Charles S. Hyneman: State and Local Authority vs. Federal Domination
tLTERNd TI IE
Charles S. Hyneman State and Local Authority vs. Federal Domination I believe that the question of where to put the power to govern this nation is of great importance and...
...Local self-government was invented so that each community could have its own preferred services and its own prefer.red regulations...
...Several of them are too big to be manageable even if Congress and the president did try to subject them to strict control...
...I am conservative in estimating promise of im- provements in that sector, however, for I am one of those who believe that it is a good thing for a congressman to look a constituent in the face pretty often and be reminded that he was elected to serve hold of the American people with in-creasing intensity during recent years...
...Stalin intended that this cordon be as thick as possible...
...And if the great swarm of regulators bring all parts of the nation to the same level of public service, who will run a-head of the rest and set models for the less imaginative communities to imitate...
...Had they realized the depth of Mr...
...The en-thusiasms whistling through America at this time were not very intelligent or useful to a man in Truman's awesome position...
...And finally, in my opinion, we are embracing a poor instrument for attaining the answer- ability to the people which the Founding Fathers had in mind --when we lodge a wide range of choices to fix public policy in officials whose names and reputations for prior achievements are unknown to the people they govern...
...It seems to me to be a sound principle that some of the money stripped off of the wealthier communities of the state by...
...The White House is one of our most revered national monuments...
...One: I am 100 percent committed to popular self-government...
...Whatever it is called, it always manages to round the ragged edges off history's complicated events...
...Trumatt and the Maelstrom of History At no time are complex historical events more neatly comprehensible than during a reign of ideology, and today in America, ideology is clearly in the ascendant...
...It is hard to confect a dream more antithetical to the insular obsessions of the suspicious Russians...
...When Truman was sud-denly made President, he actually knew nothing of the revolutionary new bomb being hatched in the desert of New Mexico...
...Truman's condition, their fractured confidence would have been all the more shattered...
...The Second World War was drawing to a close, leaving half the civilized world heaped in a shambles...
...The glory of the American federal system has been its provision that the people of each state should live under their own code of laws...
...They dreamed of a postwar world characterized by self-determination under the irenic suzerainty of some sort of international government, welded together by interna- tional trade...
...It seems to me that our present answer, a policy of continuously delegating power to national bu-reaucracies, is unacceptable...
...So we have come to the first question that I want to ask you and express a few opinions of my own about...
...President for the past twelve years, America had under-gone one of the most profound changes in domestic policy in its history...
...If all the communities of the nation must be brought to the same quality of service, how would you guarantee that result except by a mass of ever-changing regulations of nation-wide application enforced by a number of ever-enlarging federal bureaucracies...
...During the reign of Franklin Roosevelt...
...Not just our talk but our behavior makes it clear that we have a compelling com-mitment to equality, and that leads to a fixation on uniformity in the impact of government on individuals...
...If it becomes evident that the only way a black man can be assured of the right to vote in Mississippi is for federal agents to register voters and sit at the polls on election day --if that is the only way they can be assured the right to vote--then I agree that local regisR. Emmett Tyrrell, jr...
...I do say that there is a mood hovering over the nation, a sentiment settling heavily upon great numbers of American people, which favors equality of condition and uniformity in the application of law...
...I do not predict that the Supreme Court will immediately project us upon this course of all plains and no mountains, all lock step and no pace setting...
...The Russians thought only of security, They desired to ring their vast nation with a cordon sca~itaire, protecting them from any future foreign invasions, and Mr...
...What can we do to make sure that the persisting and enlarging volume of public business is attended to intelligently, with minimum costs and maximum gains to the Ameri- can people...
...He was idolized for his dramatic accomplishments, his break with the past, his powerful personality, and his fabulous entourage...
...So I approach this question with two conclusions and a prophesy...
...Roosevelt had been weaving throughout the turbu- lent world...
...I recognize the necessity of calling national authority into action when any lesser political jurisdiction withholds elementary justice from any part of the population...
...The assurance of elementa- ry justice is not what I am talking about when I say we have an over-developed attachment to uniformity in the appli-cation of law...
...As if to demonstrate the validity of this democratic ideal, fate kicked Mr...
...What can be done, either to improve the ability of Congress and president to do well what they undertake, or to relieve them --more responsibly --of lesser business that hinders their addressing matters that ought to have first priority...
...a conclusion of fact --that the men and women we put in charge of the national government are not now maintaining that measure of direction and control...
...The issue now before the Supreme Court relating to the financing of public edu-cation invites ins~)ection in this con-nection...
...and a prediction --that this unacceptalJle condition is bound to get worse unless we reverse a longdeveloping trend...
...I have been asking questions about it, reading about it, and thinking about it for some time and I shall tell you as simply as I can what I think we are up against and what are some alternatives available to US...
...I am not talking about the need for the federal government to come into a state or community to make sure that a minority group gets the fair deal in public services which is denied to them by state or local public authori- ties...
...We have more administrative organizations now than Congress or the president can ef-fectively oversee...
...Roosevelt was a magisterial leader, con-sidered to be one of the greatest in American history...
...What I have in mind when I warn against an exaggerated affection for uni- form application of laws is a supposition that the surest way to prevent injustice is to have one government govern every- body...
...2. Can the congressmen allocate the public business among themselves in some way so that no con- gressman has to divide his attention among as many things as he does now...
...It must be visited by a few hundred thousand persons each year, and I suspect that a full third of the persons who go there are experts from the Bureau of the Budget who are trying to show the president how to use his staff more efficiently...
...In its haste it has sheared off a great deal of the glory that a tough little man earned for himself and his naive countrymen right after the conclu- sion of the Second World War...
...tLTERNd TI IE Charles S. Hyneman State and Local Authority vs...
...When he died so suddenly and mysteriously on the afternoon of April 12, 1945, a shocked nation found it hard to envision the puny figure of Vice-President Harry S. Tru- man as inheriting Roosevelt's magnifi-cent position...
...He knew little about the intricate diplomacy Mr...
...Sober-minded leaders were The Alternative April 1973...
...I believe that elected officials ought to be firmly in charge of all important business of government in which there are signifi-cantly different judgments as to what ought to be the main lines of public policy...
...tration and election officials will have to move over and let the federal officers take charge...
...That is pre- cisely what it has attempted to do with the cold war...
...Two: I am a strong believer in variety, in a diversity of policies and oppoVmni- ties that provide for you to go your way and me to go my way...
...I see little promise indeed in the first course of action --increased efficiency...
...Federal Domination I believe that the question of where to put the power to govern this nation is of great importance and calls for a most serious re-examination right now...
...This does not mean that I think judges of the U.S...
...Supreme Court and superintendents of Army Hospitals ought to be elected, but it does mean that I think we now let administrative bu-reaucracies fix a lot of policies that ought to be debated and voted on in Congress...
...It means also that I think all government business that can be handled satisfactorily in the state house, city hall, or county courthouse ought to be put there and kept out of Washington...
...3. Can we raise our state and local officials to a new level of importance by handing over to them sectors of public policy which up to now we have been entrusting to administrative de-partments of the national government...
...Truman into the presidency at one of the most inopportune times imaginable...
...Unless the The Alternative April 1973 American mind takes a turn which I do not foresee, this assumption of new business will not be balanced by re-turning an equal amount of old business back to the private sector...
...The only way to guarantee that one rule of law will extend over the whole nation is for Congress to enact the legislation, for a monolithic bu-reaucracy to enforce it, and for a nation- al Supreme Court to review and revise the variant interpretations of each statute...
...Yet these were the ideas of the leaderless adminis- tration when Truman became the thirty- third American president...
...If this is a good rule for education, then it seems to me to b~ a good rule for health services, care for the aged and the crippled, and a good many other services we expect government to provide...
...I think that redress of local injustice by the national government is impera- tive...
...A conclusion of principle --that elected officials ought to be firmly in charge of the government...
...What I deplore is the supposition that national rules and regulations must cover, say, the growing of tobacco in order to escape the disadvantage some-one might suffer if the rules governing measurement of tobacco fields in Kentucky differ a little bit from the rules governing measurement of tobacco fields across the state line in North Carolina...
...But first, you should know something about the presumptions which guide my thought and the prejudices which may limit what I see and shape my conclusions...
...taxation ought to be in- vested in the improvement of education in the poorer communities of the state...
...As for greater efficiency in the White House, I think we can dismiss that from our minds altogether...
...And of course Roosevelt's misguided advisers now be-came Truman's advisers...
...Outside the government American poli- tical discourse was not much better in-formed...
...Far more would be gained if we could capture for more important uses the countless hours of time that congress-men give to constituents who insist on bringing little problems to the mightiest official to whom they have access...
...It l is a mood and a sentiment which, if it persists and dominates our political phi- losophy, will negate any hope you or I may have of returning government of the American people back to the states and the communities where the people live...
...Stated as questions they are: 1. Can we make the White House and Congress more efficient...
...Meanwhile Roose-velt and his advisers implacably pursued a policy of unconditional surrender in the field and high-minded idealism at the diplomatic table...
...Government in the United States is destined to reach further and further into our lives, unless I am a much worse prophet now than I have been in the past...
...And he knew less of the mili- tary situation...
...De-termined that individuals living side by side as well as far apart who are caught up in competition for something of value shall enjoy equal protection of the law, we leap to the conclusion that Americans living anywhere within the national boundaries must be sub~cted to identi-cal law...
...I speak of Harry S. Truman, an authentic image of the American democratic ideal, an ideal still celebrated in the American heartland, and an ideal which holds that everyone counts --even a commoner from the remote state of Missouri...
...The Budget Bureau's experts stay away from Congress and no doubt a great deal more inefficiency abounds at that pole of the political planet...
...Ac-cording to this ideal, any American citi- zen can become president, and working within the scheme of the American Con- stitution he should be able to do tolerably well...
...Three possible alternative courses of action must be considered...
...This means that I want to preserve the autonomy of businessmen and business firms and encourage free association in social organizations, and so insist that there must be mighty good reason for pro-pelling government into some new area of American life...
...If the judges conclude that the equalizing of services is mandated by the Constitution, inherent in the laws' equal protection requirement, how can the judges escape concludinz that the quality of essential services in poverty- ridden West Virginia must be brought up to the level of the same public services in the far wealthier states of Ohio and Pennsylvania...
...But improvements of this order, desirable as they are, offer little promise, in my opinion, of 'freeing Congress for sufficient time to apply their wisdom to public policies...
...Truman had hardly had a word with President Roose- velt in the few months he had been in the administration...
...And his predicament was aggravated by the fact that most of Roosevelt's ad- visers had been positing their diplomacy with the Russians on notions that were utterIy incompatible with Soviet designs...
...Three: I think the national government now has more business than the elected officials (Congress and president) can adequately look into and look after, and I have no doubt that they will succumb to public demands that result in their taking on additional burdens...
...America has always been a land visited by men of enthusiasms...
...Congress took a magnificent step to improve the conduct of its affairs by restructuring com-mittees and making better provision for research aids in 1946, and many congressmen think the time is ripe for another overhaul...
...in other circles it is more ambiguously described as revi-sionist...
...In some c~rcles it goes under the rubric New Left...
Vol. 6 • April 1973 • No. 7
