THE POWER OF AMERICA'S PRESIDENT.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 457, 28 July 1915, Page 3

THE POWER OF AMERICA'S PRESIDENT.

—. I » NOT RESPONSIBLE TO HIS CABINET. The statements being made now and again to the effect that the United States President is considering Germany's reply to an American Note "wilh his Cabinet" do not mean what the same words would mean in this country, or in any of the British dominions for that matter. An English Prime Minister, for instance, really does consider policy with his colleagues, and he may be over-ruled, since nominally his voice is only one among a number of equals. Naturally, if he is a man of power he can dominate his Cabinet. If he is overruled by his colleagues he may resign, as did Gladstone on the 1804 Estimates, though age and weariness counted much in his decision. But in the States the President's single voice against all his Cabinet carries the day as a mat lei 1 of course,, and with the advantage of being elected for a fixed term lie can discard his Ministers at will. They have nothing to do wilh Parliament; they are merely the President's Council and his departmental officers. This means that the President of the States is, during his term of office, the most powerful ruler in the world. The making of peace and war and the framing of treaties (so long as he can overawe the Senate) <and the forming of allianccsare in his hands, lie commands both navy and army, and, as has been well said, "that far larger army of over 200,000 civil appointees, holding the very means of subsistence at his pleasure or the pleasure of his subordinates." That is a patronage which even a AValpole or a Newcastle in our history nexev dreamed of exercising.