"Invisible" Government - Electorate Left Helpless

Failure to recognize the President and the governors as leaders might have been made consistent with principles of responsible government if they had placed on the chairmen of their committees executive responsibility. But they did not. Instead of linking up executive responsibility with their committee leadership, as in a parliamentary cabinet system, or of accepting the alternative of bringing the elected executive before the representative body to give an account of past acts and to explain future proposals before supplies were granted, the Congress and the assemblies turned over their powers of inquest and discussion, their function as one of the two essential organs of popular control, to the standing committees which had been organized by them to be exercised in a secret irresponsible manner. And this is the reason that we have "invisible" and irresponsible government.

Organization by Irresponsible Bosses to Control the Electorate

With leadership exercised by a multitude of chairmen of standing committees some provision must be made for central control, otherwise there could be no coördination of action. At first this function was performed by a "junta" within the representative body itself. But after the electorate had been made broadly democratic, centralized control came to be organized outside the government. Because there was no issue raised and no appeal taken direct to the people by a responsible leader, the way was open for direct appeal by designing office seekers under control of " bosess." And so it has happened that for nearly a century we have had in this country the strange phenomenon of leadership in quest for votes being organized as a business for profit. In violation of every ideal of democracy and every principle of responsible govern

ment, private organizations have grown up, calling themselves political parties, which have undertaken to frame up issues (they call them platforms) as a basis for appeal, and to nominate and elect both executive officers and members of the representative body which will do the bidding of irresponsible leaders, the heads of these organizations, popularly known as bosses. Thus our democratic electorates are made the tools of a commercialized oligarchy that gains its support through the patronage of elections and appointments and thrives by dividing the spoils derived from the diversion of public power and the trust estate gathered for the promotion of the common welfare to private and partisan uses.

This is the "system" which has come to take the place of the representative government as conceived by those who framed our charters of liberty and our constitutions for the exercise of popular sovereignty.

During the last ten years the American people have come to realize that all their efforts to establish popular control and thereby make their government responsible must come to naught unless this "system" which has grown up and surrounded this maladjustment, this dissevering of responsibility from leadership is made the issue of the day. This is the meaning of the steps taken to reorganize the administrations around a responsible executive; this is the meaning of the new interest taken in a procedure of control over the purse which will make this power granted to legislative bodies the means of defining issues and enforcing executive responsibility.

Protest Against Irresponsible Leadership

It was because the "system" had become so fully intrenched and has gained such complete control over both parts of the mechanism of popular control-the representative" assemblies" and the "electorate" — that civic bodies interested in building up the public service decided

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to abandon the representative principle. They had run up against the system. They found that all the machinery of nomination and election was in the hands of these private profit-sharing organizations. They themselves were not able to cope with these "parties." And they started an active propaganda, carried out with the support of independent voters, to put each of the public services which they undertook to build up, one after another, into the hands of the trustees. Thus it came about that during our generation the administration has been broken. up into a multitude of boards and commissions with long and overlapping terms, responsible to no one, but free from the domination of the bosses-public opinion responding to the appeal that it was better to rely on the conscience" of these trustees, as they had come to rely on the "conscience" of their courts, instead of trusting to the abortive processes of representative and electoral control. All the state administrations having thus been disposed of in the main, the hold of the boss thus being weakened, there followed a movement to reëstablish the representative principle on such a basis that both of the essential organs of popular control (the representative assembly" and the "electorate") could function - the one to bring the executive to account and define issues, and the other to serve as a court of last resort to decide whether the indictment of a majority of the representative body, acting as a grand jury, should be sustained or the accused executive would be acquitted and continued in office as the trusted servant of the people their chosen leader to manage their affairs.

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Recent Acts Looking Toward Establishing Responsible Government in the States

In the recent organic acts and budget procedures adopted by the states, opinion has been divided between those who would retain "government-by-commission" and

those who would reëstablish the representative principle. Nineteen of the states have declared for irresponsible trusteeships. In effect they have said: We will continue government-by-commission" because by this means we have succeeded in achieving results which we could not achieve through the boss-ruled machinery of representative government as it has developed under the standingcommittee system; we see no end of irresponsible "party domination. Twenty-three of the states have accepted the view that the best way to get rid of the irresponsible party and its boss is to elect a responsible leader and then provide the means for making his acts and proposals visible so that he may be held accountable to the electorate. Two states, New York and Arkansas, have declared for an enlargement of the powers of the standing committees of the representative bodies-preferring to retain the multifarious irresponsible trustees and the irresponsible party boss to a responsible executive.

The Contest Now Before Congress

The contest is now on in Congress as to whether its rules will be so changed that the popularly elected executive will be made responsible and accountable to the electorate, or the processes of invisible government will still continue. The contest between the opposing factions takes concrete form in proposals to change the rules and statutes governing the exercise of control over the purse. The select committee of the House of Representatives to which this subject was referred on October 8th reported in favor of continuing the processes by which we have had a hundred and twenty years of invisible government. The report is in favor of still maintaining the separation between responsibility for administering the public business and leadership - making a concession to the President, however, that he may prepare and submit a service plan with no opportunity to meet his opposition face

to face. This is a right that the President has always had, but he has refused to exercise it under conditions that give to him no protection. In 1909 Congress tried to force this on the President by the Smith law, but still he refuses to act and rightly so, for no man who has the judgment to command the respect of a broad electorate would think of submitting himself to trial for official acts and proposals by star-chamber proceedings.

Fight Over Using Power to Control the Purse to Protect Irresponsible Leadership

The committee of the Senate has not yet reached a conclusion it has not reported what stand it will take. But the real question is this: Shall a procedure of control be established which will do away with irresponsible parties" and irresponsible leaders? Shall the proceedings of Congress be such that the people may know what the responsible head of the government and those under him have been doing and what he proposes to do, so that the very inquiries and discussion of finance and administrative measures will bring issues and leaders before the electorate; or shall Congress still continue to bar its doors against the executive and develop a leadership of its own in the secret confines of the committee room, leaving issues to be framed and candidates to be nominated by an irresponsible oligarchy that has no acts to defend? All of the other questions raised about "executive " budgets and "legislative" budgets, staff organizations, accounting, reporting, are mere details necessary, but, nevertheless, details to be settled after it is decided what kind of an instrument of control we are to have.

The Cause of the Independent Voter

The system reaches out to every branch and root of the government. It is intrenched in the lifelong habits of men who have given themselves to politics. It is the only