In 1951?

Suppose the U. S. could scrap its codes, constitutions, institutions, traditions, start anew from scratch. Many a Utopian has meditated that heady impossibility. More realistic, Chairman William Yandell Elliott of Harvard's Department of Government last week presented a series of proposals for revamping the present Constitutional structure to accord with modern political and economic realities.* If adopted, his proposals might produce a scene like the following:

On the evening of May 18, 1951, the President of the U. S. sat alone in the White House pondering the most momentous step of his career. In his budget message of Jan. 16 he had asked the House of Representatives for $10,000,000,000 to buy up the nation's hospitals, make Medicine a Government monopoly. For four months the House had refused to acquiesce. The time had come when the President must act decisively or surrender.

The U. S. was prosperous and at peace. Early in 1936 it had become apparent that the nation was headed toward piecemeal sabotage of the old Constitution. The Constitutional Convention of 1937 had thoroughly reordered the patchwork of compromises put together by the representatives of jealous sovereign States just 150 years before. The waste and confusion of 48 State governments were wiped out. The nation had been carved into a few great regional Commonwealths along economic lines. Freed from the tyranny of a Senate minority (treaties now required only the joint consent of a majority of both Houses), successive Presidents had concluded sound trade and security pacts with the nations of the world. Vast stock purchases, pioneered by the oldtime RFC, had made the Government a giant holding company with agents sitting as partners on the boards of every major corporation, guiding the nation's economic life by a coherent, far-seeing plan. Each & every citizen was now secure against every economic threat but that of sickness.

The President had set victory over that last enemy as the goal of his official life. But the nation was apathetic. Great changes had followed each other so swiftly in the last decade that it seemed the people wanted only to be left alone. The House of Representatives held stubbornly to that belief.

Wistfully the President thought of the days when a President like Franklin Roosevelt could line up Congress with the whip of patronage. But that had been an unwieldly, short-lived weapon at best. Without it he was a far stronger executive than Franklin Roosevelt had ever been. Over him hung no fear that nine old men might wreck his loftiest schemes. The new Constitution had robbed the Supreme Court of its power to review legislation aimed at great social reforms. No wrangling, unrepresentative Senate, swayed by individual crotchets and the pressure of potent lobbies, could lay major stumbling blocks in his path. The Senate was now a body of elder statesmen, including 15 distinguished citizens appointed by the President, which could advise on and momentarily delay certain legislation but had no voice in matters of appropriation or revenue. The President's only real competitor for mastery of the U. S. was the House of Representatives. Its members, freed from localism and the domination of organized minorities by the fact that five of them were elected from each district of the Commonwealths, had taken on new stature and independence. Over them, however, the Constitution had indeed given him a far more potent weapon than patronage. But its use was fraught with fateful potentialities for himself and his party. Was the cause of State Medicine worth the risk?

He must be right. His personal appointee, the Assistant President, the Government's coordinating officer and No. 2 executive, urged him to go ahead. So did his Executive Council, on which sat those brilliant products of the new civil service system, the permanent administrative heads of the Government departments. So did the General Economic Advisory Council, representing each department's advisory council of lay leaders in its field. But if he failed he would be virtually stripped of authority. The weapon itself would be destroyed, for he could use it only once during his term. His veto power would be gone. He might even be morally bound to resign, let Congress pick his successor. After all, there were other planks in his platform. But. . . . Suddenly the President, his face sternly set, summoned his secretary. Then & there by a penstroke he dissolved the House of Representatives, sent its members out to face a general election on the issue of State Medicine,

*The Need for Constitutional Reform-- Whittlesey House ($2.50).

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