University of Virginia Library

Robert Gillmore

The 'Shadow Presidency' Proposal

Because President Nixon's
popularity is still unsagging and
because the Democratic opposition
is still weak or at least divided,
Williams College Professor James
MacGregor Burns explained
recently a reform he first proposed
in 1966 might have special
relevance now.

The proposal is what Professor
Burns calls the "Shadow
Presidency."

He suggests that instead of
meeting only every four years to
select a Presidential candidate, the
opposition meet every
non-Presidential year to select a
"Shadow President" who would
speak for the national party.

As the spokesman for more than
himself, his office, or his state,
Professor Burns believes the
"Shadow President" would merit
and receive more attention —
perhaps as much as the President
himself.

As the spokesman for at least a
temporary party majority on one or
several major issues, and perhaps as
a future Presidential candidate, he
might speak with as much authority
and credibility and thus might
wield as much persuasive power as
the incumbent President.

The proposal is especially
relevant now Professor Burns
explained, for two reasons:

Persuasion

First, President Nixon has
repeatedly demonstrated that he
has finally mastered what may be
the Presidency's greatest power—
persuasion — and that power is
multiplied by a President's unique
command of the media, especially
television. President Nixon has
specifically mastered the medium
which, observers say only half in
jest, has become the message of the
Nixon Presidency.

Only for the asking may the
President — any President — speak
personally to 50 million television
viewers and radio listeners. And
only by making a slightly
interesting remark on any public
matter will the President — any
President — find his words
reported, usually at length, on page
one.

Divided Voice

Second, the Democratic
opposition must counter the
President's tremendous
opinion-molding powers with a
divided voice. The media is glad to
give party leaders collectively as
much time or space as the President
— and in some cases more. But that
is precisely the problem: the
President speaks, obviously with
one voice and with all the authority
of his office; the opposition speaks
with a babble of voices and with all
the authority of much lesser offices
or ex-offices. The result is that
neither Senators Muskie nor
Kennedy nor McGovern nor former
Vice President Humphrey, nor any
other Democratic spokesman
speaks with the authority or
credibility which President Nixon
or any President brings with his
office. The opposition needs
therefore to unite around and speak
through only one man. The
opposition needs to create their
own president — what Burns calls
the "Shadow President."

Local Committees

Specifically, Professor Burns
proposes that local party
committees, supposedly each
spring, send delegates to a party
meeting in their Congressional
district. That district meeting
would choose (from previously
announced candidates running,
hopefully, on clear platforms) one
delegate to attend what Professor
Burns calls the "Shadow
Presidential conference" — not
convention.

'Conference'

Professor Burns chooses the
word "conference" because he does
not envision a noisy and expressive
convention which is essentially an
exercise in party power.

He wants the "conference" —
like the annual meetings of British
parties, from which his whole idea
comes—to be dominated by serious
discussions of major issues and by
the selection of the "Shadow
President" who would articulate
the conference-formed party
position on those issues.

Professor Burns believes his
proposal has many merits.

First, it would "energize" party
politics. Potentially every city and
town in the Republic would be
embattled not only over candidates
but over issues. Dissent and new
ideas would more easily enter the
party. And what, one imagines,
would have been the end of Senator
McCarthy's movement were his
"children's crusade" launched and
waged through such an apparatus?
Might the Democratic candidate in
1968 have been other than Hubert
Humphrey?

Second, as Professor Burns says,
"it would keep the parties more
honest." The "Shadow President"
would be expected to speak to
national crises as resourcefully as
the President. He would be obliged
to do more than criticize; as
spokesman for a would-be
government, he would be pressed to
present alternatives and solutions.

Unwanted Loser

Third, the Burns plan would rid
the opposition of a
probably-unwanted Presidential
loser. Were the plan now in effect,
Hubert Humphrey might nowhere
be called the Democratic party
leader.

Fourth, and most important, it
would replace the Presidential loser
and meet the Presidential
incumbent with one man, a single
voice, perhaps a future Presidential
voice; a voice, at any rate, reflecting
the most current thinking of a
party which will shortly choose the
real Presidential candidate. Only
such a person could come close to
commanding the attention and
authority of the President.

Some critics of the Burns
proposal consider it too radical an
innovation. They charge that it
seeks to impose party government
— where politics is the business of
unified parties — on to a system
where politics is the work of
individuals and their particular
organizational and/or geographical
base.

Professor Burns denies the
charge categorically. All he is
proposing, he contends, is what is
in effect already — the national
convention. He suggests only that
conventions he held more often,
albeit with modifications.

But this, too, is attacked by
critics who reply that parties should
avoid such expensive and bloody
national intra-party battles.

Professor Burns, in turn, says
that such battles are desirable.
"Let's have a dogfight," he says.
For only then, he adds, will the
party's majority be known. And
only then can a figure as potentially
powerful as the "Shadow President"
emerge.

The Burns proposal very likely
has other flaws and especially a
very large one: it requires too big a
change in political practice to seem
feasible to many.

Yet this most astounding
idea—unfeasible as it may seem
now—may someday be thought to
have merit on balance. For it may
be that the nation and the
Democratic opposition is seeing
only the beginning of the power
and the price of Presidential
government by television.