WASHINGTON REPORT:Defusing the Presidency:
Sisyphus
impose itself on a crisis involving abuse of the office. several Presidential assassinations, and survived. An im- In a word, the country will have reached a sorry point peachment would...
...Some do suggest, as does Prof...
...The floor At night I finger stars tastes of salty years as prayer-worn beads shadows close the cracks raising my cold arms in supplication, my nose is crushed to dust, kneeling upon an eye-white altar from the clerestory with earthly relics of stone, come echoes of my struggled breath the darkness carries an incense from the apse an angel dream the fragrance of dying winds...
...whether the country wants a Presidential impeachment, The absence of strong precedents and clear lessons but whether it can afford, in the light of all that is from history inevitably renders some people irresolute known and suspected about President Nixon, not to have about impeaching Richard Nixon...
...Nixon demonstrate is coming into vogue, aided by a printed collection of publicly little apprehension about the elevation of the taped interviews with him carried out in the early 1960s Presidency...
...Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu I am as a monk throwing down old traps of flesh walking monastery parapets and trembling praises in the bitter wind, made of frozen March cornfields there's the goliard and the idiot about me walking in solitude the hermit madman of the desert, around the middle court while the rest of the Order sleeps cloistered with unsprung budded trees, I'm prostrate before the Holy Cross my footsteps are empty clouds warm blood dropping onto my heart...
...Today, should a President decide to do Office...
...stituent complaints...
...Anyway, such a protimes, Abraham Lincoln, burdened with the retinue of posal has not been heard since...
...needs to be established...
...lateral actions, which previously at least it could be A pointed warning for the Congress is one by de Tocargued were illegal...
...An imIn a word, the country will have reached a sorry point peachment would not be nearly so traumatic as any of if, as Ralph Nader has suggested, it actually feels "that those tragedies...
...But their dency be deflated...
...silently passing the old barn...
...The Congress is variety of statutes, enacted within the last 30 years, exhibiting itself as a badly tarnished pageant...
...On the other hand, the nation has been through Nixon disservice to country...
...bad press vibes, Mr...
...The scandalous Nixon Presidency may, by its own Other thoughtful commentators disagree...
...Presi- ance, their speeches drafted and redrafted unto the sixth dent, too many bad memories associated with the place or seventh degree, their voice-teachers, make-up men...
...The Conkins University...
...Its Concompels a President to act in a variety of foreign-affairs- stitutionally-assigned responsibilities in foreign policy related matters-military applications of atomic energy and public spending are almost beyond its grasp to being one...
...such troops so introduced could not remain unless the The argument now being heard even within the ConPresidential action was approved by the Congress within gress itself is that if it can make itself into an effective, 60 days after the President acted...
...He promised that, once apparent-and, perhaps, firmly established...
...There were some dis- alert and attractive Institution, then Americans would sents...
...Committee, Senator Stennis of Mississippi, supported It is unreasoning nostalgia to work toward returning the measure which severely limited the power of a PresCommonweal: 53 ident to introduce American troops to hostilities or bruised, had better be pulled from the White House situations wherein hostilities are imminent...
...Haphazardly, it is attempting to rectify this aide to President Johnson, said recently at Johns Hop- inadequacy, but not nearly promptly enough...
...His proposal, as others One shudders at the possibility that in contemporary of his, was regarded as quixotic...
...One the adage that "new occasions teach new duties," the has been enactment of a so-called War Powers Bill last Office has become an unmanageable monster, Water- Summer...
...WASHINGTON REPORT DEFUSING THE PRESIDENCY There was a time when a President walked from the the incumbent, but there comes from them little intiWhite House to the local newsstand at 11th and Penn- mation that the Watergate affair has its roots in the sylvania Avenue to buy a local newspaper and, per- growth of Presidential power and the panoply of the haps, a cigar...
...The observation is debatable but bers of the Congress attempt to act in such a capacity, it's as good a bridge as any to the role of the press in but they are unable, however diligent, to deal with the inflating the Presidency and distorting the behavior of larger consequences of the problems of individual conits occupants...
...lines of the Canadian parliamentary system...
...Senator Eagleton of Missouri argued vigorously have the advantage of having two choices presented that the measure, in effect, gave legal sanction to uni- them for leadership-the President and the Congress...
...Presidency...
...The Presidential press conference he gress may need an outside agency, a sort of Congresdescribed as a "professional wrestling match where the sional Brookings Institution to feed it, willingly or not, contestants grunt and groan and the public is not ed- with facts and policy choices about problems susceptible ified...
...When that comes to pass, there will be little to separate life in the cloister from the life of the world...
...There men refuse to jettison their intellectual critical faculties is reason to believe that during the Kennedy Adminis- in return for being able to occupy "the highest Office tration, one chief aide on one occasion put on his suit- in the Land...
...Senators Jackson and Mondale, two prominent this, the streets would be cleared of motor vehicles and aspirants for their party's Presidential nomination, each pedestrians pressed against the buildings by platoons of basically states he can do better than Nixon...
...President Although, perhaps, Americans at-large are getting a...
...Truman, policy faults 22 March 1974: 52 and all, may have been the last President that Americans the Presidency to a position in keeping with the literary have been permitted to see as his authentic self...
...dent . . . Evans & Novak won't like it, Mr...
...But in one of his writings he provoca- new system will be the ones traditionally hostile to the tively noted: "As the speed of information increases, unaffluent sectors of American society...
...In this century, by statute a exists an historic unpopularity of Congress...
...or Fulbright has been without desire to be PresidentNowadays, President Nixon speaks mostly to his and each has a greater intellectual capacity for the Secretary of State, and Henry Kissinger, in turn, speaks position than recent incumbents-but simply the two mostly to Mohammed-or to airline stewardesses...
...But there's no evidence of argument runs that essentially the federal system is a this by putative candidates of either major political Presidential system...
...tween form and content of the Presidency was that of Yes, the monarchial nature of the Presidency is clearly Eugene McCarthy in 1968...
...SISYPHUS ALAN ALTANY AS A MONK "May the time come when men, having been awakened to a sense of the close bond linking all the movement of this world in the single, all-embracing work of the Incarnation, shall be unable to give themselves to any one of their tasks without illuminating it with the clear vision that their work-however elementary it may be-is received and put to good use by a Centre of the universe...
...Perhaps...
...Whatever the validity of applying to the Presidency The Congress has made some small beginnings...
...Consequently, Richard Neustadt has pointed recover...
...This befor a President in respect to guiding the economy...
...It is not that either Church ment is necessary...
...To turn back now, for whatever reasons, from the through a Presidential impeachment only once before, demands of justice and the law will be to ennoble fraud and that instance provides few historical parallels for to- and deception, and heap yet another disservice on the day...
...Birds are ringing for Matins I am as a monk the baldachin's become a suspended web turning light into rainbow roads, alone in my blue walls room it's time to rise, gather in my robe...
...glimpse of it...
...out: "A President may retain liberty, in Woodrow Wil- The leadership of the Congress needs to be improved...
...The 1947 Taft- workings, actually a two-branch, not a three-branch Hartley Act now makes -it mandatory for a President system...
...Criticism within the Senate, the newsstand dealing mostly in pornographic books and for example, is usually left to a few such as Senators magazines...
...with hands for wings Above my cowled spirit and a nimbus of thorns, an unbusheled candle burns through the pale face sleep suddenly comes of a vigil moon, it is Nocturne but can collapse be called sleep...
...Indeed, President is now obliged to act in certain situations, there is an argument that the federal system is, in its wherein earlier Presidents had a choice...
...And the elected, the fence that surrounds the White House trend has been welcomed and cultivated by both Demo- grounds would be removed as a symbolic effort toward cratic and Republican Presidents...
...President should not be a messenger-boy for CongresIt is not that national politics is without "genuine sional liege-lords...
...you may lose abolitionist Massachusetts, Mr...
...The country has been one...
...But the cops and Secret Service men (and, when the President hazards of a reckless Presidency are not prime topics arrived at the intersection in March, 1974, he'd find on their respective agendas...
...They still look upon the Presidency, as did Theo- able nor possible to reshuffle the major branches of the dor Roosevelt, as that "bully pulpit" from which to federal government into new patterns...
...Mansfield probably could not be eral institutions by which an apparatus of "collective elected President as he now performs in his terse, plain- responsibility" could be established-perhaps, along the spun fashion...
...Church and Fulbright-each of whom suffered considThere is this passage inserted in The Congressional erable personal abuse from President Johnson because Directory for 1825: "The President keeps morning ap- they objected to his bellicose intrusions upon Congrespointments, but following that, anyone barbered and sional authority and his taste for reinforcing the Caewith a pleasant manner may call upon him...
...Such an effort is now underway, Marshall McLuhan is no longer a fashionable prophet but the hazard is that those who guard the doors of the of what's ahead...
...achieving a reduced Presidency...
...22 March 1974: 54...
...ways of improving the Presidency as an instrument of Realistically, modern events do favor a dominant government...
...of legislation...
...Even the chairman of the Armed Services gate aside...
...if you throw out a corrupt guy, you tarnish the office, When everything has been said, the big question is not when it should be the other way around...
...Moreover, fireplace before it was too late...
...theory of the Constitution-as evidenced in the pat Truman was perhaps the most guileless man ever to phrase, checks-and-balances...
...The Congress is a collection of delegates from to intervene in certain major labor-management disputes...
...This may be a reason why Harry Truman Those who seek to replace Mr...
...Presidential choreographers, including counselors and For those living outside Washington, it is difficult to speech-writers, might never have found his own way to comprehend the inaccessibility and public artificiality the Washington depot, boarded a train for Gettysburg of Presidents-their carefully structured public appearand given his Address there...
...Presi- women and television coaches...
...The most recent memorable remark of coat before answering a telephone call from the Presi- a Presidential candidate that indicated an awareness bedent on the intercom at the White House...
...The concept of a "strong" Presidency is no The Congress needs an infusion of strength, but there longer just a literary one...
...Individual memtral acts of decision...
...articles...
...firewood under the other I'm part Cassandra, Quasimodo and monk praying with hammer and a steel wedge astride the basilica bell tower inside the monastery walls...
...Better to institute lecture and to lead...
...Shouldn't go, Mr...
...Lewis Dexter, that a One is Senator Mansfield of Montana, the Democratic Constitutional Convention be summoned to reshape fedMajority Leader...
...They argue that it is neither desirparty...
...Newton's laws for physreach high office," Dean Acheson, his Secretary of State, ical objects are not transferable in political terms...
...The once said...
...No appoint- sarism in the Presidency...
...as blackbirds call me to Terce the time of morning chanting, I'm as a monk this I do at an old desk lost from his duties by typing out melismatic poems squinting beneath the high sun holding the Scriptures under one arm (humble and transient groping chants...
...They, with abominations, compel Americans to insist that the Presi- Dexter, agree the Presidency should be defused...
...They do disagree about decisions made by by Merle Miller (Plain Speaking...
...a havior is one that should be altered...
...the last office of the day...
...The press constantly tempts a President to become Congress has not been one to seek intellectual noura ham rather than a leader," Douglass Cater, a former ishment...
...But seventy-two Senators believed queville: "A danger to democracy is not the tyrant, but that Congressional chestnuts, however charred and the good shepherd...
...son's phrase `to be as big a man as he can.' But nowa- A synchronized budget system within the Congress days he cannot be as small as he might like...
...around the country who meet annually to exchange the 1946 Employment Act establishes certain obligations favors and agree to minimal national goals...
...There are many walking around Washington...
...This, of course, is a tribute to Mansfield...
...the tendency is for politics to move away from repre- Congress also should assume an institutional role as sentation and delegation of constituents toward imme- ombudsman and intervenor on behalf of those bruised diate involvements of the entire community in the cen- and mauled by the Executive Branch...
Vol. 100 • March 1974 • No. 3
