Repent what's past; avoid what is to come; And do not spread the compost on the weeds To make them ranker.
Shakespeare, Hamlet
There are a whole series of valid objections to the traditional methods of conducting Parliaments, but if they are taken one by one, it is seen that none of them justifies the conclusion that Parliaments ought to be suppressed, but all, on the contrary, indicate directly and plainly that they should be reformed. Now the best that humanly speaking can be said of anything is that it requires to be reformed, for that fact implies that it is indispensable, and that it is capable of new life. The automobile of today is the result of all the objections that were made against the automobile of 1910.
Jose Ortega y Gasset, La Rebelion de las Masas (1930)
PROPOSALS FOR THE REFORM of Congress as the sands of the beach-innumerable and small. They vary by a little but usually have to do with rather minor corrections, at least when viewed from the broad rises of this book. They are furthermore colored generally according to the prevailing myth of an ideal Congress; they reflect a notion that by nature a legislature has some kind of fixed constitution.
To the contrary, a legislature is what it its made to be. The proposal for an "effective Congress" may be a republican proposal or it may be an executive appeal. When its details are spelled out, it is never neutral; it usually favors one or another force in the nation to some degree. It so happens, under the conditions of recent political life, that the slogan of an effective Congress has been the property of those who would in effect displace Congress as the supreme legislative body.
It is not always easy to distinguish the ultimate consequences of the many proposals of reform that are offered. Each is usually examined as if its only meanings were on its face. Not long ago, Dr. George Galloway, a senior research officer of the Library of Congress and expert upon Congress, collected about 180 recommendations received during one month of hearings on the organization and operation of Congress. A second list of proposals was collected by the Joint Committee on organization of Congress that met during 1965. The two lists have been combined and classified according to the topics with which they treat. They are carried as an appendix to this book (pages 00-00). They display the universe of congressional reform proposals.
It develops that many of these recommendations for reform are innocuous with respect to the major thesis of this book. They have to do with minor modifications of pay, tenure, the number of committees, committee allowances, increased publicity about lobbies, expense money, and the like. Some are ambivalent: depending upon their specific provisions, they may be biased towards the Executive or the Republican Force. Of the remainder that have relevance to the struggle between the two forces, most would benefit the Republican Force, but in numerous cases, the beneficiary would be the executive branch of government. The great majority of proposals, especially those bolstering up republican principles, are low-powered. They would not have much impact on the great issues of republican government.
Another way of studying the scope of reform of the Congress is to see what congressmen view as the problem areas to be explored by proposed commissions on congressional reorganization. Perhaps these too will indicate the priorities of congressional reforms. Thus, Senator Clifford P. Case, in his bill for congressional reform (S177-1963) listed twelve specific problem areas. They were:
1) The scheduling of measure for consideration and action;
2) The structure, staffing, and operation of congressional committees;
3) The workload of the Congress and the committees thereof;
4) Congressional rules and floor procedures;
5) Conflicts of interest of Members of the Congress;
6) The term of office of Members of the House of Representatives;
7) Communications, travel, and other allowances of Members of the Congress;
8) The financing of congressional election campaigns;
9) The duties of Members of Congress incident to the appointment of postmasters and the making of appointments to military service academies and other government academies;
10) The legislative oversight of the administration of laws;
11) The strengthening of the congressional power of the purse; and
12) The operation and effectiveness of existing laws with respect to lobbying.
The list in itself reveals a preoccupation with areas of reform that are pitched towards the strengthening of executive forces. They are offered apparently in a neutral and objective spirit but this is all the more demonstrative of the way in which the reform of Congress has been embraced by the ideology of the executive branch. Behind each "area of proposed investigation" we may suspect that there is standing prominently as a candidate for favorable consideration some executive-biased scheme.
Behind (1) the scheduling of measure, stands the idea of forcing Congress to act on the president's program. Behind (2) and (3) stands the resolve to "streamline" Congress by taking away the independence and nuclear constituencies of its members. Behind (4), the interest in rules, lies the hostility towards the congressional oligarchy. Behind (5) lurks the desire to sever connections between congressmen and the world they represent. In (6) is the desire to tie a congressman's election to the President's. In (7) is the possibility of diminishing a congressman's means of operating freely. Behind (8) may be the restriction of independent campaign funds and a desire to unite congressional and presidential fortunes. In (9) are implied cuts in control and patronage of congressmen. In (10) and (11) might be limitations on the right of Congress to specific oversight over administration. And (12) suggests that Congress is a victim of nefarious lobbies.
Perhaps these suspicions may still appear unwarranted to some. They should no longer seem so, given the analysis in earlier chapters of the ideology of the executive force. Moreover, speaking in support of his bill, Senator Case reveals a view of the congressional process that is strongly biased toward the executive branch of government. (see pages 15-16.) He may not himself perceive the extent to which several of his major wishes, if realized, would project the nation toward centralization, although the Senator's critics may be well persuaded that he must know so. Still, there is no reason why the list of reform areas put forward by him should constitute the basis of discussion here.
For present purposes, the great dividing line is apparent: there are two major categories of proposals, those that tend to carry out the program of executive control, and those that tend toward republicanism. In this chapter, executive control shall be the aim of a set of proposals for the reform of Congress. If these reforms, and it must be admitted that they are the most popular of those being proposed, are carried into effect, Congress would shortly lose its character as an independent and powerful legislature.
In the next chapter, different proposals for the reform of Congress are set forth; they consist of a set of ideas, which, if adopted, would establish Congress as the supreme governing force. Which of the two is to be preferred is a matter for individual choice. But friends of Congress are fools to let congressional government be destroyed on the pretext of making it efficient.
The set of reform proposals that would bring about the victory of the executive force may be grouped into several categories and discussed in that order. There are reforms of the constituency, and reforms of the parties. There are reforms of the presidency, and reforms of the executive establishment. Finally, there is a groups of reforms proposed for the Congress, which, like all of the others treated here together, would tend to changed congressional government in the direction of presidential and executive control.
When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government. . . enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.
Madison, the Federalist (1787)
The ideal constituency of the executive force is one well-organized by the political party, led and instructed by the president via the mass media, and directed at and responsive to national issues. Adherents to this conception of the electorate look back upon the somewhat mythical Jacksonian and Rooseveltian constituencies as the model. Actually, in some critical cases such as going to war, and curbing the legislative power of the Supreme Court, the commitment of the constituency to the presidency was most doubtful. The considerable evidence available about the nature of constituencies and the active or even attentive public would lead us to doubt that the majority here thought to exist ever corresponds to an actual existing majority. In other words, what, we have again is a myth, the components of which hold that government by majority is a possibility, that the aim of government is egalitarianism, and the road to this condition lies via the politically organized electorate under the leadership of a national executive.
The greatest structural reforms of recent years contributing to this desired condition came with the decisions of the Supreme Court in the cases of Baker vs. Carr (and its successors, Reynolds vs. Sims, etc.) and Wesberry vs. Sanders. [Citations on p. ] The doctrines of these cases encourage a complete reorganization of the apportionment systems of the state governments to provide for equal-population districts in the state senates and assemblies and equal-population districts in the House of Representatives. Should an amendment to the Constitution later permit a Senate shifted to a proportionate population basis, in weighting of the votes if not in actual membership, so much the better for the Executive Force.
Meanwhile it may be expected that the reapportionment of the state legislatures will increase the power of party-organized constituencies, since many new seats are going to urban areas of strong party affiliation. Since these in turn are correlated with party-controlled congressional constituencies, and since they both in turn are correlated with the more highly presidential and nation-directed constituents, then the whole effect will tend to tie the state governments more closely into the national parties and the national parties on the state level with the presidential parties. This effect will be bolstered by changes occurring at the same time in the House, whereby congressional districts will become more equal in population, and urban area in some states, suburban in most-both of them presidentially and executive-minded-will be given as many as fifty seats, tipping the balance on many issues to the Executive Force. The Executive Force should pursue these development enthusiastically.
The suffrage is still in process of enlarging in the United States. The most important and largest new element consists of Negro Voters who have been hitherto denied the right unconstitutionally or kept from it by social, economic and psychological causes. That this electorate, prevented from self-realization by a system of local autonomy and battered economically by a "free" system mirroring faithfully social prejudices, will be pro-centralization and pro-presidential is fairly plain.
The new electorate generally, whether it is of youth or women, or the economically depressed or Negroes, tends to be very largely pro-executive. Elimination of the poll tax payment as a prerequisite to voting and diminishing the length of residence required for voting, also pro-executive. Completing the task of universalizing the vote can help the Executive Force, and, should the Republican Force be goaded into resisting these changes, so much the worse for its reactionary image.
It is also proposed from time to time that Congress be reformed by the removal from its competence of the government of the District of Columbia, a proposal often sincerely meant to relieve Congress of the burden of governing a single city as if it were a city council. Of course, Washington is no ordinary city, as those who planned its birth knew beforehand. The government of the District of Columbia presents opportunities to control the total government that cannot be overlooked in the long stretches of history to be written.
That Washington is worse governed than other cities would be difficult to prove, although it is often asserted; that it is not self-governed is somewhat easier to prove, beginning with the fact that its residents do not cast ballots that control its government. An extension of self-government to the city, which would remain still under congressional rule, would appear possible, and would encourage the development of those local qualities of initiative and self-government that republicans should espouse. At the same time, the voters of the district would be largely pro-executive by profession and attitude. That has to be granted.
But the executive should never have in its hands the power to turn a local or national police force against a legislature. For this last reason, any reform of the District that would remove completely its government from congressional hands may be considered anti-republican, and most reforms towards self-government short of that would probably be considered pro-republican.
The proposal to organize constituents more tightly along party lines by requiring payment of membership dues and issuing membership cards pledging certain attitudes and activities on behalf of the party would also promote executive centralism; part of the constituencies would be mobilized, and this always helps mobilize the rest, because they are deprived of choice and influence. Towards the same end, the parties should seek financing, too, on a mass basis; small contributions from a multitude mean that the party leaders will be accountable to no "wicked special interest." They will in fact be accountable to no one and in a happy condition of fiscal solvency.
Appeals for centralized and integrated parties should be widely disseminated by advocates of the Executive Force. Professor Burns's suggested that the presidential and congressional factions of each party in Congress should be merged is characteristic of the reforms proposed. His plea for cooperation meanwhile between the presidentially oriented branches of both parties in Congress is significant and also understandable. [ Burns, op. cit. ] Actually, what appears to be a contradictory demand on the one hand for the merger of the two parties in support of the presidency, and on the other for greater party responsibility is resolved when it is realized that the ultimate goal is rational one-party, one-force government with the efficient, effective, responsible executive leading the whole country.
One of the weakest points in the establishment of executive dominance has been the collapse of the presidential leadership of the party once the party does not hold the presidency. Thus all the strength, integration, issues, and organization built up in the halcyon days of office are washed away in the defeat. The obvious solution would be modes of creating a strong party directorate carrying on as if nothing much had happened. To this end, Professor Burns, for example, calls for a permanent national conference of the opposition party. Something like this occurs now; the defeated are forever organizing groups, conferences, and assemblies to perpetuate their memory, to hold onto internal party power, and to plot for the day of return. But the ultimate aim of a true executive system would be permanent, unified, disciplined party leadership, in office and out.
Within Congress itself, the path to executive dominance is clear. Professor Daniel Berman ends a recent textbook typically with the word that congressional "localism and party irresponsibility fairly cry out for solution." [ In Congress Assembled (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1964), p. 403. ] There is fairly general agreement among the Executive Force on the solution. The minorities within a party should not be permitted to join the opposition party, organize themselves, hold any of the several dozen posts of leadership in Congress whether in opposition or in office. They should be confined to necessarily curtailed rights of debate, and their opposition to party positions should be reserved for causes.
The majority of each party will be thoroughly coordinated with its national leadership. Several devices will promote this condition. Compulsory party councils under presidential chairmanship, extension of presidential patronage, control of party funds by the President, amalgamation of presidential and congressional campaigns, extension of party organization into the areas where maverick party candidates reside-all of these and more will help to strengthen the presidential party in Congress and to tie it into the presidency and executive branch of government. As Robert Bendiner, who wrote of the difficulties of federal aid to education legislation, sighed and said, "In our dream arrangement the President's party naturally is in control of Congress." [ Obstacle Course on Capitol Hill (New York: McGraw - Hill, 1964), p. ]
The presidency itself requires some considerable reforms if it is to lead Congress. The State of the Union address has become an excursion into dreamland; it contains all wishes that the President may have or may wish to his followers and would-be supporters. It has nevertheless tended to increase presidential prestige; it has meant to millions that the President can be counted upon to be active and constructive. However, he should also have more exclusive rights to initiate legislative proposals. In recent years it has come about that legislative proposals, even those generated in Congress, have been forwarded as a matter of course to the Bureau of the Budget in the Executive Office of the President. Often, in consequence a proposal is amended or withdrawn, but in some cases taken over with enthusiasm. This practice, originating out of a desire to inform and coordinate, has gradually assumed an influential role in the real legislative process. Formal adoption of this procedure would further strengthen its role.
The right to veto individual items in appropriation bills passed by Congress would facilitate executive control over the finances of the government. Not only could policies be selectively promoted and enforced, but friends could be helped and enemies punished. What the bill of attainder could be for Congress, the item veto could be for the President.
Moreover, tendencies to vote money to agencies for periods in excess of one year, or at least to authorize programs that must then be funded, aids the executive. Some three-quarters of civilian programs and a third of the defense programs are already of this kind. If to this practice could be added the procedure whereby funds are generally voted for a long period, with liberal powers to the President and agency officials to rule on the manner and amount of their expenditure, then would the scope of executive power broaden indeed. It was probably owing to such a power as this that Governor Talmadge and his successors could erect a kind of dictatorship in Georgia between 1932 and 1961; the Governor controlled the second year of appropriations voted for a two-year period of time.
The Twenty-second Amendment to the Constitution should be repealed, if the position of the executive branch is to be enhanced. Limiting the terms of the President to two may preclude a popular dynamic figure from retaining office. Professor Burns, who is the most consistent reformer among the executive force, urges this action. Similarly the Electoral College is to be made "more responsible to the people." Several devices can be employed for this purpose. The ideal would be to abolish the college entirely in favor of a single national majority vote. Another method would keep the college, but split each state's vote among the candidates in proportion to the votes they win. Either way would allow the presidential candidates to drive at a central majority in the American electorate, and to exploit the mass media to the fullest extent.
Several reforms within the executive establishment would strengthen its position. The affirmation and continuation of the absolute power to determine that certain secrets and documents belong to the executive branch and are not to be released to Congress is a logical step. Extension of the single service merit system to the furthest reaches of government employment is also desirable. The President may be assumed to use his patronage to affirm his position as head of the executive and political branches of government, but actually, so long as the political system is decentralized, and attention has to be paid to local autonomous groups in making appointments, the President is better off without the appointive power. He can get stricter obedience and readier response from a civil servant than from one of his own appointees, on the average, under a decentralized party system.
Furthermore, though it may be difficult for people to imagine how it works, the administrative service is the savings bank of presidential power. What he earns, it keeps. Even more, it acts as trustee. His successors cannot spend this capital. And therefore it accumulates more and more.
The unfettered power to reorganize agencies of government has long been the aim of administrative reformers such as Brownlow Committee and the Hover Commission. They appreciate that with a wholesale delegation of power to create, change, and abolish agencies of government less than giant size, the presidency can effectively uproot the sources of congressional power in the agencies.
A companion reform, as urged by Louis Brownlow and many others, would prevent congressional interference in the "details" of administrative management. Though difficult to carry into effect by formal enactment, this reform, formal or informal, would also cut out the numerous relations between congressmen and officials that presently lend a special character to American federal government.
The fiscal accounting system is also unsatisfactory at present from the standpoint of the executive force. The General Accounting Office is concerned with the auditing of expenditures to the point where often administrators are intimidated in making them. Louis Brownlow and others would have strict accountability assured through the executive branch, with only selective post-auditing. Thus the departments and agencies would be able to mange all except post-auditing without concern for how a congressionally-minded official might interpret congressional policy, and in the final analysis some would have even the post-auditing done by a top executive agency, as occurs in Britain. This is said to provide perfect honesty and efficiency-two terms however, whose meaning does not provide for the representation of the appropriate policy-making groups and which therefore are incomplete with reference to the broad aims of auditing and financial accounting.
Generally speaking, the goal of Executive Force reform is to elevate the bureaucracy fully to legislative status. There is no structural reason why the administrative branch of government cannot operate as a congress of the United States. It can employ the full collection of devices of representative government. It can take public opinion polls, set up representative councils of industry, commerce, agriculture, the arts, and foreign affairs. It can create dozen of representative bodies and employ thousand of consultants and service agencies to keep close watch on whatever may be the aspirations and wants of the American people. Its rules and regulations already have a scope, domain, and intensity that would makes the average pronouncement appear to the casual eye to be more important than the average enactment of Congress. Most citizens and businessmen, when told something "is the law" already obey without knowing that most of the time it is an administrator's rule that they obey, not a law of Congress. The bureaucracy-as-Congress is well over half-way established, more by the method of the tour de force than by taking from Congress any powers.
The enactment of more programs and engagement in more activities will of course increase the trend; the intent may not be present but the effect will be there, for it is impossible to add to the functions of government without diminishing the possibilities for organizing enclaves of libertarian and voluntary action in the population at large. New forms of regulations and government enterprise give enhanced opportunities for the executive reformation of American government.
. . . He begins an oration with so quick and loud a voice, that, at a distance, it might be imagined they are all making a noise together. During the whole discourse the rest keep a profound silence, and when it is ended, he makes signal to the rest to answer him, and immediately they all set up a cry together, till such time as by another sign with his hand, he orders them to be silent: when they are immediately obedient and quiet. Then the first renews his discourse, or his song, which when finished, and the others have paid the utmost attention to, the whole assembly breaks up and separates.
Buffon, on the Howler Monkeys
The reforms of Congress itself are less important to the success of the executive force than the development of a large administrative establishment. No matter how keenly adjusted a mechanism to the tasks desired of it, it will not have an effect on a larger setting in which its tasks are limited. Still consideration of reforms of Congress is of large interest to this study.
A favorite reform among executive advocates is the four-year synchronized term for congressmen and President preferably with a four-year Senate as well. President Linden B. Johnson once more gave prominence to the scheme in 1966. Then the whole political machine will turn over at the same time; all will depend upon coordinated integrated campaigning under the banner of the presidential candidate. (Is it too much to hope that the Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment will reapportion the Senate by equal-population districts?)
Restricting freedom of debate is also recommended, from the executive's standpoint. Since the House has already rather severe restrictions upon debate, save in respect to the final decisive element of placing a partisan pro-presidential limit on who may speak, the proposed reform concerns only the Senate. There the notorious filibuster stands as an insufferable bar to presidential ambitions.
The filibuster, it perhaps needs asserting, is not absolute. Two-thirds of the total membership of the Senate, after a short delay, can impose closure upon debate. Closure was imposed during the debate of the civil rights bill of 1964. Obviously the Senators, who are well-educated, well-informed, and rather "liberal" men prone to spend money more freely than the House and support the President on welfare legislation more than the House, see something exceedingly valuable to their corporate and individual status in the privilege of unrestrained debate. That value is the right to resist in a most public manner policies that a President desires. Considering the losses of policies and time occasioned by filibustering and the fact that the target is almost invariably the executive, it would appear necessary, to those who feel that the executive in America has little enough power to consummate its will, to limit further the personal liberty of Senators in this regard. Making enclosure of debate easier, by a majority of the membership, say, would be the solution.
Next in importance to abolishing the filibuster would be circumventing the powers of committees to bottle up legislation. As Senator Clifford P. Case of New Jersey put it: "A President who has been elected by the people of the United States and who has a majority in both houses has a right to believe that his major legislative proposals will be brought to a vote. [ Press release of Sen. Clifford P. Case, June 28, 1963. ] And he adds, "This is the forthright way to deal with legislation and is highly preferable to a procedure under which bills are buried without a hearing, without a vote, often by the action of one man, a committee or subcommittee chairman." Though not accurate as fact, the statements have a logic that is admissible: the Rules Committee, the leadership, the committee system whatever may be the dilatory element in the legislative process must be forced to stand aside and permit a vote on a proposal of the President, substantially in the form in which he requests it and with only so much legislative consideration of it as he feels necessary under the circumstance.
It would be better in fact, by this view, to reorganize the method of selecting committee chairmen and appointing members to committees. One of the primary sources of trouble is the modified seniority system that prevails. This should be replaced by a partisan system, which would essentially place power in the hands of the party leaders, acting under the national authority of their party, to designate their committee chairmen and members. A change in the rules of the House and Senate would be adequate for these purposes and would require "only" a majority vote in each case.
That this is not done forthwith or even seriously considered must come as another of those surprises that baffle the distant observer of the American political Scene. That such a popular idea could be carried out by such a simple mechanism, and yet is not, should be a flashing signal to everyone that something more than a love of old men is involved. Therefore, to reform Congress in accord with the desire to make it more responsive to the presidency requires more devious and half-way measures. One such method would be the organization of policy committees in each chamber that would voluntarily settle upon modes of cooperating within their parties and with the national party leadership.
The same might be said for the proposal of joint policy committees of congressmen and the President, whereby the leadership of each party could meet in both its executive and congressional manifestations, for the purpose of determining a united course of action. Many proposals that would fall into this category could be listed.
In fact, each President is entitled, if he pleases, to call upon congressional leaders of his own party, or of both parties, and may together with them plan a strategy about one or more problems before the nation. Congressional leaders might also request such encounters.
Since meetings conducted in an atmosphere of hostility or among reluctant participants would not at all be conducive to the settlement of any issue before them, it would appear that legislation to guarantee such joint policy meetings would avail the Executive Force little. A forced meeting might be the occasion for an unconstitutional showdown. In sum, peaceful and voluntary meetings, and policy committees can be set up whenever they may be desired. When they are not desired, the power to compel them would only goad the White House group into extreme measures to obtain consensus out of them.
As the number of presidential faction adherents grows in the next few years, owing to changes in appointment and other factors, it may also be possible to guarantee a Speaker who will be favorable to the President or to the presidential candidate's ideas. In that case, the cry that the House is oligarchically run will have to give way to the "need" to give the Speaker more power so that he can appoint more committee heads and members favorably disposed to the presidential party. If the Speaker does what the President tells him to, he is no longer, miraculously, a boss.
The reduction of the number of committees is often recommended as a means of obtaining stern public scrutiny and improving the "efficiency" of Congress. This does not usually work, because it is accompanied by an increase in the number of subcommittees, which have almost as much authority as the original committee would have had. Furthermore, the Congressmen whose ambitions for chairmanships are most likely to be frustrated by the reform would be presidential adherents. For the oligarchy would introduce its own supporters, rather than the President's, to the limited number of posts. In any case the public cannot visibly impress itself upon fifteen committees any more than on thirty so that the ideal of citizen control would not be realized.
It would be better to force matters out of the committees earlier, if only the floors could be cleared for them. But the floors are always crowded or somehow unavailable. Hence the correct tactic may be to reduce the ability of a member to command the consideration of his fellow members for private bills. Also one might save time if electric voting were installed. To insist upon bills of a more general rather than specific nature would help to get Congress out of the business of administrative management." So would go the reasoning of an Executive Force adherent.
There is a great deal of circumlocution in all of these proposals. Proposals to clear the floor as a means of making Congress effective are countered by proposals to bring new matters upon the floor; take away merely personal legislation but bring in a question period. Let matters be decided on the floor; but keep raw material off the floor. All of which inclines one to believe that on some matters there is either no important reform to be desired from the standpoint of the executive branch or that the simple reforms the direct ones, that place congressional officers under the command of presidential officers are ultimately the reforms to concentrate upon.
Other reforms come to mind. It is a pretty thought to permit former presidents to address Congress and take the floor; and it has recently been effected. It enhances the dignity of the office of President and queues former presidents up ahead of hundreds of equally good orators. But it will not advance the cause of executive government by more than that fact.
A more promising avenue of executive leadership is by way of reforming the ethics of Congress. For instance, the public and bureaucracy can be easily aroused to moral indignation by accounts of congressional travel abroad and within the country. Congressional "interference" with the administration can be curtailed if congressmen spend less on travel. It will be also clear that they will be less prone to travel needlessly. Hence a stingy attitude toward congressional movements and travel expenditures is desirable from a strictly executive point of view.
On a broader scale but resting upon the same principle is the question of congressional conflict of interests. If congressmen are restrained by ever tighter definitions of conflicts of interest, two things will happen first, fewer candidates will offer themselves from among elements in the population who have free-wheeling, libertarian, independent professional backgrounds and humble origins. Second, the reputation of Congress will decline as impossible standards of conduct are imposed. Meanwhile, the moral stature of the civil servant and presidency will grow.
In addition, if conflict of interests statutes can be tightened up throughout the government, fewer elements of a republican nature will be able to enter government. Being removed from the government arena will sap their vitality and, therefore, their reason for being government in the first place will no longer exist. Thus, those who know about government will be least likely to have a hand in determining the course of government, unless they join the civil service-the professional soldiery of government-and thus remove themselves from the ranks of the general public.
For these several reasons, campaigns aimed at tightening rules against situations where conflicts of interest might exist are of benefit in establishing the greater neutrality, objectivity, and public interest of the executive establishment and the presidency.
If all or most of the proposals recited above are carried into being, whether by law or by informal practice, the chances for the early success of the executive force in government will be measurably increased. Taken together they add up to the accepted definition of "effective, modern government." They are "constructive, moral" reforms. They will give a "badly needed integration and coordination to national government in America." They will "promote a stronger, more favorable image of America abroad." Congress will be adequate-adequate, that is, to the role provided for it in the executive government of the future.