Power as Cure
O'Neill, William L.
Power as Cure Uncommon Sense, by James Mac-Gregor Burns. Harper & Row. 196 pp. $6.95. Reviewed by William L. O'Neill James MacGregor Burns is a brilliant, much honored historian and political...
...Every President since Herbert Hoover, except possibly Dwight Eisenhower, has reached for more power...
...Have the results been so happy that we must urge upon them what they will take anyhow if they can...
...The Democrats are an unstable coalition that cannot, as a rule, be daring when in charge for fear of breaking up...
...Burns excellently demonstrates how the concept of equality has broadened in this century...
...Burns's chief recommendation, a great increase in Presidential authority, is hardly surprising, since his entire career has focused on executive leadership...
...While calling for more political involvement, he reminds us that in free societies there is a right to be apolitical too...
...His account of how we arrived at this dismal hour is strangely flat and obvious for this distinguished scholar...
...The GOP is always in the minority, rarely able to organize Congress even during Republican administrations...
...However, there are good things in Uncommon Sense...
...Lyndon Johnson is still too much with us for spirits to rise at the thought of salvation through Presidential power...
...Yet many would like to know if there is not a better way to save the environment, the cities, and the poor—a way less dangerous to our liberties and good reputation...
...Reviewed by William L. O'Neill James MacGregor Burns is a brilliant, much honored historian and political scientist, which makes his new book depressing...
...Burns does hope for the same coalition of youth, the poor, blacks, union labor, and middle-class elements that all liberal Democrats want...
...This is a disheartening book, then, because in it hope triumphs over experience, and because it rests finally on the trust in executive authority that liberals have cultivated since Theodore Roosevelt's time...
...His discussion of what Americans think about politics is sensible and informed...
...O'Neill, professor of history at Rutgers, is the author of "Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960s," published last fall by Quadrangle...
...Maybe the cure for what ails us is more of what we have been getting...
...Mr...
...The most curious aspect of this book is that it focuses so much on ideas, so little on structure...
...Burns shows again how dangerous is the want of principle that office-holders call pragmatism, but which C. Wright Mills more rightly termed "crackpot realism...
...One would expect a political scientist to concern himself with party constituencies, voting trends, and the like...
...It is no less melancholy for being so predictable...
...But he does not explain what its chances of forming are, still less what can be done to improve them...
...Perhaps liberals are right in saying the fault is not that the Presidency has grown so great, but that it has not grown great enough...
...Uncommon Sense is supposed to show us a way out of our present troubles, but while calling for boldness and originality Burns displays little of either...
...This is a crucial omission because the main feature of contemporary politics, as Samuel Lubell pointed out years ago, is that neither major party has the strength to govern effectively...
...Might it not be more helpful if distinguished liberal intellectuals gave some thought to alternatives...
...Until something happens to end this impasse the new men and new ideas Burns wants will make little difference...
Vol. 36 • March 1972 • No. 3
