To Reform the System

By Otto Friedrich

Needed: major changes in Government--but not constitutional surgery "Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time. "

--Mark Twain If there is one political belief that Americans cherish as an article of faith, it is the belief that their system of constitutional Government is the best ever devised by the mind of man. Yet an increasing number of citizens seem to share a contradictory view--that the system is not working. The evidence takes diverse forms. There are widespread demands for several differing constitutional amendments. And after the usual blizzard of declarations that every ballot is crucial, only 53% of the eligible voters went to the polls last November, the fifth voting decline in a row.

Opinion polls, the nation's favorite medium of public confession, document the erosion of Americans' faith in their system. Pollster Louis Harris has been asking over the years how many citizens believe in a series of statements like, "The people running the country don't really care what happens to you."

The number who subscribe to this "index of alienation" has climbed steadily, from 29% in 1966 to 44% in 1972 to 58% today. The University of Michigan's Center for Political Studies asks opinions on similarly glum statements: "The Government is pretty much run by a few big interests ... Quite a few of the people running the Government don't seem to know what they're doing ..." The alienated again rise sharply, from 19% in 1964 to almost 60% today.

Just as Oscar Wilde once remarked that the youth of America is its oldest tradition, much the same could be said of complaints about the failings of the U.S. political system. George Washington grumbled that "the stupor, or listlessness with which our public measures seem to be pervaded, is, to me, matter of deep regret." Through all the criticism, the mere fact that the system has survived more than two centuries of turbulent change is the strongest possible evidence of its solidity. While the American way of Government has repeatedly stood accused of inefficiency, the best defense is that it was not designed for efficiency but for accommodation and consensus. That, indeed, is the key to its survival.

To some extent, the faults of the system can be blamed on the men charged with operating it. And perhaps their biggest failure lately has been the inability to formulate a coherent set of national priorities. The result: enactment of muddled programs because there are no clear objectives. Democratic Congressman Richard Boiling of Missouri, who hopes to establish later this year a bipartisan blue-ribbon committee on reorganization of the Government, believes that a new national consensus has been needed ever since the basic objectives and priorities began to blur about 15 years ago. That was the time, at the height of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society flourishes, when the polls began showing that increase in public alienation. "Lyndon Johnson forgot to ask for a tax increase to pay for the Viet Nam War," Boiling says wryly, "and that was the breaking point. In the absence of a broad overall concept, people retreated to their own interests. Society became fractionalized, and the interest groups exacerbated that. No President and no Congress can reorganize the Government now without a great deal of support from concerned citizens. Big Business and Big Labor also have to come together."

But even though some of the nation's problems derive from the questionable competence of its elected leaders, and even though some derive from the general uncertainty about where the U.S. should be heading, the fundamental question remains: If a first-class leader managed to reach the White House, and if he had a clear and persuasive view of the course he wanted to set, could he provide an effective Government? Or would "the system" doom him, as it doomed more than one of his predecessors, to a single term ending in bitterness and frustration?

CONSTITUTIONAL CURES

The creators of the Constitution never claimed that the document they drafted in Philadelphia in 1787 was immune to change. Not only did Article V authorize amendments by Congress and the states, but it also promised that whenever two-thirds of the state legislatures wanted to summon a new convention, they could rewrite the whole Constitution. Thomas Jefferson thought some such revision was needed once in every generation. "Alterations may at any time be effected ..." added Alexander Hamilton in the 85th and last of the commentaries and cajolings that make up The Federalist. "The will of the requisite number would at once bring the matter to a decisive issue."

Alterations have indeed been effected, from the Bill of Rights (adopted in 1791) to the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery (1865) to the 26th and most recent Amendment (1971) lowering the voting age to 18.* The possibility of a new convention, however, has never been fulfilled. There have been attempts made--scores of them. In the early years of this century, 26 states petitioned for a constitutional convention to outlaw polygamy. In the past few years, 30 of the necessary 34 states have petitioned for a convention to require balanced budgets.

The founding fathers not only did not design a blueprint for the America of 1980 but had not the faintest idea what it would be like. Where the White House now stands, there were only a few empty meadows upstream from the barnyard where George Washington tried to breed new varieties of mules; Ronald Reagan's smog-filled Los Angeles was a tiny settlement of Spanish friars surrounded by thousands of miles of wilderness. The principal danger envisioned by those squires and merchants who had rebelled against King George was that of monarchy, and their remedy for that danger was the theory of checks and balances. "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition," said James Madison. The theory is reasonably sound, but as circumstances have changed and become more complex, the doctrine of separate powers can be partly blamed for the present imbroglio, a presidency unable to get any program through Congress unmauled and a Congress unable to get its wishes carried out by an entrenched bureaucracy.

Despite these shortcomings, however, radical surgery on the Constitution is not the answer. It is hard to imagine any major overhaul of the nation's fundamental charter that would not create more problems than it would solve. In fact, some of the problems afflicting the system today derive from various reforms undertaken--with the best of intentions--during the past decade.

These were primarily liberal reforms, designed to improve the way Presidents are elected and the way Congress deals with legislation. The chief target was "the bosses," the chief goal a more open political process. Only now that bossism has been largely overthrown can it be demonstrated that the party bosses performed a valuable function after all, that they were a corrupted form of a system known as representative democracy, and that the new vogue for various forms of "direct" democracy could itself become undemocratic.

The founding fathers emphasized that the U.S. was a republic, which simply meant that they would bow to no king, but they had no intention of establishing a democracy, which most of them regarded as synonymous with mob rule. Thus they decreed that the President should be elected not by direct popular vote but indirectly by an Electoral College, and that Senators should be chosen by state legislatures (a method that was changed by the 17th Amendment of 1913). They did so not only because they feared the vicissitudes of what conservatives liked to call "the tyranny of the majority," but also because they wisely saw the values of circumspection and consensus. If every public issue can be submitted to an instantaneous plebiscite --a Utopian (or nightmarish) possibility that cable television has now made technically possible--then there is little time and little impetus for thoughtful debate, for the analysis of dangerous consequences, or for the conciliation of opposing minorities. All of these are necessary for the formulation of policies that truly serve the public interest. All of them can best be achieved by a process known as intermediation, in which various groups of citizens and various layers of Government have an opportunity to shape and influence the raw expression of public opinion. This was one of the major purposes that the political parties once served, and that is why their influence needs to be restored in the presidential elections, in the operations of Congress and throughout the governmental process. The whole process depends on the building of coalitions; otherwise, the only rule of politics becomes the rule of every man for himself --the exact opposite of the purpose for which Jefferson said governments are instituted.

Though any alteration of the Constitution should be regarded with extreme caution, there is much else that needs to be done. Indeed, there is hardly a single element in the U.S. system that could not benefit by some serious scrutiny, some reevaluation, some alteration.

How LIGHTNING STRIKES

The first area to consider involves the nation's most basic political act: choosing a President. There was a widespread view during last year's campaign that any system that forces the American public to choose between a Ronald Reagan and a Jimmy Carter for the most powerful office in the world is a system gone wrong. This sour judgment was not dispelled by the fact that the previous rules produced mediocrities like Coolidge and McKinley and incompetents like Pierce and Harding. Nor is it overwhelmed by the argument that Reagan and Carter would have won under any system, since they were demonstrably the most popular candidates in their parties. Nor even by the possibility that Reagan may turn out to be a good President.

The present nominating process is a prime example of reforms that have not worked. The 1968 Democratic Convention, an embarrassing spectacle dominated by Chicago's jowly Mayor Richard Daley and his helmeted riot police, inspired the party's liberals to push through a series of antiboss rules requiring a more open process. The number of delegates elected in primaries increased from 40% to 75%, and rules governing state conventions were liberalized; the "unit rule," requiring all of a state's delegates to vote the same way, was abolished, and more seats were made available for women, young people and minorities. The Republicans basically followed suit in 1972.

Whatever the merits of the reformers' goals, the net effect has been a nearly permanent presidential election campaign, which culminates in a 37-primary marathon that exhausts and bewilders both the candidates and the voters. It ultimately leaves the party leaders very little to do at the nominating conventions except put on straw hats and look interested. One of the most remarkable aspects of the thoroughly "reformed" 1980 Democratic Convention was that the 3,331 delegates included only 72 Governors, Senators and Congressmen. By contrast, the assembled delegates included 388 representatives of teachers' unions--one sign that at least part of the nominating machinery had been seized by special-interest groups composed of ideologues or amateurs.

The steady weakening of the political parties, combined with the steady growth of television as the prime mediator between the voters and the Government, means that the primary campaign now emphasizes the wrong issues and the wrong qualities. What is needed to win primaries is often quite different from what is needed to govern. Primary politics is the "politics of celebrity." Experience counts for little and sound policy for less. Indeed, the time required for shaking hands at factory gates, smiling triumphantly at barbecues and endorsing local candidates at gatherings of party faithful makes being unemployed (but rich) one of the major prerequisites for victory. To know anything is less important than to be known. The low arts of making deals and trading favors have been replaced by what perhaps may be the even lower arts of media manipulation and the 90-second film clip.

Nobody today advocates a return to the notorious smoke-filled rooms of the turn of the century, but certainly the recent reforms should themselves be reformed. Here is how:

-The campaign must be shortened. The first contest now is the Iowa caucus in mid-January, but the candidates have to start raising money long before that in order to get federal matching funds. One remedy--urged by former L.B.J. Aide Douglass Cater in a study for the Aspen Institute--would be to ban use of federal funds before the spring of an election year.

No primary should be held before April 1, and they should all be held within 90 days. The present multiplicity of primary voting days could be limited to three or four, and the primaries could be scheduled on a regional basis, greatly reducing the need for the candidates to hopscotch around the country. This idea was endorsed last December by the President's Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties. Some experts have advocated grouping the primaries on a more scattered basis in order to avoid favoring any one region, but regional primaries seem a more coherent way of testing the voters' preferences.

-The proportion of elected and committed convention delegates should be decreased. The current system commits most delegates elected in the primaries to vote for their candidates on the first ballot, regardless of what happens in the world during the months before the convention. It thus tends to reduce the convention to a mere ratification. One interesting proposal put forth by Newton Minow, Adlai Stevenson's law partner and a longtime Democratic stalwart, would not limit the primary balloting to party members but allow independents to participate in a separate "advisory" primary; their votes would help test popular sentiment but would not be binding on any delegates. A more sweeping and effective reform would be to have only half the delegates elected in the primaries. The other half would be chosen by the top state official of the party, either the Governor or the party chairman, and would consist mainly of public officials. Such a change would immediately restore to the party organizations a good deal of their lost power. It would reduce the importance of celebrity politics. It would establish valuable relations between the presidential candidates and local officials. -The rules on campaign financing should be loosened. Since the 1976 election, candidates have operated under complex rules that require them to scrounge for thousands of small donations in order to get matching federal funds, which last year reached a maximum of $7.4 million. Designed to eliminate sinister "fat cat" donors, the current rules limit individual contributions to $1,000, and only the first $250 of that counts toward the matching funds. The reforms have made an immense growth industry out of finding and exploiting loopholes. Money has poured into the political action committees newly organized by various industries and interests, and they donated roughly $55 million to their political favorites in 1980. Among the most notable exploiters of the new system: single-issue groups like the antiabortion lobby, particularly those that have easy access to computerized direct-mail fund-raising lists.

The simplest solution would be to abolish all limits on donations, requiring only that they be made public. If a candidate wants to take $10,000 from a big defense contractor, let the voters judge the motive of the gift and the propriety of accepting it. Another change, which would contribute mightily to the general goal of rebuilding the political parties, would be to give them a supplemental federal election fund that they could spend as they see fit on behalf of the national ticket. Nothing could do more to make the enfeebled party chairmen become figures of authority.

How THE WORD SPREADS

Jefferson, who valued the press, could turn apoplectic when he considered the newspapers of his day. Said he: "The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."

Imagine what the sage of Monticello would have had to say about television. Today, in the perhaps hyperbolic words of Theodore White (The Making of the President), "television is the political process."

Though the myriad channels of cable TV may eventually provide greater exposure to aspirants on the political fringes, network TV has so far been and still remains the force that decides which candidate will be seen and heard and which will not be seen and heard. Though he speaks with the tongues of men and of angels and has not television, he is become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, for it is television that beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things. Says defeated Presidential Aspirant Jerry Brown: "If a person isn't on tele vision, he is a political nonbeing. He does not exist for the voter, even if that voter meets him in person."

The problem with television's political omnipotence is that it turns issues into slogans. TV concentrates almost exclusively on confrontations, statement and counterstatement, all reduced to brief segments of video tape. TV also demands filmable ritual: the waving placards and red-white-and-blue streamers of the quadrennial conventions, celebrated with the ceremonial jollity of an Easter egg hunt perpetuated for children who have grown into sullen adolescence. When TV has finally crowned its Muppety candidates, it reaches for their purses. Of the $60 million in federal funds that Reagan and Carter spent to campaign against each other, more than half went to television. Overall, candidates for federal office spent an estimated $150 million on television in the 1980 campaign.

Although TV has come to dominate and manipulate U.S. politics, much the way it dominates sports and entertainment, the shrewdest politicians have found that it is perfectly possible to decipher the camera's needs and then take advantage of them. TV enables a politician to elude all the controls of party and policy and present himself directly to the people. "Television is a miracle that American society has manage," never according learned to to onetime CBS News President Fred Friendly, "and in its relationship to politics it has been permitted to run wild." There is certainly no reason to alter the First Amendment's declaration that the Government should impose no restrictions on the freedom of the press. There are two important aspects of political campaigning in the age of television, however, that would benefit by change:

-The debates should become standard. These suddenly sprouted in 1960 from nothing more substantial than John Kennedy's need to deflate a more experienced antagonist and Richard Nixon's misplaced confidence in his own debating skill. In the 20 years since, there have been two campaigns with debates and three without them. No rules have emerged except that whichever candidate feels stronger generally tries to avoid the confrontation, and that the League of Women Voters presides over whatever can be negotiated between the warring camps. Nonetheless, TV debates have become so important in the voters' final judgments that they should become a regular institution, with the ground rules made standard. The main goal of those rules should be to encourage real debate between the candidates rather than what the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, president of the University of Notre Dame, calls "just people talking at each other." Hesburgh argues that "there should be a debate on foreign policy, on domestic policy, on governmental policy, on where we are going for the next four or five years. Each debate should have a subject and a moderator to make the candidates keep their feet to the fire and talk to each other." What if a front runner refused to risk such a challenge?

The networks could simply give the time to his opponent(s), and let the absentee face the judgment of the public.

-The candidates should get free air time. Though the networks' news departments must remain independent in deciding what they want to broadcast, there is no immutable law that all political candidates must be charged thousands of dollars a minute to get their own views across. The air waves theoretically belong to the public and are only leased to broadcasters in exchange for a certain amount of public service. One such service should be the granting of some post-convention prime time free of charge, perhaps one hour a week for the presidential nominees, a shorter period for lesser candidates. If such free time were arranged, there should then be a limitation on the 30-second spots that blitz the voters as an election nears. It should be possible for stations to impose an arbitrary limit on the number of political commercials that last less than, say, two minutes.

The main obstacle to free air time is not network greed but Section 3 1 5 of the Federal Communications Act, which requires that equal time be granted to all candidates, no matter how obscure or ab-Section 315 should be substantially revised -- or junked.

THE PITIFUL GIANT

The presidency begins with a gro-extended transition period, which was traditionally fixed at four months during the horse-and-buggy then cut to two months in 1933.

It still leaves the country too long suspended over an abyss of uncertainty, and in this age of instant communication it should be cut by another month.

Finally, the victor takes the oath that he will "faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States," and soon discovers, if he has not previously guessed, that he has acquired an office that demands more than anyone can fully execute. The Constitution says vaguely that he is the holder of "the Executive power."

More it says that he is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, he can make trea ties and otherwise deal with foreign nations, he can appoint fed eral judges and other officials, and in his relations with Congress, he shall "from time to time . . . recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." Those were the days.

The President today is regarded as leader of the Free World, which means that he is expected not only to outwit the Soviets but to mediate between Arabs and Israelis and to provide shelter for Italian earthquake victims. As U.S. Chief of State, he must ceremoniously stand ready to greet the Queen of England or a visiting delegation of Boy Scouts. As Chief Executive, he must present to Congress and win approval of a complete legislative program, ranging from Wyoming water projects to Har lem hospitals. As national leader, he must formulate and win support of policies in areas he cannot in any sense control. He is expected to hold down prices, for example, and to fight crime in the streets. If the polls reflect a state of public disgruntlement, he is supposed to take charge of regruntling. Almost incidentally, he is also chief of his party, and his coattails are supposed to haul into office Congressmen and Governors he hardly knows. Finally, as a national symbol in a state that has been constitutionally separated from the church, he is a kind of custodian of the national morality; his views on divorce, marijuana or abortion both reflect and influence public behavior.

Part of this burden has accumulated under the eaves of the White House by tradition, some even by accident, but much more derives from a series of presidential requests and congressional assents. It was only in 1939 that the Executive Office was formally established (George Washington had a personal staff of 14; Carter had 437 in an Executive Office total of 1,780).

Not until the Employment Act of 1946 was the President officially made responsible for prosperity and employment. The Bureau of the Budget was born inside the Treasury Department in 1921, moved to the White House in 1939, expanded into the Office of Management and Budget in 1970, and now boasts a payroll of 616. None of these major changes is enshrined in the Constitution or impervious to alteration.

The second discovery the President makes is that the most powerful office in the world has quite limited powers.

Unlike any third-rate dictator, he cannot simply decree a tax increase or have an enemy arrested or even build himself a marble monument. His favorite programs can be talked to death in Congress, ignored by the federal bureaucracy or overturned by the judiciary. "The only power I've got is nuclear," Lyndon Johnson once complained, "and I can't use that!"

Because presidential powers are largely persuasive rather than coercive, because even the long levers of patronage work best when used discreetly, much of a President's effectiveness depends on his staff and his Cabinet. And --theoretically--on the Vice President.

If the President is the world's most overburdened man, the Vice President is almost unemployed, his only constitutional duty being to preside decorously over the Senate.* The situation cries for a more equitable sharing of burdens. Gerald Ford, who has filled both jobs, publicly argued in TIME last November that the Vice President should be officially given all the powers of Chief of Staff.

Such relations cannot be legislated, however. While all reasonable reforms encounter unreasoning opposition, none is more vulnerable than the idea of giving the Vice President real authority. The President wants his Chief of Staff to be a man he viscerally trusts, likes, relies on; the Vice President, however, got on the ticket mainly because he represented constituencies different from the President's own. The best that the Vice President can realistically expect, therefore, is to serve his chief--as Mondale did Carter--hi the capacity of senior adviser without portfolio.

The President, of course, should be able to organize his staff as he pleases, but that staff has grown so haphazardly in recent years that it sometimes interferes with good administration. Since Nixon's presidency, White House aides have from time to tune usurped the function of Cabinet officers, congressional liaison aides have tried to dictate policy to the House and Senate instead of reasoning with them, and National Security Advisers have overshadowed Secretaries of State as architects of foreign policy.

Some needed reforms:

-The White House staff should be reorganized. The National Academy of Public Administration spent two years studying means of improving White House staff efficiency and last November issued an excellent report outlining not only reductions but a sensible reorganization. Instead of the present system of two main policy groups (domestic policy and national security), there should be three, devoted to domestic affairs, international affairs and economic affairs. The National Security Council, which, since the era of Henry Kissinger, has been tempted to become a rival State Department, should be reduced to a small interagency committee. Another major policy group should be devoted to long-term planning, a subject now customarily left to universities and think tanks until a sudden crisis reveals that the long term has arrived.

-The White House staff should be reduced. Four hundred are simply too many people to perform what should be the staff's basic functions: presenting the President with impartially organized information and seeing that his wishes are clearly communicated. Instead, the swollen staff tends both to insulate the President from the outside world and to attempt to make policy on his behalf. In addition, the White House staff has acquired unnecessary departments that exist primarily for the prestige of special interests. Examples: Hispanic Affairs, the Aging.

-The Cabinet should be reorganized and given more authority. The Cabinet originally consisted of only five men, the Secretaries of State, War and Treasury, Attorney General and Postmaster General, and several of these, notably Jefferson and Hamilton, saw themselves as future Presidents. Today the Cabinet numbers 17, and, as with the White House staff, several unnecessarily represent the demands of special interests for special attention (the foremost example, the Department of Education, was created mainly because teachers' unions wanted it). Since it is an iron law that committees lose effectiveness in inverse ratio to their size, the Cabinet's growth has helped turn it into a show-and-tell group that has little collective authority. Its lesser members have hardly any access to the President.

In 1971 a presidential commission headed by Litton Industries President Roy Ash recommended to Nixon that seven departments (Labor, Agriculture, Transportation, Interior, Commerce, HEW and HUD) be merged into four: Natural Resources, Human Resources, Economic Development and Community Development. The proposal was made at a tune when the Democratic Congress felt resentful of Nixon's aggressive assertion of presidential powers, constitutional and otherwise.

With the support of various lobbies, it balked at the changes.

The Ash plan still has merit. Just as the armed forces are more coherently served by a Secretary of Defense than by rival Cabinet officers representing the Army, Navy and Air Force, the various economic interests represented by the seven departments (which grew to nine under Carter) would benefit by coordination. Indeed, the number of "superdepartments" might be reduced even further by merging Economic Development with Community Development.

THE CAVE OF WINDS

Most efforts to rationalize or reform the workings of Government come to an end, of one sort or another, in the wilderness of Congress. It was here, and not in the presidency, that the authors of the Constitution established the basic powers of Government. When Andrew Jackson first stated the modern notion that he represented the people, ex-President John Quincy Adams, who had been elected to Congress, shouted back from the floor of the House: "No, we are the representatives of the people!" The Constitution gives Congress not only the basic authority to levy taxes and make war but also the power to reorganize--or refuse to reorganize--both the Administration and itself.

Congress has repeatedly given away its powers to importunate Presidents, then tried to snatch them back. In the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964, it told Johnson he could take any action he chose in Southeast Asia; in the War Powers Act of 1973, it told Nixon that he could not use force anywhere without its approval. All congressional efforts to assert executive authority, however, run afoul of the fact that a bicameral legislature of 535 members has difficulty making up its collective mind, particularly in tricky questions of foreign policy. Individually, too, the legislators are often vulnerable to local pressures--an outcry from Greek constituents agitated about the Turks, or New England trawlermen worried about fishing boundaries off Canada.

With reporting by Neil MacNeil, John F. Stacks

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