Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR S. M. LEVITAS I wish to convey to those dedicated to the continuance of Sol Levitas' great work my sense of profound grief at his passing. As correspondent in India for The...
...He is therefore at once assisted and restrained by his cabinet colleagues and must carry them along with him in the formation of policy...
...I do not complain that Schlesinger—whom I admire as an historian of American politicsfinds my proposal for a 12-man Presidency unacceptable, though I believe that the surging social, economic and moral forces at work in our nation and the world will eventually compel the adoption of some such collectively responsible Executive branch, even if it is a form different from my own...
...He was always ready to help me out of some scrap even though he himself had to face numerous headaches concerned with keeping the journal going...
...The word "construed" was printer's error...
...4. I am sorry that Schlesinger finds my book "'repetitious...
...3. I hardly think it valid, therefore, for Schlesinger to bring in J. C. Calhoun, whom I deliberately kept out as irrelevant...
...It is true that Neustadt says, "Some dangers in political society are not escaped by structure...
...The method is often more valuable and cogent for the general reader...
...and I can think of no more fitting monument to him than the continuation of the magazine...
...However, I feel it only fair to take issue with his reasoning...
...the British system does not fit our traditions or environment or mores...
...It is this I complain about...
...Chicago, Ill...
...we are Americans and he does not understand us...
...My own political vision runs very close to Schlesingers, but is everything about the Presidency forever settled because our joint efforts were so fortunate in getting Kennedy elected...
...Herman Finer...
...Would Schlesinger have been so sanguine if Nixon had become President...
...And believe it or not, it is possible for a former Englishman after many, many years in this country to understand it...
...For example, it might come in stages: by two, three and then four executive Vice Presidents elected along with the President...
...New Delhi, India G. S. Bhargava CORRECTION In my review of Robert Harris' book, The Quest for Equality (NL, March 6), one sentence appeared as "Harris goes on to recount skillfully how the Supreme Court construed the equal protection clause as a shield for the Negro, and then transformed it into a shiny, head-to-foot suit of armorplate for corporations in the Age of Enterprise...
...I would have made more of this in my own work on the Presidency, but I was afraid that if I did people would avoid reading them with the usual excuses: "He is or was British...
...I shall certainly be prepared to modify my views as the Kennedy years roll on to 1968...
...2. That is what my book does, but Schlesinger does not tell the reader what my diagnosis is, though he rejects my prescription...
...I will not traverse Neustadt's discussion of the British Cabinet, for it is cursory and does not rise to the quality and penetration of his book...
...As correspondent in India for The New Leader I was privileged to correspond with Levitas and I still treasure some of his letters...
...This is advanced to support Schlesingers point that Neustadt "is obviously (and, I think, rightly) skeptical of a collective executive...
...The difference, alas, is one between what was and what might have been in American constitutional history...
...He does not report that I have re-examined the assumptions of the Founding Fathers on the efficiency and responsibility of the Presidency and found them wanting...
...If I understand Calhoun, he wanted doubleheaded Presidency, one representing the North and one the South, each with a veto on Congressional legislation, in order to make action impossible unless it pleased the South...
...In support of my view and in refutation of both Schlesinger and Neustadt, I refer to the standard works, like Jennings' Cabinet Government and my own Theory and Practice of Modern Government and Major Gavornments of Modern Europe, as well as Anthony Eden's memoirs and those of Thomas Jones—all of which describe both the constitutional understandings and their actual operation...
...But I flatly deny this description of the operation of the British Cabinet system...
...He does not make it clear that I have subjected the institutions that have grown up to assist the President to careful assessment in relationship to the President's abilities and time...
...I carried my facts along and re-assessed them at later stages, as I was essaying an argument and not narrating a chronicle...
...To his many correspondents throughout the world he was not merely the Executive Editor but a great personal friend...
...the original word had been "constricted...
...But then it is also true that some dangers are—and Neustadt even mentions some of them...
...What a deliverance...
...My book concentrated on American tasks, needs and experience with an American Presidency and American homo politicus...
...Schlesinger says that the only "serious political thinker in America" to have suggested plural executive was Calhoun, who favored the plural executive —precisely to prevent action...
...1. He paraphrases Richard Neustadt's Presidential Power as saying, "The British Cabinet system is only a technique for disguising the central importance of the top man...
...All these matters are done at some length, and I hope with proper scholarship and faithfulness...
...New York City Alan F. Westin THE PRESIDENCY Permit me to comment on Arthur Schlesinger's remarks about my book, The Presidency: Crisis and Regeneration (NL, January 9...
...and, if the former, does the electoral system help us to find him...
...I posed the dilemma: a man of surpassing talent, or collective cabinet...
...These are not my intentions and I think the argument is immaterial...
...He hardly hints that the qualities of Presidential leadership are thoroughly analyzed in a whole chapter...
...These and many other studies by realistic and even cynical eyes show that while the Prime Minister is pre-eminent in a collective cabinet he is held to responsibility by colleagues elected with him and having an equal independent basis in the same party and among the electorate...
...I wish he had been able to use the adjective "cumulative...
...He has not told the reader that here he will find a thorough examination of the growth of the President's powers...
...But if some, then may not others be considered...
Vol. 44 • March 1961 • No. 12
