A Clanging Alarm Bell

...Burns' imaginative proposal for a "team ticket" that would enable a voter to cast a single ballot for President, Senator and Representative may be the first step toward the better arrangement he is convinced must be made to appear...

...The crisis besetting the Presidency, as Burns sees it, is that politicians joust for the White House as if playing the boy's game of "King of the Rock...

...Burns warns grimly that since he is convinced a renovation of the national government must eventually come, like it or not, the nation is well-advised to undertake the task before a hideous emergency makes it unavoidable...

...Burns makes a case for a fresh design of government—based chiefly on a revivification of political parties —that he believes ought to attend the commemoration of the Constitution's 200th anniversary...

...But he is too adept a political scientist to think that short of a national crisis—or worse, a national disaster—the large-scale reordering of the American government he proposes is likely to occur...

...He has thought through how he would modernize the Constitution, resuscitate political parties, rein-vigorate Congress, and make the Presidency once more the sheet anchor of the republic...

...As a President-watcher I am constantly being pestered to answer why the United States does not have a single six-year term for Presidents, and whether I don't believe that a parliamentary system would be more effective than our own in bringing dynamic leaders to the fore...

...Since there is no way of comparing a single-, fixed-term President with those who seek re-election (only James K. Polk announced in advance of taking office that he would not serve a second term), and no way to compare Presidents and Prime Ministers, I am always at a loss to respond without feeling the urge to give a lecture...

...Instinctively, though, the thought of tampering with the Constitution—for that is how most Americans would probably label the idea of altering one of the "tablets of the law" —in front of television cameras no less, boggles the mind...

...Although Burns devotes a few pages to the role of television in political affairs, he does not directly address the truth that 40 years into the age of the tube, our political institutions have not yet been able to accommodate themselves comfortably to the invention...

...Either they are watching everything on television or they have given up participation altogether out of ennui substantially produced by the instrument...

...He is a political scientist steeped in American history and he provides solid authority all neatly set forth with pertinent detail...

...On the other hand, the success of Ronald Reagan in transforming the public's view of government, as well as the government itself, possibly tells us that our political machinery requires only minor adjustment after all, and that a persuasive chief may still be the best bet in the near term...

...Certainly there will not soon be a new Convention at Philadelphia—or anywhere else...

...By this he means that they package themselves through the use of media experts, an army of doorbell ringers, and millions of dollars raised "scientifically," and carry on as if they were heading a holy crusade to eradicate some dread disease...

...editor, "The Presidents: A Reference History" The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, Herbert Hoover once declared, are "the twin tablets of the law...

...The evidence from the present primary campaign is that the crowds which once gathered to see Presidential aspirants in person have disappeared...

...In the years ahead, a successful marriage of television and party might nonetheless yield a new kind of system in somewhat the way that parties themselves came into being to meet a crying need at the beginning of the 19th century...

...On top of everything, the decline of party loyalty and discipline in the presence of the separation of powers and the Federal arrangement ordained by the Constitution have had the effect, Burns believes, of so severely hobbling America's ability to govern itself effectively that it may be the worst-managed of the great Western countries...

...If indeed the substance of that metaphor is embossed on the national mind—and it is easy to suspect that it is—then the trenchant arguments offered by James MacGregor Burns in his new book face tough going...

...The next time these questions are put to me I will recommend Burns' book as required reading for my tormentors...

...The hyped presentation of the candidates on the screen now replaces the ancient hoopla formerly embodied in torchlight processions and partisan parades along Main Street...

...Whatever, television, in making unfamiliar faces into household figures in a trice, is today using them up at a furious pace so that it may be said of all of them what once was said of King Louis Philipp, "his greatest crime was that he bored the people...

...On the eve of the 1984 campaign Burns' assessment is as sobering as it is distressing...

...Reviewed by Henry F. Graff Professor of History, Columbia...

...Readers will find his proposals fascinating, even if all of his ideas are not entirely novel...

...Still, it is worth pondering that the history of republics contains sufficient evidence to more than hint that our kind of government could come a cropper as every republic of the past eventually did...

...For the self-appointed hopefuls muddy the issues, and ignore their fellow-candidates and party confreres in office, apparently oblivious to the fact that the victor in the tournament must eventually concert his efforts and goals with those of other people in order to govern...

...Thus organized and arrayed, the chief campaigners—hardly to be called leaders because the effect of their effort, argues Burns, is to deny the country true leadership—establish themselves as the center of interest and attention to the detriment of party operation and requirements...

...The "electronic mirror," as the television set was once blithely tagged, has proved to be nothing of the sort: It is an indispensable element in the electoral process, inseparably intertwined with the traditional and older elements...

...In addition, television has drained the electoral process of the mystery and the possibility of sleight-of-hand maneuver unmistakably necessary to its proper functioning...

...Television, in a word, has made the system more "democratic" but less "republican...

...The constant reach for the Presidential office "next time around," furthermore, means that the nation is endlessly electing a new "King of the Rock," and the Presidency is accordingly being increasingly personalized and paralyzed...

...Burns' words in the light of such awareness become a clanging alarm bell...