University of Virginia Library

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.