Bromidic Manifesto

...Though Burns is willing to reteam state governments, Administration task forces and regional commissions would be created to outflank them The consequence would be "the localization of Federal power" Government would not be too distant from its constituency, but would be ignited with Executive force...

...For example, in the early 1960s Congress kept applying the brakes whenever a herbal President wanted to get America moving again, therefore Burns' desire to relegate Congress to a back seat made sense when first voiced in The Deadlock of Democracy (1963) Nearly a decade later, however, after the Congress submitted tamely to a war in Indochina sponsored by the Executive Branch, after a conservative Republican fell heir to the White House, the aggrandizement of the Presidency might be regarded with ambivalence Nevertheless, Burns continues to fire salvos aimed at weakening the Legislature, as though a Democratically controlled Congress were not somewhat more attuned to liberalism than a Republican Cabinet meeting, as though the possibility of President Nixon's reelection could somehow be discounted...

...Similarly, the proposal to confine the Democratic party to liberals and send the conservatives to the GOP may be morally delicious, no matter how miscast Strom Thurmond may feel as the John the Baptist of the new politics But in requiem some sort of ideological coherence, Burns may be exchanging a bad system for a worse one Thurmond did not lose his seniority by becoming a Republican, were the seniority system to be scrapped, as Burns advocates, most if not all of the Bourbons would undoubtedly be reelected under the new rubric anyway...

...While speculations on the structural weaknesses of the polity should always be welcomed, many of the specific proposals enunciated here are pervious to the same criticism that Burns himself levels against the American way of political life He too does not compellingly relate means to ends, it those ends are defined extrinsically as the canon of liberal reform and intrinsically as the extension of liberty and equality...

...Burns dismisses the fear of polarization because "millions of centrists and moderates control the balance of power " But if the specific gravity of the new system remains at dead center, the need for partisan creeds becomes less insistent If the center remains the court of last resort, and the Democrats follow Burns' advice by shifting to the Left well, they might be allowed to keep their horses for the spring plowing The cry to transform the political system, to consider platforms something to run on and not just to stand on, is rooted in a sense of social dislocation, a belief that the parties must alter because their old foundations in classes and interest groups are crumbling Except for the deletin of the Southerners, however, the new "coalition of the concerned" that Burns wants the Democratic party to represent is a replica of the old Roosevelt coition Thus it is odd that a political historian whose studies of Roosevelt have drawn prizes like magnets does not conclude that reports of the death of the system are greatly exaggerated...

...Burns advocates an alteration in the system of checks and balances to meet the crisis of authority The Executive branch would continue to be the most resourceful agency of change, while the Congress would be permitted to survive in recognizable form only if it supported Presidential programs Should the Judiciary balk, then the President is advised to take his principled case to the people rather than propose something as devious as Roosevelt's court-packing plan...

...An argument for doctrinally distinct parties is that they provoke greater merest and invite greater participation Without coming out for apathy, one can still wonder whether liberalism will be advanced if more voters simply pull the wrong levers The people often do not perceive what others define as their best interests Nor is it credible that charisma will be distributed only to the Democratic nominees, for Right-wing demagogues have enjoyed some success with the American electorate...

...A biographer of John F Kennedy, Burns would presumably second the late President's call to "make the world safe for diversity," to encourage self-determination without imposing our own system Uncommon Sense concludes on a note of assurance that diversity is tolerable because people are basically good and are in pursuit of reason and justice If such a synopsis seems too full of bromidic thoughts and wishful thinking, it is because the book has been fairly represented Burns has written a manifesto of romantic liberalism, a manual of piety that describes the passions of the previous decade as though by remote control He claims that his subject is the domestic conflict swirling around issues of race, poverty, the city, and the environment, yet the juices of social criticism have been sucked dry...

...Since international affairs provide less room for the advancement of national goals, pragmatic flexibility should continue to characterize our foreign phony The avoidance of nuclear holocaust must be our primary objective, but we should not be committed in principle either to intervention or to nonintervention...

...Table the progressive elements of the bourgeoisie...

...Bromidic Manifesto Uncommon Sense By James MacGregor Burns Harper & Row 181 pp $6 95 Reviewed by Stephen J. Whitfield Graduate Student, Brandeis University James MacGregor Burns is worried The American political process has passed the fail-safe point, he believes, because of "a crisis of pub-he authority m America, a pervasive popular cynicism as to the capacity of the system ' " His new book, bravely entitled Uncommon Sense, was written between the Mylar trial and the Attica tragedy and is designed to help us redirect our energies toward the creation of comity A professor of government at Williams College, Burns diagnoses the disease of the body politic as psychosomatic Out of a philosophical commitment to pragmatism, we have paid more attention to means than to ends, and have failed to relate the two We have not recognized the interdependence of problems, and have preferred incremental to systematic solutions Indifferent to planning, inarticulate in our national goals, we have become hostages to what C Wright Mills called "crackpot realism ". Instead, Burns suggests, we must redefine American values and then formulate a means-end continuum to make those values operational He describes the government as both a protector of and threat to liberty, and urges it to promote equality of condition as well as equality of opportunity To extend the arcs of freedom and equality, the government should be transformed into "an instrument that can convert, on a planned and systematic basis, the economic, social, and political forces now sustain poverty and blight into forces that alleviate these conditions " He spurns as impractical the attempt to engage in politics outside of the system and to promote decentralization Because progressive change has accelerated where the writ of the national government has run, Federal power should be extended...

...Burns' argument is based upon the dubious propositions that (1) liberals would wrest control from conservatives if only there were truth in labeling, and (2) there are more liberals m the Republican party than conservatives among the Democrats Yet the coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats is already too powerful without the cement of partisanship, and the nominal majority which blesses the upon of urban liberals and rural Southerners at least permits a few sports to emerge, like Fulbright on Vietnam and Erma on the Bill of Rights Burns' proposal to make the Congress more liberal and to make it weaker is consistent...

...He urges us to deliberate the national purpose and to forsake tinkering for teleology, yet he reveals more alertness to the techniques of government than intimacy with the ideals of democratic philosophy...

...This does not mean that the fight for serious political change should be canceled It does mean that the opponent will probably roll with the punch and that the herbal strategist, taking such resilience into account, should distinguish between prediction and predilection And while no book can reasonably be expected to equal the kinetic power of Paine's Common Sense, the failure of James Macgregor Burns to connect proposed actions to consequences, or to resonate even when he is right, comes as an early disappointment in this election year...

...To the despair of radicals and to the exasperation of many intellectuals, the creaky, short-sighted, unfair, and unjust parties and institutions we have endured for over a century have usually managed to defuse the time bomb that someone is always detonating The persistence of suffering does not in itself generate political change, as any tsar but the last could attest, Burns himself discounts the possibility of another assault on the Winter Palace or the summer White House...

...The party system and voting patterns which were tempered in the pit of the Depression cannot be expected to survive intact either Amid the disintegration of party loyalties, the Democratic party should be recast in the image of its left wing, by appeals to a larger social movement of the poor, the blacks, the young, the trade unionists, and??here the patois of the popular front is irises...

...And the Southerners and the moderates'' "There simply is no room in the Democratic party for conservatives," Burns announces, denying any intent to purge, they would find welcome within the Republican party...

...The Democrats would be galvanized not by jobs but by goals, would thrash out issues and programs rather than scramble for the spoils of office An annual party conference would hone and refine the purposes of the republic, and the permanent status accorded delegates to the nominating convention would solidify the Democrats' institutional base Exciting candidates and ideas would activate the 30-40 million adults who seem deaf to appeals for political participation...