The President represents the party in power. It may chance that the opposing party has a majority in the Senate, in the lower House, and in the Supreme Court; yet the party which has elected the President is the party in power.

The American system finally expresses the party unity, which is essential to party efficiency, in a person, differing radically at that point from the English system, in which final party unity is reached, not in a person, but in a cabinet and a legislative assembly, of which the cabinet is an integral part. The party in power in England is the one whose national party committee, so to speak, is the cabinet backed by a majority in the House of Commons. When the Englishman thinks politics, he thinks of a legislative body led by a party committee.

Even in English municipal government, the same general principle is applied. It is in accordance with the political training of the people that the mayor of an English city should be an ornament, a decorative figure-head, while the actual government is by means of a council jointly responsible for both executive and legislative business. The cabinet system does not fix responsibility upon a person, but upon a body. Americans have had a different political training from the English. In national affairs they have acquired habits of dependence upon a chief person, to whom they looked for the fulfilment of party pledges.

The past eight years have not altered in any essential respect the principles discussed in this chapter, but they have added much illustrative material. Personal executive leadership in matters of legislation

has, if anything, increased. President Roosevelt assumed the charge of numerous bills which he carried through Congress. President Taft was criticized first for failing to control tariff legislation, and later for going farther than any previous President in assuming control over the details of legislation. The patronage as a means of executive influence continues to decline in importance. This difference was strikingly shown in President Taft's confession that he believed the attempt to influence insurgents in Congress by withholding patronage had weakened instead of strengthening his position. Patronage, though declining, is still an important force. Recent experience adds evidence of the President's influence over the national convention. President Roosevelt was unanimously nominated in 1904. Executive influence secured the nomination of Mr. Taft in 1908.

References:

"The Growing Powers of the President," by H. L. West. The Forum, March, 1901.

"Three Months of President Roosevelt, ," by Henry Loomis Nelson. The Atlantic Monthly, February, 1902.

"Cleveland and the Senate,'' by James Schouler. The Forum, March, 1897.

"The Presidency," Chapter XV in "The Rise and Growth of American Politics," by Henry Jones Ford, 1898.

"The Presidential Office," by J. F. Rhodes.

Monthly, February, 1903.

Scribner's

"The Independence of the Executive," by Grover Cleveland.

"Presidential Problems," The Century Co., 1904.

For additional references see Chapter XVII.

CHAPTER IV

CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP

IT has been shown that, in the more simple form of party government presented by the English cabinet system, there is no sharp line of distinction between legislation and administration. It is the cabinet which controls both alike and is subject to continuous criticism for delinquency in either. The American system, on the contrary, with its divided powers of government, gives rise to a marked difference in respect to the localization of party responsibility for the two sorts of business. The party in power-the party whose chief is the President-is in control of the administration of the government, and the national party leaders-the President and his cabinet-are, like the English cabinet, the target for unceasing criticism upon all matters of executive efficiency. To detect and expose all serious failure or short-coming on the part of the government is the duty of the opposing party-the party out of office.

This attitude of keen watchfulness, of critical surveillance, is an essential characteristic of the dual organization which carries on government by means of political parties. This rivalry of claim to superior administrative ability is the one party issue which never

changes. It is the perpetual mission of the leaders of either opposing party to seek to convince the voters that they excel their rivals in executive efficiency. The members of the President's party in either House are expected to answer any unjust charges or reflections made before the Houses upon the administration, and to defend it against unfair attack. At the same time, it is not the policy of the party to shield the Executive from just charges. All this is without reference to party majorities. The policy of the government is subject to question by the opposition, whether or not that opposition is in superior force in Congress, and it must be defended by the party of the administration, whether or not it commands majorities in the Houses.

The American system holds the dominant party to a strict accountability in matters of administration, and this applies to all the many national, state, and local divisions of the government. The separation of the powers of government tends in itself to concentrate party responsibility upon administration rather than upon legislation. Wherever a party gains control of an office, it is given and it accepts the responsibility for the conduct of that office. But in respect to legislation, party liability cannot, in the Federal Government, be so centralized as in the English cabinet government. Here the distribution of powers and the wide diffusion of legislative agencies among coördinate Houses and innumerable committees make it impossible for the public to follow the process of lawmaking or to fix responsibility to anything like the same extent as in Great Britain. No party committee, no officer, no single body of men can be made answer

able in the same sense for the details of legislation. Some share of this responsibility falls, as has been shown, upon the President. Other portions pertain to the national legislature as a whole, and others to each House, taken separately.

The same tendency to diffusion that characterizes our general system of government, the same habit of apportioning out business to many agents appears also in the methods of the national assembly. The complicated committee system is an extreme illustration of this characteristic. Most of the actual work of legislation, the drawing of bills, their minute consideration, and their conduct through the required course of procedure, is assigned to some half a hundred different committees in each House. But it is, nevertheless, a distinguishing feature of the system that the party controlling a House makes itself answerable for the conduct of its committees. That is what the organization of a House means. Here, as elsewhere in our peculiarly scattered form of government, the party is the organ that unifies. Such unity as is secured in each House is through the fact that one political party is, in a way, accountable for the legislative conduct of the House. Though both parties are represented upon each committee, the chairmanship of each and the majority of its members belong, as a rule, to the party that organizes the House, and this helps to fix the responsibility.

It should be remembered, however, that only in respect to a few subjects which have entered into special public debate, is attention particularly directed to the question of party responsibility. Nearly all