THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, AUGUST 7, 1923. THE CARES OF A PRESIDENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18471, 7 August 1923, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, AUGUST 7, 1923. THE CARES OF A PRESIDENT.

The death in office of Mr. Harding has recalled attention to the burden of office borne by the President of the United States. Throughout the bereaved country there has already begun an agitation for a lightening of that burden. It is widely believed that the volume of business to which the President must personally attend is beyond the physical capacity of one man. There can be no shadow of doubt, in view of the statements of Mr. Harding's doctors, that his recent public tour in prosecution of his scheme for America's participation in the International Court of Justice was ; an excessive tax upon his strength. It certainly precipitated his end. There lives still, but as the mere shadow of his former self, Mr. Harding's predecessor in the Presidency, Mr. Woodrow Wilson —broken in health by the strain of public duty. She Presidents of the United States have died in office. It is easy to minimise the implication of these facta. Mr. Woodrow Wilson's burden was not that of the Presidency in normal circumstances.' The war and the peace smote him with searching blows. He essayed to be the Atlas of the modern world, and it crushed him. The Presidency's .duties are not accurately gauged by "those that he undertook: his term was unique in its demands. As for the six Presidents slain at their post, three of them Were killed by the hand of the assassin, one died within a few weeks of assuming office, another succumbed in a cholera outbreak, and the sixthMr. Harding—-was for years the victim of organic diseases that weakened bis resistance to illness. It would seem that these instances alone do not substantiate the claim that to become President of *he United States is to run excessive risk of breakdown. They are not alone, however. A close scrutiny of the careers of the Presidents reveals more than enough to justify the present alarm lest the Presidency prove a deathtrap for American statesmen. The Presidents have in many instances been so physically harassed by their official - duties as to need special means of retaining, ordinary health. White, House has not proved by any means a pleasure resort. .;

With the passing of the years the cares of the Presidency have increased. At first, they were merely the cares of the executive of the Union, involving less of leadership than of expression of the driving decisions of others. The makers of the. United States' Constitution modelled it upon the Whig theory of government obtaining in Britain. That theory depended mainly upon the idea of checks and balances affecting the .' executive, . legislative and judiciary functions of the State. It was an attempt to find a perfect poise for all three. Parliament was to be so powerful in making the laws and criticising the king's policy that ordinarily lie could not have his way without their co-operation and consent; yet he was left free to exercise, if he chose, an absolute veto upon the acts of Parliament. The courts of law, on their part, were given as great an independence as possible; they could not be coerced by Parliament nor overawed by the king. This treatment of politics as mechanics appealed strongly to the framers of the American Constitution, and they set out to secure a perfect counterpoise of ; President, Congress and Legislature. Yet they were practical enough to know that government is not a machine, but an organism. It must function in relation to its environment, and be the co-operation, not of a body of blind forces, but of a body of more or less clear-seeing men. So room was left for the elastic play of life within the Constitution, and the Presidency has consequently been now one thing and ! now another, according to the personality of the occupant of the office. A Jackson, a Lincoln, a Cleveland, could make the Presidency; almost the whole government. Against a Tyler, Congress could be overbearingly assertive, and it could reduce an Andrew Johnson to : virtual impotence. Nevertheless, in this give-and-take, the Presidency has become, on the whole, more influential. The veto on legislation has not fallen, as in Britain, into disuse. With the growth of the nation, and its increasing participation in world affairs, the opportunity for enlarging the President's' dignity and power has expanded and been increasingly used.

Writing in 1891, Viscount Bryce declared that there were reasons for expecting the Presidency to "reach a higher point than it has occupied at any time since the Civil War: the tendency everywhere in America to concentrate power and responsibility in one man is unmistakable. . . There may therefore be still undeveloped possibilities of greatness in store for the Presidents of the future." It has been the pressure of foreign questions that has thus thrust the President to the front. Ever sinco the war with Spain, he has exercised nation-wide leadership and been a national unifying ; force. Selected as a party leader, lie has become the spokesman of the whole country in its most far-reaching and ; crucial j affairs. The one man selected by a I national vote, he has : opportunity to

be the- nation's idol as no locallyelected representative can hope to be. 7 He can impress its imagination 'and wini its confidence. ; :It i craves;however subconsciously, unified action and a. ; single leader. ; 'This gives him a unique chance to form its views, as recent Presidents have all endeavoured to do, on its foreign affairs. Such a task, added to his work as legal executive and leader in the nation's domestic business, has made him, in the words of Mr. Woodrow Wilson, written long ere he had any expectation of being President, "the most heavily burdened officer in the world." He declared then that "men of , ordinary physique and discretion cannot be Presidents and live, if the strain be not somehow relieved: we shall be obliged always to be picking our chief magistrates from among wise and prudent athletes." He survives pathetically to bear in his own body grim witness to his dictum's truth and to see his successor exemplify it too. Clearly, there must be a great extension of the plan, already in partial operation, of placing the President's executive powers in commission, to be exercised by departmental officers, while he has freedom to deal with great political issues.