To the Editor:
While I share Marcus Cunliffe’s uneasiness about the Johnson administration [“A Defective Instition?” February] I do not share his view on how the Presidency, admittedly a defective and far from perfect institution, should be improved.
Decentralization of the federal government and a weakened Presidency is not the answer, assuming that one favors major government support of social welfare and active intervention in the economy. Particularly since the Depression, Congress has been considerably less enthusiastic about these activities than the President.
The President, most eloquently John F. Kennedy, has had to rally public support to extricate his programs from Congress. A President who did not possess all the current majesty and symbolism of office would be in a weak position to appeal for popular support for his congressionally impeded programs.
(Capt.) Stephen L. Cohen, USAF
United States Air Force
APO, New York City
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To the Editor:
Marcus Cunliffe’s article on the Presidency is very useful, but it overlooks one aspect of our national political situation which is most serious—our lack of a sufficient corps of competent and responsible citizens.
No democracy can confidently face the crises ahead, in our kind of world, without sufficient voters who are competent to analyze the problems of their communities . . . from the smallest local group to the world community. . . . No manner of institutions or personalities can substitute for voters for very long in a democracy.
Those of us who oppose our tragic policy in Vietnam must never commit the error of “blaming Johnson” for that sad war. In like manner we must not assume that congressmen who turn their backs on Great Society programs are ignoring what they think their voters want. Their experience tells them that what they are doing is smart politics. And “throwing the rascals out” will do little good for social progress unless we can build a new type of responsible voter. . . .
Tucker P. Smith
Perry, Missouri
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Mr. Cunliffe Writes:
I agree that recent Congresses have sometimes impeded the executive branch over welfare legislation. My article took note of congressional inadequacies. I still maintain that (a) Congress has a constitutional responsibility to play a prominent, indeed a major role, in formulating as well as sanctioning legislation; (b) a too-dominant executive branch leads to a deterioration of the legislature: there is a cause-and-effect relation; (c) an improved system of federal government ought to aim at greater harmony between the executive and the legislature.
Franklin D. Roosevelt well understood this, at least in the critical month of March 1933. My point is admirably developed in an exchange of that date published in Max Freedman’s Roosevelt and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence, 1928-1945 (1967), between Felix Frankfurter and Walter Lippmann. Lippmann had expressed impatience at congressional indecision and stupidity. Frankfurter, with F.D.R.’s approval, answered him:
Of course there are times for summary action and the pace for devising policies is properly more rapid at one time than at another. But all this is a very different thing from educating the public into the psychology of dictatorship. I know your phrase has been concentration of authority, but the result is the same. We have not, and ought not to have, government by Presidential decree. . . . And I strongly deplore the current tendency to assume that power as such generates wisdom and that the deliberative processes are drags upon wise action.
Frankfurter and F.D.R. had a tactical no less than an ethical concern. They wanted to ensure that the President would not at some later stage be left to bear the whole burden of blame for policies that had misfired—which a proportion of policies are bound to do. Tactically and ethically, I think they were right.
