A Presidential Nation

Norton, $9.95

A realist and a lawyer, Mr. Califano swiftly disposes of any lingering doubt that the power of the American presidency will persist and, in fact, enlarge in the years to come. Then, speaking as a man who ran domestic affairs in the LBJ White House and struggled with the admittedly thwarted job of converting Great Society rhetoric into practical results, he surveys the long reach of that power into the very gizzard of America and suggests some approaches to making the man in the Oval Office and the thousands who do his bidding more accountable to the people. Among his proposals: a six-year presidential term, with a second term permitted to the President who can win one; four years instead of two for representatives in the Congress.

Califano also proposes enactment of a Presidential Powers Impact Statement Act, requiring the President and the Congress to analyze and publish in advance of any major new legislative program an analysis of that legislation’s likely impact on the powers of the presidency. It sounds, frankly, like an idea conceived by the late Rube Goldberg at the request of the wastepaper industry. But a man who knows so much about the workings of the White House and of government-at-large is entitled to at least one proposal that boggles the mind, especially if he has written a book that deserves a place with such relevant works as Richard Neustadt’s Presidential Power, Clinton Rossiter’s The American Presidency, and Arthur M, Schlesinger, Jr.’s The Imperial Presidency.