Cobblestone Leadership: Majority Rule, Minority Power.

THE LAST election demonstrated that no matter how dissatisfied the voters are with the politics of avoidance and fiscal irresponsibility, their representatives have little fear of losing office. Of the 405 members of the House of Representatives who faced re-election in 1990, 82 were unchallenged by a major-party candidate; another three hundred faced a major-party opponent who raised less than $25,000 in campaign funds. Frustrated voters-both Republicans and Democrats-are rebelling against unaccountable lawmakers by considering constitutional amendments to limit the number of consecutive terms a state legislator or a congressman can serve.

At the same time, the eminent historian James MacGregor Burns asks us to pause and reconsider whether government by amateurs is what we want. In Cobblestone Leadership: Majority Rule, Minority Power, he argues that politics ought to be played by the pros: "Take the player selection and play-calling responsibilities away from the fans and return them to the coaches."

Despite Burns's reputation as an activist Democrat, this is not partisan fare. Many of his suggestions, such as abandoning direct primaries and restoring the political party's grip on the nominating process, make him an iconoclast among his liberal Democratic colleagues. Burns has stepped back and assumed the role of an inventor, a scientist of politics, observing and reasoning about what constitutional design will produce the best and most durable government. Emulating the original authors of the Constitution, whom he praises for their readiness to innovate and their devotion to the public good, Burns promises to think in "rarefied terms." The key to more competitive elections and more qualified candidates, Burns argues, is to revitalize the two-party system. Since the beginning of the century, but especially in the aftermath of the Democratic National Convention of 1968, "reformers" in nearly every state have replaced party conventions and caucuses with what they insisted was a more democratic way of choosing candidates, direct primaries. Anyone seeking to be nominated must now build a large personal organization, with pollsters, researchers, and policy advisors, and wage a costly media campaign before the primary. Many talented aspirants are discouraged from even entering the contest, and the winners are often elected for their television appeal rather than their wisdom or governing skills.

Give party organizations more influence in the selection of candidates, Burns urges, and each party will lose no time offering a qualified, well-financed challenger to take on every entrenched incumbent from the opposite party. To render the major parties truly answerable for the state of the nation, Burns urges voters to support a straight party ticket, putting either the Democrats or the Republicans in command of the White House and the Congress. Without one major party in control of both branches, government has swung erratically between stalemate and crisis management, Burns observes, and voters have not known whom to blame. Let one party govern, and the electorate will judge the results. Bums's arguments for "effective partisan rule" challenge prevailing wisdom. Two-thirds of Americans prefer seeing one party in command at the White House and another party in control of Congress, perhaps because they believe that dividing power will curb its abuse by either party.

Burns also favors strengthening party ties between Congress and the President by adopting a four-year term for members of the House of Representatives, a change that would eliminate the mid-term elections, when partisan support for the President in Congress is often diminished.

Has Burns presented an idealized version of party government? For many Americans the word "party" evokes images of Richard Daley, Frank Curley, the spoils system, deals made behind closed doors, and self-seeking politicians lined up at the patronage trough. But in the early nineteenth century, when ambitious politicians began organizing national parties for the first time, some Americans saw that this partisan competition would have the advantage of offering voters legitimate visions of what the nation might achieve.

In the 1850s, when the regular competition between these parties-the Whigs and Democrats-had deteriorated, Charles Sumner defended the efforts to organize a Republican Party intended to challenge Whig hegemony. He reminded the nation why it was necessary to have two great parties. "Through parties, principles are maintained above men. And through parties, men in power are held to a just responsibility." During most of the nineteenth century, a time of vigorous two-party competition, voters were able to hold their congressmen accountable and turned incumbents out of office 40 to 50 per cent of the time, although the electoral contests did not always present the choices between legitimate, but opposing, principles that Sumner envisioned. The party system was an instrument of good and of evil, of national purpose and of self-interest, employed by principled statesmen and by opportunists. Abraham Lincoln was a stalwart party man, who wielded the tools of party government, including patronage, masterfully for principled ends.

TO PROMOTE energetic, accountable partisan leadership, Burns proposes far-ranging constitutional changes-for example, an amendment allowing Congress to impeach and remove a President who has committed no serious crime but simply has lost the confidence of too many legislators to govern effectively. But this is not one of Bums's wiser innovations-our President is far more than a prime minister, and impeaching him on purely political grounds would turn an unpopular President into an heroic defender of the office.

Despite their flaws, Bums's proposals make important, exciting reading. The inventive spirit of his inquiry tempts us to try our own hand at adjusting our political system-though with prudence and reverence-and reminds us of the challenge that inspired Alexander Hamilton as he began writing The Federalist Papers in 1787. On the opening page Hamilton observed-and it remains true today-that the success or failure of American government would be regarded as an answer to "the important question" whether human societies are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice."