The Functions of the Office

What was the President doing about the Berlin crisis?

Wrote Columnist Walter Lippmann: "But for Mr. Truman's campaign tour, it would never have been possible to prove to the country how small a part Mr. Truman actually plays in the great office which he holds . . . Mr. Truman may get reports on what is happen-"I,

ing ... but there is not even an attempt to pretend that the President is directing affairs, is making the decisions, is forming or conducting policy."

Friends of Harry Truman, Lippmann recalled, resented preconvention complaints that Mr. Truman was not equal to the presidency of the U.S. "A complaint of that kind is almost impossible to prove," observed Lippmann, "as long as the President remains in Washington within the majestic structure of his office . . . But now the country has Mr. Truman's own estimate of how necessary it is for him to exercise the functions of the presidency."

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