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How Strong a President?
| Article
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14167 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1988 |
4,363 Words |
| Author
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Richard Rose
Richard Rose, professor of public policy at the University of
Strathclyde, Glasgow, is author of the forthcoming book Can
the Presidency Succeed? The World Closes In on the White House
(Chatham House).
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Do you want a dwarf or a giant as a president? If the former, then the 1988 American presidential election appears to fill the bill, for it offers a choice between candidates who are distinguished by their ordinariness. No one would expect any of the current Republican or Democratic alternatives to stand tall in a pantheon of world leaders. And even if a towering figure were elected president, the limitations imposed on him by the Constitution would soon cut him down to size.
By contrast, the French president has the powers of a giant, for the office was designed to fit Gen. Charles de Gaulle, a national leader who not only towered many inches in height over other politicians, but also stood tall in his self-confidence and in the trust of the French people. The general reacted against the weaknesses of previous French constitutions, believing that they had contributed to the country's surrender to Hitler in 1940 and indecisive government immediately after World War II. Hence, the constitution for the Fifth French Republic that he put forward in 1958 was designed for the exercise of strong presidential leadership.
The use of the word "president" to describe the leaders of America and France is an example of what the French call a faux ami (a false friend), because words that appear the same to the reader actually refer to two very different political offices. The differences are intentional. The Founding Fathers who met at Philadelphia were not only worried by the shortcomings of the English king, George III, but even more by the prospect of an able absolute monarch, like France's Louis XIV. A republican form of government could only thrive if priority were given to responsive representative institutions; Congress, the institution deemed closest to the people, was thus given pride of place in a system of checks and balances.
The French have been schizophrenic about the authority of their leaders. The French Revolution overthrew an absolute monarch, but put in his place a short-lived terror and then the first of the modern military dictators, Napoleon Bonaparte. Since Napoleon met his Waterloo in 1815, the French have vacillated between constitutions giving too much and too little power to the center. For example, Louis Napoleon, the head of the late-nineteenth-century Second Empire, was prepared to submit his imperial authority to endorsement by plebiscite, but remarked that even though an election was, like baptism, a necessity, it would be ridiculous to spend all one's life in the baptismal font! The constitution of the Fourth French Republic, adopted immediately after World War II, prescribed a weak president, and
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