merely a sense of responsibility for the community but also a set of moral values. It is because, in the end, even the most purposeful and ardent special interest groups accept the moral as well as the legal rules of the national game that our society is a going concern.

## The Leader and His Tasks in a Democracy

Why, then, are leaders required in a democratic society, and what do they do? Why does not the interplay of individuals, pressing temperately and responsibly their special interests, suffice?

Leadership is required for two reasons. First, all men are not equally gifted in the special tasks--ultimately in the art--of handling the affairs of the community; nor are they equally drawn to communal affairs. Second--quite aside from natural endowment and interest--the handling of communal affairs requires a knowledge of special areas of fact and of situation which all cannot equally know, if the day-to-day work of an individualist society is to be conducted. In social and political organization--as in virtually all else we do--specialization is required.

But it follows directly from the basic character of American society that the delegation of leadership is not a simple affair. In assuming special

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powers of decision in communal affairs the leader must look in three directions; and if he is successful, he must harmonize what he sees. First, he must perceive--if possible he must anticipate--the urgent new problems faced by the community which require for their solution change in method or in communal policy. Second, he must examine alternative solutions to these problems and throw his weight behind those which are both effective and in harmony with the constitutional and moral rules of the community. Third, he must persuade the community that the proposed course of action is correct and organize its energies effectively around that course of action.

On this view, then, the leader in a democratic community must be an innovator--the man who perceives new problems and organizes technical solutions for them; he must be the protector of the community's long-run continuity, the keeper of its historic values and its titutions; and he must, finally, combine the talents of educator and short-run political tactician. This is quite a package; but in a modern democratic society these multiple facets of leadership are everywhere to be observed in successful organizations, including those formally outside the political process. The successful businessman is not merely an automaton, making rational market calculations; he is the leader of his firm, peering ahead to understand its future problems of technology and markets; carrying with him not only his board of directors but also his managerial staff and his labor force; harmonizing his decisions not only with the legal but also with the moral values of the society of which his firm is a part. Similarly, the successful labor leader must concern himself not

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only with the current and foreseeable agenda of problems affecting labor's
real income; he must also carry along both his immediate constituency--the
rank and file--and the more distant but still powerful constituency of the
American community.

These three dimensions of the task of engineering change by consent
within the continuing values and constitutional rules of American democracy--
dimensions of innovation, continuity, and persuasion--exist equally for the
President and for the leader of the most modest communal organization within
our society.

National Leadership and Contemporary America

American life has, from its colonial origins, steadily faced tasks of
innovation; and it has required men of "answerable courage", capable of
guiding the community on to the right next step, in the face of new problems.
Over a substantial part of American history, however, our communal life has
developed successfully without the exercise of strong leadership at the
national level. There were, of course, four occasions before 1945 which did
require strong, national leadership and where it was supplied with varying
degrees of success: in the twenty years after 1776; in the Civil War; in the
First World War; and in the world crisis of the 1930's when we faced the
Great Depression and the life and death challenge of the Axis powers. Aside
from these crises leadership was generally exercised on a diffused basis:
within families; in our schools and churches; politically, in small communities
and towns, and at the state level; and, above all, in the development of the
American economy.

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We have never lacked men who not only enjoyed the fruits of liberty, but who have also accepted a degree of responsibility for the fate of the community. But given our relative safety in the world of the nineteenth century and given an expanding frontier society where affairs of state did not draw the best talents, men with qualities of leadership--prepared to think and act in terms of the community's new problems--were drawn in high proportion into the adventure of American economic growth. The nation spread out over the continent and brought its resources into production mainly through the enterprise of individual men. With an occasional assist from the army, from diplomacy, and from state and national legislatures, the central communal task of our history, down to 1900, could be accomplished with relatively little national political leadership. And when we came upon our one great crisis of this era, we found Lincoln. Aside from the Civil War, the American nation was permitted to grow by an extension of familiar processes, requiring little intervention by the national government.

Since 1900 the nation's life has radically altered; and we have come now in mid-century to face a flow of problems requiring rapid innovation in the face of changing circumstances; and conscious national policy is essential for the solution to these problems. In our relations with the world and, to a degree also, in relation to one another at home, we face issues which require that the leadership process function with heightened effectiveness at every level of our society in relation to national policy; and as nearly as it is given to us to peer ahead, this requirement will remain with us over the foreseeable future.

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We are opposed in every dimension by a Communist Bloc dangerous but changing, whose great strength we must frustrate while we do what we can to accelerate a hopeful but precarious sequence of international alterations favorable to our interests and to those of the men and women who live within the Bloc. We are in the midst of the tremendous arms competition of which the core is a succession of inventions and a race to apply them efficiently in front-line strength; and, should the arms race yield to diplomacy we face an equally challenging and revolutionary task of instituting and maintaining an international system of arms control. Independent of, but heightened in its challenge by the Cold War we face a world in revolution, where something like a billion human beings in Free Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America are transforming their lives and status in the global arena of power. We confront a Europe on whom we must to a degree continue to depend, facing the choice of decline or a radically new orientation to the world, a choice in which our qualities of leadership or lack of them may be decisive. And even beyond the Cold War--as nearly as we can discern a different world through the mists--one can perceive an endless flow of American responsibilities as we seek to maintain a favorable environment for our society in a rapidly evolving and shrinking world community.

All this has directly and intimately affected our lives at home and will continue to do so: our tax bills; our laws; the lives of our young men; the content of our science, literature, our culture in its widest sense. It yields a chronic sense of stress and danger and challenge, broken from time

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to time by major crises which briefly dominate our attention.

Meanwhile, our domestic life--in the narrow sense--moves on to a new wealth, security, and maturity. Its technical, political, and social framework unceasingly changes--in ways that require national leadership--from the handling of atomic energy, automation, and the road network to the surge of the Negro towards social equality and the revision of our educational system to meet needs new in scale, changing in content. Perhaps, above all, having learned to maintain full employment in the context of political democracy and private capitalism we must learn how to avoid voting ourselves into chronic inflation, a problem that will test the nation's sense of communal responsibility from top to bottom over coming years.

The increased communal content of domestic policy at the national level is something quite distinctive in recent years and worth special notice, as it relates directly to the functioning of leadership. The process of solving national problems has, in the past, been accelerated by the fact that the major issues involved urgent and direct special interests of particular groups within the nation. These groups were articulate; they pressed hard on politicians anxious to pick up marginal votes; and the interplay of unambiguous special interests drove the political process forward. But the agenda of American domestic life for the next decade--as nearly as we can perceive it--consists in large part of issues where the problem is not so much to compromise conflicting group interests as it is for the community to act (or fail to act) as a collectivity on an expanded range of common interests. This is the case

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with the problem of inflation; with school buildings and teachers' salaries;
with enlarged road-building programs; with the rebuilding of the old cities,
including the clearance of slums; with public health; the care of the aged;
and so on. If some or all of this agenda is to be dealt with, the community
must decide that extra dollars spent on communal purposes outweigh the
value of marginal dollars spent within the private budget. The struggle
must take place to a substantial degree within the mind of the individual
citizen rather than as among different groups of citizens, each motivated by
over-riding special interests. American national politics is shifting, in a
sense, towards the long familiar patterns and issues of small town politics:
the roads, the schools, and all the rest.

These communal problems must be faced at a time when the public
budget is strained by security outlays, and by the unavoidable consequences
of providing minimum public services for a rapidly expanding population.
They cannot be resolved by soaking the rich. They confront the community
either with inflation or some alternate form of sacrifice: the nation may well
have to judge as among (say) degrees of risk in the missiles race; the
quality of education for the young; and the horsepower of its automobiles.

There is every reason to hope that the American community is capable
of making the calculus intelligently; i.e., in such a way as to preserve the
society's fundamental values and its physical security. The communal trend
of national life and experience should make sound decision on these problems
easier than it would have been in, say, the 1920's. Nevertheless, how the

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community decides to dispose of its annual increment in real income as among security outlays abroad, communal outlays at home, and the private budget will prove a searching and, in some respects, a new form of challenge to the political and social process at the national level.

American politics is shifting away from its classic task of compromising special interests to the task of harmonizing private and public values. And within the area of public values there is a clash between the imperatives of a welfare state (with a rapidly expanding population) and the imperatives of American survival on the world scene. There is a clear and basic continuity in our political processes; but they must be adjusted to deal with a problem, familiar enough in kind, but new in its scale.

In short, the problem of leadership on the national level has become a central issue in American life because the maintenance of our interests on the world scene and the maintenance of the quality of our domestic life require that we innovate at a pace new in our national experience and that we behave increasingly as a national community rather than as a loosely associated group of regions and special interests. The dynamics of our world position and of our domestic evolution as a tightly knit continental community have thus powerfully converged in ways which justify and require a fresh look at the whole leadership process in American democracy.

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The demand for leadership in the nation's communal life has, then, radically increased; and the causes for this increased demand do not appear to be transient. What of the supply?

We are, of course, producing an increased supply of potential leaders; for the innate qualities of ability and character certainly exist within our expanding population and the average level of education and of social and political opportunity are rising. More than that, as a matter of long term trend, it is true that a higher proportion of able men and women are willing to concern themselves with national policy, for all or part of their careers, than has probably been the case for, say, the past century and a quarter. But optimism or complacency based simply on the trends of American life is misplaced. The performance of the nation in this generation will not be judged by those who come after on the basis of whether we did better than our predecessors or whether we did rather better than most other nations might have done when confronted with the challenge of moving from isolation to world leadership at a bound. We will be judged on whether we coped with our problems while protecting the nation's external interests and preserving the abiding values of American society.

In terms of this criterion, there are some harsh facts to face in assessing the current supply of American leadership, notably within the Executive Branch. At the moment there are a substantial number of high-level offices in Washington which stand empty; and there are others filled by men whose

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names did not initially appear high on the list of desired candidates. Some of the specific, current reasons for this troubling -- even dangerous -- state of affairs are considered below (pp. 16-43). But there is a general observation to be made; namely, that the nation has not yet matched the rising importance of national policy with a shift in attitude towards government service.

The classic national attitude was incorporated in the discussion, at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, on the appropriate salary level for officials in the federal government. Shrewd and wise old Benjamin Franklin counseled that salaries should be low so that the attractions of money and power would not converge and the more adventurous Americans would seek their fortunes outside government service. So it was; and for more than a century the nation was well enough served by a system that drew only a very small proportion of its leadership talent into the making and the administration of national policy.

At the bottom of the present difficulty is the persistence of this classic American view that government service is, for the truly able man, second order business. The low financial rewards of government service are a part of the problem, but only a small part; for, at the highest levels of business and professional life, from which leadership in national policy should be drawn, money is an ancillary and, often, symbolic incentive. The deeper problem is that a high proportion of the group from whom national

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leadership must be drawn in the United States are neither prepared nor motivated by their education and experience in our society to look to national service as an appropriate outlet for their energy and talents.

In turning now to certain more specific aspects of the leadership problem, its setting in the nation's historic experience and values should be kept in mind; for while our response to recent challenges has been in the right direction -- including the response to the increased demand for national leadership -- that response has been slow. It is, of course, possible that our major enemies will prove so incompetent that we can successfully pass through the present dangers with a relatively mediocre national performance; but that is a high risk to assume in a world of modern weapons where the threats to the United States include both the devastation of our land and people and the destruction of our way of life.

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PART II:

LEADERSHIP IN THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT

## Introduction

Part I of this report asserts that the democratic process in the United States confronts two major challenges which center in the leadership process: first, how can innovation and change in public policy be brought about more promptly and efficiently than at present; second, how can the weight of the nation's communal interests be strengthened in public policy relative to the influence of special interests? The task of Parts II and III of this report is to consider specific problems which must be solved if these challenges are to be successfully met and to make certain specific recommendations to this end.

Under our Constitution the President, in his person and in his office, is and must be a central figure in any consideration of leadership in national policy. Reverting to our tripartite definition of the functions of leadership, it is the President, above all, who must identify and if possible anticipate urgent new communal problems; it is the President who must generate the staff work which will yield the array of alternative solutions open to the community: and he must play an important role in making the community aware of its problems and in persuading it to support effectively the courses of action which he regards as both effective and in harmony with the community's constitutional rules and moral values. Notably in military and foreign policy, but

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also to an important degree in major domestic issues, the President must be--
in fact as well as symbolically--the community's mind and voice, if the
community is to function effectively. As ex-President Truman often puts it:
the President is the only lobbyist for all the people.

As a crude first approximation one can thus view the making of public
policy as a triangular process. The President goes to the voters with his
definition of the problem and with his proposed solution; against the back-
ground of a voting public thus informed and influenced by his judgment, the
Congress then acts, making such modifications as the special interests and
the balance of political power in the nation suggest as appropriate, given the
important parochial responsibilities that Senators and Congressmen bear. And
occasionally something very like this simple model of the President as
innovator and educator can be seen to apply; for example, in Lend-Lease, the
Truman Doctrine, and, more recently, in the Eisenhower Doctrine for the
Middle East.

But even when the role of the President is most central and powerful
in the making of public policy the triangular relationship is not as simple an
affair as the model would suggest. In each of the three dimensions of leader-
ship there is a complex interaction between the President and the other
institutions of the nation. For example, the problems requiring new national
policy are not defined simply in the President's head. They may be forced
on his (and the nation's) attention by events in the world so flagrant that it
would be politically dangerous for the President to fail to make new policy.

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A problem may be brought to the President's attention by one of his principal advisers. The act of primary initiation may, even, come from outside the Executive Branch: through the controversy of the two parties; from the Congress; or from informed and even excited elements in the public.

Similarly, staff work--the exploration of alternative solutions--will certainly be conducted not by the President alone, but through his interaction with the various institutions of the Executive Branch. In foreign and military affairs, for example, the President's freedom of action and, indeed, his vision of what alternatives are open to him will be limited and colored by views and interests of the Department of State, the three military services, and the Department of Defense. At any moment in time the President may be able to influence the great bureaucracies only marginally. Moreover, the President's definition of the situation he confronts in the world--and thus, by implication, the routes of action open to the nation--will be profoundly affected by the intelligence picture drawn for him by the CIA and by those others charged with informing him. Often an extremely important if not decisive role in the definition of alternative solutions may be played by special Presidential commissions or by other groups outside the normal machinery of the Executive Branch. And, finally, the Congress, despite its limitations in the conduct of staff work, has played in many domestic issues a role of greater importance than the Executive Branch; and it has demonstrated that it can, on occasion, do so in foreign affairs as well--for example, in the recent (1957) foreign aid bill whose shape was basically determined by the Senate.

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Finally, the process of persuasion in a democratic community is a vastly more complex and interacting affair than the simple model of the President as teacher and advocate of the communal position would indicate. Political leadership at every level plays a part, as well as the world of mass communications, voluntary associations, and, even, determined private individuals.

In short, no matter how positively the President interprets his constitutional responsibilities as communal leader--no matter how "strong" or "weak" he is in the parlance of American constitutional history--the leadership process in modern America is a diffuse and many-sided process, embracing the activities of a whole spectrum of governmental and non-governmental institutions. In considering concretely the question of how innovation might be accelerated and how the communal interest might be strengthened in national policy Subpanel VI did not, then, confine its attentions to the Office of the President or even to the Executive Branch as a whole. It ranged over whatever institutional situations seemed most relevant to improvements of the leadership process in the making of national policy.

In presenting the main lines of our thought and recommendation we shall, therefore, organize our report by examining successively the functions of leadership in national policy rather than, merely, specific institutions. The balance of Part II considers certain difficulties of the nation in identifying its problems promptly and correctly and in generating adequate staff work; that is, it is concerned with the first two functions of leadership. Part III will examine difficulties in the generation of public knowledge and support--

will examine difficulties in the generation of public knowledge and support--
that is, it is concerned with the first two functions of leadership. But III
is the problems of democracy and majority and minority and in generating abutment
reliance of Part II constitutes certain difficulties in the nation in identifying
leadership in national policy rather than merely, specifically, institutions. The
therefore, organizes our report by examining successively the functions of

In presenting the main lines of our thought and recommendation we shall,
process in the making of national policy.

Institutional situations seemed most relevant to improvements of the leadership
President or even to the Executive Branch as a whole. It turned over what-
policy Support VI did not, then, continue its attentions to the Office of the
President and how the communal interest might be strengthened in view of
institutions, in considering concretely the question of how innovation might
the activities of a whole abatement of governmental and non-governmental
process in modern America is a climate and many-sided process, embracing
work. He is in the balance of American constitutional history--the leadership
in short, no matter how positively the President interprets the conphi-
gion, voluntary associations, and, even, determined private individuals,
leadership at every level plays a part, as well as the world of mass communi-
cation and advocate of the communal position would indicate. Political
reality more complex and interacting states than the simple model of the Prussia
that is the process of leadership in a democratic community is a

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the third element in the leadership process. Illustrations will be drawn mainly from military and foreign policy, where the nation's leadership weaknesses are greater than in domestic policy and the costs of failure are likely to be higher.

## The National Interest: The Need for Consensus

If one looks back over the experience of the nation in military and foreign affairs over the past fifty years a simple fact stands out: the United States has, on the whole failed to identify the major dangers it confronted in time to organize a policy which prevented major crises from coming about.

This is true of all the nation's major military engagements from the First World War to the Korean War; and it is true also of a good many of its non-military crises, from the rejection of the League of Nations in 1920 to Suez in 1956.

Certain of the causes for the convulsive pattern of our national performance lie in the character of American institutions of leadership and are subject to remedy by institutional modification. It is essential, however, to acknowledge that some of the basic factors which have determined the result lie outside the terrain of institutions, and that they will only yield to changes in men's minds--in ways of looking at ourselves in relation to the world--rather than to changes in tables of organization.

The weakness of democracy in military and foreign affairs, except in a protracted major war, is, of course, a familiar theme. It has been on the American agenda since Tocqueville defined it so well about a century and a

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quarter ago. In modern America this weakness does not arise from a lack of
public information; nor does it reflect an unwillingness of the American voter
to make sacrifices in the national interest. But it does link directly to a lack
of consensus on the character of the national interest. We need an under-
standing of the national interest so precise that major problems can quite
easily be identified and that staff work can proceed on appropriate and
acceptable solutions before the nation slides into a crisis so dangerous and
self-evident that some form of national response is evidently called for.

This lack of consensus on the national interest is not a matter of a
gap between a well-informed elite and an unintelligent mass of citizens:
there is every evidence that American Cabinets of the twentieth century have
been as badly split on this matter as the American public. And, in a sense,
public lack of a full consensus is less awkward to deal with than a lack of
consensus in high places. In the past fifteen years or so when the Executive
Branch has been united it has had a bipartisan majority of about 60% to work
with on most issues of military and foreign policy; but an Executive Branch
split on a 60-40 basis cannot effectively inform the public and mobilize the
majority consensus; unless it is led by an exceedingly forceful, even
ruthless, President.

In our domestic life we are quite close to achieving an effective
consensus on many important issues. We have hammered out, in the century
or so since American industrialization began, a view of how industrialization
can be made consistent with abiding moral, social, and political values.

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While there is still plenty to argue about, men inside and outside the government are pretty well agreed as to what we ought to argue about. And looked at closely, the range over which argument proceeds is relatively narrow.

Fruitful debate takes place, in similar terms, from the highest levels of the government down to discussions within the family or local groups.

There is still an enormous potential role for Executive Branch and Congressional leadership in domestic policy; but if such leadership is lacking the imperatives of a free election process unmercifully prod those with political responsibility. What is at stake, for example, in current discussions is the scale and character of government support for education not whether there is an educational problem for which the community bears an important degree of responsibility. And so also with questions of the level of employment, inflation, the farm problem, and, despite its grave difficulties, the question of segregation.

In short, there is reason for confidence that our traditional method of relatively diffused leadership is capable of identifying most of the domestic issues we face, of formulating alternative solutions, and of ensuring action before disaster overtakes us; although, as noted earlier, the character of the domestic problems on the American agenda is likely to place an increased premium on the leadership process at the national level over coming years.

This confidence stems not merely from the existence of a widespread tradition of communal responsibility in domestic affairs but also from the fact of a working consensus on the major particular problems of our time and from the

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power of the electoral process.

In military and foreign affairs the case is different. Foreigners don't vote in American elections; and even so perceptive and well-informed an electorate as ours cannot--from day to day, and from month to month--accurately and confidently gauge how well or badly we are doing in our relations with the world. The consequences of a given stream of military and foreign policy is only revealed, and then often not clearly, when that policy fails and a flagrant crisis is upon us.

But there is a deeper cause for our trouble even than the vicarious relation of the citizen to external affairs. We stand at a particular unresolved stage of our evolution as a nation in which it is essential that we consolidate the accumulated experience of dealing with the world--notably in the past fifty years--into a working consensus, on the nature of the national interest. This consensus must be such as to suffuse equally NSC papers and the thought of responsible citizens in every community. Such a consensus on the character of the national interest does not exist. The mobilization of an elite, the recruitment of the ablest and most public-spirited of civil servants, or the ultimate refinement in our Executive Branch Committee system cannot substitute for such a consensus.

Specifically there are two themes in our history and experience that have not been reconciled in an orderly way. One derives from the insights of Mahan and the remarkable group of men who developed in the early years of this century concerned with our foreign and military policy: notably

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Theodore Roosevelt, the elder Lodge, Root and Stimson. These men faced the fact of power in the world and the need of the United States actively to apply its power on its world environment in order to ensure the national interest.

The second strand is the American concept of its ideological interest in the world. This is rooted, of course, in the deep conviction that from its founding, our experiment in democracy had a meaning which transcended the American borders. Wilson relied overwhelmingly on this conception of our role in the world arena of power; and it is a strand which runs in different ways through the performance of Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower.

But right down to the present-right down to the application of the Eisenhower Doctrine in the Middle East-we are uncertain as to how these two elements relate to each other and to the ultimate interest of the United States as a society. Whether we are committed in the Middle East to stop the extension of Soviet military power or to help build viable, independent, increasingly more democratic societies are closely related questions: but we can regard them as identical questions only at our peril.

The nation's problem in defining the national interest usefully and operationally reflects a more general difficulty to be seen in many aspects of American life: a tendency to articulate our purposes in terms of large ideal goals while operating from day to day in a pragmatic way. Special interests and the facts of power play a larger role in American behavior than our political orations make clear. In our domestic life we are subtle and expert at reconciling moral and ethical values and special interests; and we have been

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so ever since our remarkably sophisticated and wise Constitution was
formulated. But we are still awkward in articulating our purposes to ourselves
and before the world and acting upon them in such a way that our real
ideological and real power interests are put into an orderly relationship, and
lead directly to well-balanced, well-articulated lines of action.

It would be inappropriate in the report of this Subpanel to do more than
to identify the problem: this is not the occasion for an exploration of the
character of the national interest. The development of a consensus is,
however, an essential condition for a policy--and a flow of day-to-day
actions--capable of forestalling crises; it is an essential condition for the
nation's allocating adequate talents and resources to deal with the challenges
and to exploit the potentialities it now confronts; it is an essential condition
for the public support of a military and foreign policy required to maintain
the nation's security under rapidly changing circumstances. Put another way,
one of the first substantive tasks of our leadership is to develop this consensus
and our institutions of leadership from the President on down cannot
efficiently function until that consensus is established.

## The Balance Between Staff and Line

The first major problem for the leadership process-the problem of an
effective consensus on the national interest-was seen to arise from our
peculiar new involvements and responsibilities on the world scene. The
second proceeds from the fact that the execution of these responsibilities
requires a pace of innovation in public policy for which neither our national

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history nor our present institutions have adequately prepared us.

From the earliest days of our national life down to the present, observers have noted that we are a nation of operators rather than men of reflection. Philosophically, we have been pragmatists, approaching our problems in the specific terms in which they presented themselves--be it a hard New England winter or an incoming cable. We should be clear that this quality is one of our great national strengths, lying as it does at the root of our operational vigor, our will to regard specific obstacles as things promptly to be removed; but it is a sufficient approach only where the broad directions for action are set and agreed. In a time of rapid innovation and revolutionary change, the traditional balance between creative thought and operational efficiency--between staff and line--built into our military and foreign policy establishments is inappropriate to our needs. We make the problem of creating policies which are something more than a convulsive reaction to crises difficult for ourselves by our heavy-handed, pyramidal methods of administration. These methods were admirable for a nineteenth century railway or post-office or for an army in piping times of peace or for any operation where fixed, specialized tasks can be defined and remain stable; but they are destructive of initiative and creative energy, freighted with a dangerous bias for the *status quo* in a situation where rapid innovation is essential. Given American biases in philosophy and administration the *status quo* tends to be the policy hurriedly worked up to deal with the last crisis, perpetuated thereafter by the weight of bureaucratic inertia, until the next crisis comes along.

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Men successfully operate processes by accumulating experience, feel, judgment, by sensing recurrent patterns rather than isolating clean-cut logical connections of cause and effect. This is how good captains of sailing vessels have worked, good politicians, good businessmen. This has been the typical American style in operating and developing the nation's society. Its success, however, is dependent on two conditions which are, to a degree, alternatives; first, that the problems confronted be, in their essence, relatively familiar, capable of solution by only moderately radical innovation, on the basis of existing principles or institutions; second, that time be allowed for the experimental exploration of possible solutions, and the osmotic process of accepting change. The more the time permitted, the greater the workability of a technique of problem-solving by empirical experiment and institutional change-inertia.

It is, thus, in the less radical orders of innovation--in science, industry, and politics--that the nation has historically excelled. Or put another way, the American style is least effective when it confronts issues which require radical innovation promptly.

It is precisely here that we are in trouble. We live in a world of extremely rapid change, where the survival of our society hinges on prompt innovation, while our intellectual style and our national institutions are accommodated to the slow and carefully balanced modifications of a successful on-going process.

For example, we now have in Washington two institutions designed to assess

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the overall position of the nation in the world and to prescribe unified policies to guarantee our survival: the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council. Each has access to enormous staff structures, filled with experts on every region of the world, every sort of weapon, every sort of expertise the national and social sciences can afford. At first glance it would appear that we have accepted our permanent burden as a world power; staffed Washington with the best products of our graduate schools, each in a specialized section fitting his doctoral working papers; and crowned the structure with unifying institutions to formulate neatly and cleanly the choices open to the Commander-in-Chief.

But the nation's staff work institutions operate quite badly. And the reason is this. Successful policy-making in a world where weapons systems are out-dated in (say) four years, a world caught up in revolutionary change, depends on a series of major innovations; that is, on major new ideas, quite discontinuous with past experience. The change of weapons models from year to year cannot be conducted by enlarging the fins or changing the color combinations; one cannot deal with Nasser, or with the disintegration of Indonesia, or with the current mood of Western Europe by formulae relevant even to such recent experiences as the Korean War or the Marshall Plan.

Ideas--major innovations--do not emerge easily from an hierarchical bureaucratic process. It is the instinct and the vested interest of an orderly bureaucracy to throttle new ideas. Innovations emerge in the heads

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of lonely individual men, or from small like-minded groups, thrashing freely about for the answer to a problem that fits no particular section or division of the bureaucracy, neatly delimited by professional administrators.

And when ideas do work their way up--for, blessedly, the American bureaucrat has thus far not wholly accepted the world of Kafka and remains a bit of a buccaneer--what is there at the top? The JCS and the NSC are committees of operators, bureaucratic departmental chieftains, each freighted with large vested interests to protect, each biased heavily towards the *status quo*, as, indeed, operators must be. They cannot, under these circumstances, survey in a systematic way the horizons of our national position and formulate policies which effectively unify day-to-day operations.

High-level policy tends to emerge in one of two forms: either as general statements so broad that operators can go on doing what they are doing, interpreting policy statements as they will; or as tough, practical compromises, allocating money or other scarce resources, in which the pattern of policy is much less important to the outcome than the bargaining weight of the negotiators. First-class ideas cannot emerge from a committee of hard-pressed bureaucrats any more than a first-class book can be written by a committee of professors.

What is the result? American policy-making consists in a series of reactions to major crises. Having failed to define, to anticipate, and to deal with forces loose in the world, having tried merely to keep the great machine of government ticking over from day-to-day, at last the problems never recognized or swept under the rug come ticking in over the incoming cables. Then, as a nation of operators, we respect the reality of the matter, and--in the past at

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least--we have turned to with vigor. We rig up an _ad hoc_ effort--often by-passing all the bureaucratic machinery created to deal with our affairs, launch hastily some new courses of action; and these become the working norms of policy until the next crisis comes along. As a first approximation it is quite accurate to say, of any moment over the past fifteen years, that current policy has been a bureaucratized version of that created _ad hoc_ to deal with the last crisis.

We are, thus, applying an empirical, pragmatic style, created out of a remarkably continuous national experience, to a world where it is altogether possible that crisis take the form of situations where even the most vigorous _ad hoc_ effort by the nation would come too late to retrieve our abiding interests.

Here, indeed, institutional change has its role to play. The NSC would, for example, be vastly improved if it had an independent staff of first-rate men, freed of ties to particular bureaucracies, paid to think in terms of the totality of our policy problem, empowered to lay proposals on the table. The three military services evidently need to be unified and the Pentagon provided with a top-level staff of men paid to think about the character of our military problem as a whole. The Planning Staff of the Department of State evidently needs to plan and not be caught up in convulsive responses to urgent unanticipated crises. And so on.

In short, the nation's philosophic and bureaucratic style makes us relatively weak at creative staff work, at a phase in our history where the need for rapid innovation is being thrust on us from every direction. Fortunately

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the nation has moved, in the past two decades, to a new position of leadership in the world's scientific life. It is no longer accurate-as it would have been only a short while back-to hold that Americans were unlikely to contribute first rate original ideas to the physical or social sciences. We have now the intellectual capital required for the process of innovation; but our systems of administration are geared for static processes and for slow change. And something of an administrative revolution, shifting the balance between staff and line in our major governmental establishments is required to deal with the problems we face.

to deal with the problems we face.
between staff and line in our major governmental establishments it resulted
change. And something of an administrative revolution, shifting the balance
put our systems of administration are geared for static processes and for slow
have now the intellectual capital required for the process of innovation;
contribute that rate original ideas to the intellectual or social sciences. We
been only a short while back to hold that Americans were unlikely to
ship in the world's scientific life. If it is no longer accurate-as it would have
the nation has moved, in the past two decades, to a new position of leader-

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## Personnel: The Problem of Quality

As was inevitable and proper in an examination of leadership in national policy Subpanel VI devoted considerable time to this question: how can able men and women be recruited for work in the Executive Branch and be persuaded to stay at work there. If our view of the nation's problems is correct, the question of quality is more than a pro-forma matter, something more than a conversational exercise for men of good will when considering their government. A quite complex bureaucratic machine can be made to do its business with reasonable efficiency if it is dealing, essentially, with recurrent problems. These can be broken down into specialized functions which, in turn, can be dealt with by men of modest gifts. When the governmental machine must, against every built-in bureaucratic vested interest and instinct, change rapidly the cast of its policy, then, indeed, men of special gifts--men with force and initiative--are required to innovate in good order, in good time.

Although the requirements for improved quality in the Executive Branch have been heightened by the current and foreseeable tasks the nation confronts, certain of the familiar remedies are relevant. The government would, for example, be well advised to build a senior Civil Service. Aside from the stature and prestige this category would afford, it would permit easy transfers from one government department to another, widening the experience and the operating insight of its ablest men.

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Policy-making has been hampered in recent years not only by the lack of first-class permanent civil servants but also by a chronic weakness at the Assistant Secretary level. In part this has been due to the rapid turnover of men brought to Washington who did not choose to stay long enough to apply what they had learned in an inevitably long apprenticeship. It is possible, in the case of permanent civil servants, to prescribe certain changes in roles and prerogatives which might well induce abler people to stay within the Civil Service and to widen their experience and increase their effectiveness if they do stay. What can one say about the problem of recruiting and holding abler men at the Assistant Secretary level? There is, of course, no simple answer to this question. This, however, is true: the quality of the men a President can draw and hold within his administration in political posts is one measure of his ability to dramatize his program and his purposes. There seems little doubt that first-class Americans are prepared to give of their time and their talents within government if they are convinced that the tasks are important and if they are convinced that they as individuals have an opportunity to leave a constructive mark on the course of great events. The first requirement for good men at the Assistant Secretary level is, then, a challenging, clearly articulated program of national policy. But there is another dimension as well. Our conventional methods of administration often make it difficult to attract and to hold first-class men in relatively high positions. When a man is hired to undertake a relatively clear-cut task under the personal

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direction of the President or of a major Cabinet officer, the chances are that he will be drawn into his work, feel a sense of personal identity with its purposes and its success, and be tempted to stay with the program. When decision-making becomes embedded in endless inter-departmental committees, the responsibilities of the individual are diluted. The high administrator may find himself merely protecting the vested interests of a bureaucracy to which he has been attached as a political appendage, not sharing centrally in the making of a policy and a program. This is not the setting or the mission in which a good man is likely to remain long.

In short, the problem of improving the quality of personnel in government service at relatively high levels, is not merely a question of new incentives for high-level career men nor can it be solved by enjoining the President to try harder to get and to hold able men at the Assistant Secretary level. The whole governmental process must be suffused by the President with a sense of clear purpose, of adventure, and of personal responsibility before first-rate men are likely to undertake and to sustain the real sacrifices and frustrations that inevitably must go with work in the Executive Branch of the Federal government.

As in any other aspect of national policy, however, the burden of responsibility does not lie wholly with the President. He must, indeed, organize his program and his administration so as to exert an effective pull on good men; but the private institutions of American society, which normally harbor these men, must exert a salutary push. Or, if that is too much to ask,

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they must at least refrain from setting obstacles in the way of those who feel drawn to serve for substantial periods in the national government. The good Assistant Secretary is likely to be recruited from business or law, from the university or the foundation. Every instinct of these institutions is to hold onto their best men; and, increasingly, the policy of these institutions is to keep their best men out of controversial politics. Even if the Civil Service should be strengthened in its higher reaches it is clear that we are committed as a nation to handling a higher proportion of bureaucratic posts than most democracies by political appointment. This is a wholly defensible system if the ablest men in the society take their politics seriously and if they are willing to serve when their party holds responsibility and power. Thus, the instinct and the policy of key private institutions in American Society will have to be modified if we are to create a setting likely to draw our ablest men into political service at the key Assistant Secretary level.

## The Executive Branch and the Congress

The central problem of Executive Branch relations with Congress in foreign affairs and military policy is familiar enough: Congressmen generally speaking are elected on the basis of local and regional issues; foreign and military affairs are generally an obtrusion on what they must regard as higher order business; and when local or regional pressures do become directly enmeshed in foreign or military affairs (as with racial groups, tariffs, or local

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military establishments) they are likely to reflect only partially the general American interests involved and to be not wholly constructive in their net effect.

In addition to this fundamental lack of convergence between Congressional and Executive Branch responsibilities and outlook on foreign and military affairs, there are additional problems of Congressional disorganization that make grave difficulties for American democracy in its military and foreign policy performances:

1. There are rarely united party positions with the Congress on military and foreign policy; and there is, therefore, rarely a single party leader with whom the Executive Branch can negotiate with confidence. The Executive Branch must, as it were, construct an _ad hoc_ coalition, drawn from both parties, to carry through major legislation.

2. The separation of policy-making from the appropriation process adds extra strains and hazards to the process of Executive Branch advocacy before the Congress.

3. Finally, the seniority rule in the election of committee chairmen adds an element of Russian roulette to the leadership process in military and foreign policy.

When all this is said--when the Congress is enjoined to organize itself in a more unified and responsible way in military and foreign policy matters--the fact nevertheless remains that the Congressional performance

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since 1940 in military and foreign policy has roughly matched that of the Executive Branch. The Executive Branch has been in trouble when it lacked a clear-cut policy in which it deeply believed or when the Executive Branch had not adequately done its homework. The underlying truth is that members of Congress and the Senate are, in the end, responsible American citizens. And, while they bear the special professional responsibility of seeking re-election in local and regional constituencies they are as a group--on balance--most unlikely to behave irresponsibly when the nature of responsibility is made clear to them by a wise and well-presented Executive Branch policy.

Nevertheless, a massive problem for the democratic process remains in military affairs--a problem of knowledge and of Congressional responsibility. In foreign affairs the knowledgeability of the Congress has markedly increased in postwar years. The Senate--and even the House of Representatives--contain a group of men who are remarkably well informed and who are relied upon to lead their parties and the Congress as a whole in major matters of foreign policy. On some issues--as recently with foreign aid--the Congress has demonstrated that it is capable of acts of intiation previously associated with the legislative branch only in domestic policy. In military affairs, however, the problem of security has converged with the continuing split of the three services to make the education of the Congress more difficult. It is an extraordinary fact that the largest item in the national budget is voted annually by the Congress with only a minimal knowledge of what is involved. The

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defense budget is a virtually impenetrable document, in no way presenting
clearly the nation's military policy and the programs which are designed to
implement it; and this ambiguity fairly reflects the results of the negotiator
process by which budget is achieved.

In short, the process of leadership in military policy at the Congress-
ional level is peculiarly weak. This weakness is obscured in the short run
by the willingness of Congress to "go along" on matters of national security,
partly because Congressmen regard it as unsafe and, even, unrewarding to
take strong independent positions on major military matters, until the nation
has worked its way into a crisis so unpleasant that it appears safe and
rewarding for the party in opposition to exploit it. This is not the democratic
process at its best. In a world caught up in revolutionary military change,
with the nation facing all manner of danger, it is unwise for American democracy
to proceed with its legislators in a fog of ignorance, apathy, and irresponsibil-
ity about military matters.

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The President and His Office

It is a central theme of this report that leadership in modern American democracy is a diffused process rather than the job of one man. Nevertheless, a heavy and inescapable burden of personal leadership is allocated under our Constitution to the President. It follows, therefore, that at a time when leadership in national policy must be strengthened, the hand of the President must be strengthened.

SubPanel VI considered a wide array of proposals to this end, agreeing to the following:

1. The President should have the right to veto specific items in bills brought to him from the Congress.

2. The Constitutional amendment forbidding a third presidential term should be repealed.

3. Limitations on the President's negotiating and treaty-making powers, beyond those already in the Constitution, should be opposed.

Taken together these three positions would strengthen the President's hand in pressing his program with the Congress, in dealing with the domestic political process during a second term, and in fulfilling his inevitably personal role as a leader of a world-wide coalition at a time of continuing crisis.

In addition, it was agreed that the President should have permanent authority to reorganize the Executive Branch to meet its responsibilities and needs, as he saw them. Behind this recommendation lies a particular view