REFORMING CONGRESS
Kilpatrick, Carroll
Reforming Congress CONGRESS ON TRIAL, by James MacGregor Burns. Harper. 224 pp. $3. Reviewed by Carroll Kilpatrick THE problem of reforming Congress has been a fruitful subject for students of...
...While still a student, Woodrow Wilson wrote an analysis of Congressional government which is still a classic text...
...Burns argues that the President is elected and is responsible to a majority of the people...
...Unlike many books on Congress, this one is well written, and it is brief...
...The Republican Party, on the other hand, is almost completely without direction under the present system...
...Neither party is really an effective instrument for carrying out the policies promised in its platform and by its Presidential candidate...
...It should be clear to anyone who knows an Amercian Congressman that all the Burns' proposals are not acceptable to the men who make the rules...
...The idea of the caucus, with certain safeguards, deserves the most earnest consideration...
...The power rests with the local party leaders...
...If some of Burns' proposals now seem too radical, the suggestions to end the seniority system of choosing committee chairmen, of instituting the rule of germaneness in the Senate, and of limiting the Senate filibuster are not...
...In its analysis of the modern Congress and in its explanation of how it works, it is without flaw...
...The pressures on him, says Burns, are to see the overall problem, the national interest first...
...Burns would resolve the issue between President and Congress not by the parliamentary devices so often suggested but by the strengthening of party government...
...These critics insist that any system which imposes greater discipline from the top would undermine the roots of American democracy...
...Unfortunately, neither of these ac tions has had much effect in Con gress, where both Sens...
...Actually, a start toward more effective party government, though a very small start, has been made in the Democratic Party, the last place most people would expect such a thing to happen...
...He thinks that the party caucus in Congress should be binding on members, that the national leaders of the party should have veto power over candidates for Congress, and should have final control over campaign chests...
...Their combined circulation is not much greater than that of Wilson's Congressional Government, and they have had little to add to what was said in the 19th Century by Wilson, Bryce, and others...
...One of the finest of the recent books, and one that contains a very challenging proposal, is Congress on Trial, by James MacGregor Burns...
...Hoover and Truman can attest to that...
...He thinks there should be annual party conventions attended by the rank and file for the purpose of keeping national party policy up to date...
...But the general public has been singularly uninterested...
...Glen Taylor and Harry F. Byrd still call themselves Democrats...
...But he does point the way to responsible, effective party government, something we do not have today in the 81st Congress...
...The individual members of Congress, on the other hand, he says, are first of all representatives of locally vested interests of farmers, business men or workers, and of local prejudices and customs...
...Burns believes that the national party leaders must have far greater authority...
...At present the Democratic and Republican National Committees are of little importance, and they are without much power...
...His task is to represent the whole country...
...It has worked before, and unless the parties become responsible through some other device the public may insist upon a return to the caucus...
...In the Democratic Party, the national leadership is stronger and more united because the President also is the real leader of the party...
...Critics of a strong party government argue that the two major American parties are not monolithic parties as some European parties are, and that they are strong because they are made up of many factions...
...They would greatly strengthen the hand of the party that was elected to govern the country without reducing the freedom of the minority...
...Both Messrs...
...In the last few years, scores of books on Congressional reform have rolled off the presses...
...Congressmen often can strengthen their position at home by opposing the President or by making exaggerated demands on behalf of local interests...
...it is virtually impossible for it to have an organized, effective leadership...
...In other words, Burns would borrow from the British party system but not from the British parliamentary system...
...There can be no doubt but that party responsibility in the United States should be greater than it is...
...The Democratic Party has cast off its extreme left wing, which now reposes in Wallace's party, and it has cut itself off in part from its extri right wing, represented Dixiecrats...
...Reviewed by Carroll Kilpatrick THE problem of reforming Congress has been a fruitful subject for students of government almost since 1789...
...The principal point of the book is that until basic reforms are instituted there always will be bitter fights between the White House and Capitol Hill, with the irresponsibility and deadlock which they often mean...
...That ana chronism alone should stir new in terest in Congressional—and party —reform...
Vol. 14 • April 1950 • No. 4
