have been better to have followed Harry Truman's technique of saying, "I am a Democrat, I was elected as a Democrat, and I am going to try to represent the Democratic party during my years in office."

Senator BAYH. Can you give us some examples of damage that was done or perilous times that took place and were made more perilous by a President approaching his responsibility from the standpoint of representing all of the people?

Mr. BURNS. I think a conspicuous example is President Johnsonand I do not say this as a professional critic of President Johnson because I think in him we had a good President, but I do feel to the extent he tried to represent some kind of consensus and did not sense the rising of divisions that had to be dealt with in this country, to that extent his administration was handicapped.

Just before he made the statement that he would not run again he said he had tried to follow the consensus approach and he had discovered that it was not possible.

Senator BAYH. If you are talking about consensus politics in a legislative body, you are talking about getting a sufficient legislative vote to pass legislation. But as President, as the national leader, you would have a responsibility to think in broader terms. In other words, how large a totally disenchanted minority can the country tolerate. If the President assumes the position I am a Democrat, a liberal Democrat, and that is who I am going to represent, how does that attitude-if it does hinder his ability really to get the people themselves to be a part of a movement for a change in attitudes or addressing the Nation's new problems?

Mr. BURNS. Well, in my view, the President has no responsibility to bring along the minority. Perhaps I can simplify my position, Mr. Chairman, by saying I am a believer in majority rule and I am a believer in the right of the minority to oppose what the majority is doing, to oppose what the President is doing for the majority, and to present their case to the people. And if the people support the opposition's case at the next election, they become the majority and the new President represents the new majority, as indeed has been more or less the case in the election of President Nixon.

As long as the minority has its right to protest, to demonstrate, to use to the full the Bill of Rights of this Nation-and incidentally, as long as it has somewhat better forums than I think it now has to present its views that is all the minority deserves until it gets its chance.

Hence, I am not worried about the President trying to represent the minority as well as the majority. I am not worried about the possibility that the minority might pick up its bags and leave the country or leave politics. I simply expect the minority to do what the Democratic party is doing, today, for example, and that is to try to become the majority by going back to the people.

Senator BAYH. Let me ask you something a bit further then, something a bit more specific about your suggestions relative to the change congressional terms.

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I have supported the lengthening of the House terms, but I have not supported the specific proposal that you made that they be elected concurrently with the President.

I haven't given much thought to the shortening of the senatorial terms. I think perhaps from a pragmatic point more than anything

else, it might be a bit difficult to get a two-thirds vote of the Senate to do that. But it has not been easy to get any specific or significant support in the House for the lengthening of their terms.

Let me deal with the philosophical problem of the inability of the people to express their consent or dissatisfaction at least at 4-year intervals now with one-third of the Senate being elected every 2 years and all of the House. I would suggest that at least we ought to have half of the House elected every 2 years to guarantee a barometer on public opinion to continue to let the people have their voice expressed in the democratic process.

Does that 4-year length concern you at all or do you feel

Mr. BURNS. Mr. Chairman, I'll say first if you can find any Senator who will support limiting the senatorial term to 4 years—I would be very surprised to see you find such a man. I am not sure how popular he would be in the Upper Chamber if he came out for a 4-year term.

But on your question as to whether a 4-year term for the Representatives be wholly congruent with the presidential term or should it be staggered

Senator BAYH. If I might just say one thing further, this is very similar of course to the parliamentary system. When a government is imposed on the country or takes over, anyway you may care to describe it, indeed, the government has the tools to impose its will on the country, but if that will is not the popular will, then under most parliamentarian systems, it can be changed, and you don't have to wait 4 years.

Now, I'll let you speak on that.

Mr. BURNS. I think that is a very good additional statement, Mr. Chairman, but I would add to what you said that in fact in Britain, which is the greatest example of the kind of parliamentary control you are speaking about, that in fact practically never in this century has that power been exercised.

Almost always the British resort to an election unless there happens to be a coalition government, which they have not had for some time. But on the 4-year term, this really depends on how we evaluate elections and I think, incidentally, Senators and Representatives are just as good at evaluating elections as political scientists and historians to my mind the greatest of all politic processes is the presidential election, because as I said in my statement, this is where people participate the most and this is where the issues are most clearly presented to the American people.

Now, if you should have a 4-year congressional term staggered with the presidential term or even half of them elected during the so-called off year, from my standpoint that simply muddies the waters, because for one thing, people do not turn out to such a degree-particularly the low-income people. In the off-year election the issues are not clarified and presented as alternatives to the people.

From my standpoint the off-year election is not a very good election. Indeed-and your own experience, Mr. Chairman, might be useful on this score-in the off-year election national issues tend to be drawn into the orbit of local and sectional issues so there is not a cleancut national decision in the off-year election. And hence, I would be much happier if the President and the 4-year Congressmen and Senators went before the people in the election year when the people are thinking in terms of the national issues.

Senator BAYH. Well, is it fair to say that there would result in each Congressman being a party to a greater degree than he is now in national politics, any Senator or Congressman, and thus it would depersonalize the representation in Congress?

Mr. BURNS. Did you say that he would be a representative of a national constituency?

Senator BAYH. Yes, and it would tend to depersonalize representation.

Mr. BURNS. Well, it would depersonalize to a degree, but these would be a presidential candidate and a congressional candidate and a senatorial candidate running essentially on the same party or team and having some kind of collective responsibility to the people.

Senator BAYH. What effect would a 6-year term have in your judg ment, looking at the party structure, on the viability of the two-party system?

Mr. BURNS. I think it would have a damaging effect, Mr. Chairman, but I wouldn't make too much of that point because I don't think Presidents generally have served their party and have been concerned about their national parties.

Presidents have tended to mobilize their own constituencies, to run on their own personal power basis, so that we cannot do much worse than we are doing now, but if a President had 6 years during which he did not have to worry about reelection, he not only would not care particularly about his own power base that put him into office, he certainly would not care very much about the party as a structure. And one thing I would hope, incidentally, that would result from the repealing of the 22d amendment would be that the Presidents might begin to pay more attention to the two great parties that have elected them, or nominated them to begin with, and that in my view badly need more presidential support as political organizations.

Senator BAYH. You basically feel a two-party system is beneficial to our political structure in this country?

Mr. BURNS. Yes, I do.

Senator BAYI. Could you give me a little better idea of your thoughts relative to the interrelationship between the presidential power and the role as political leader he must play. Is that imperative, in your judgment? What pluses or minuses do we have?

Mr. BURNS. That is the kind of a question that invites volumes from political scientists rather than brief answers, but I will give you as brief an answer as I can. No. 1, I believe strongly in presidential leadership as long as there is a very strong opposition-that is, a party opposition, as well as a press and congressional opposition, to that leadership.

But if the question is leadership, I would grant that on the face of this proposal, this joint resolution would suggest that perhaps a President could be more of a leader if he had a 6-year term.

I would doubt it. I think great leadership is based in politics. It is based in political organization. Leaders can move ahead when they know that they have something of a following, something of a constituency. I would worry that if a President were elected for 6 years and could not run again, his party might lose interest.

On the face of it, it might seem wonderful to have a President who was floating up there not worried about grasping, backroom politics,

but I think that after a year or two of this kind of euphoria, the basic workings of a democracy would start operating and this President would have a miserable 4 years, more or less, as he watched his power slipping away and being eroded away as rival candidates and the two parties turned to new candidates that might be the Presidents of the future.

Senator BAYH. Is there an inconsistency between what you just said relative to the presidential power being related to what I suppose he would offer in the way of support through the country as a presidential leader and the feeling that you expressed earlier that consensus politics is not good?

In other words, if a President is able to bring under the tent, so to speak, a broad base of support, he has more political power and thus can be a stronger national leader, that is, pursuant to what you just said about the relationship between the two

Mr. BURNS. Senator, I simply disagree that that is what would happen. As I said, I think what would look like great political power would not in fact be the kind of political power that is translated into specific politics and legislation.

After all, what is power and what is great leadership, as Woodrow Wilson once said, except the ability to gather the people behind great objectives of the President or the party?

That takes more than oratory. It takes more than talking about how he may represent all of the people. It takes day-to-day manipulating people, pressure, management, pulling strings, getting people to do the things that they think ought to be done, the kinds of things that people talk about. And if the Presidents discovered that the practical politics, the hundreds of men that a President had to work with, were turning their gaze elsewhere and looking toward future Presidents, I think this would make for a very ineffective President.

Senator BAYH. Let me ask your thoughts relative to the testimony given earlier this morning by Mr. Califano in which-to paraphrasehis reason for the 6-year term was the length of time it takes a new leader to organize. You pointed out in your statement that the Presidents who have been felt most successful were those who had achieved significant success in their first 2 years.

He used the following chronology of the budgetmaking process. Particularly in light of today's monetary pressures and the tremendous amount of Federal funds that are now being utilized, the new President would enter office in January of 1973; he would send proposals to the Congress probably sometime early in 1974, major proposals that his administration would have to hammer out early in 1975; they would be passed by Congress and then would take a period of time to implement them. His basic point was that a President gets into office and for 2 years he is really operating on budgetary decisions that have been made by his predecessor. What are your thoughts on that? Mr. BURNS. I am not sure I would have much to add to his testimony except if you, as a committee, are interested in the possibilities of dealing with that kind of problem, I have long felt there ought to be a kind of housekeeping amendment to the Constitution with a number of things in it. But one in particular would be to change the scheduling of American elections and new presidential administrations.

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I would like to see presidential or national elections held let's say in October which would cut down even more on the kind of lameduck situation we have today.

I would like to see the election in mid-October and the President inaugurated in mid-December. He could have a Christmas vacation period to organize his administration.

Now, that might sound like a rather small change and perhaps it is, but I would couple that with a broader point that I think relates to the question you are raising, one of the troubles with our system, it seems to me, is that Presidents so typically neglect their parties. The parties are not governing institutions. They should be. And again the British example is very good on this. If we really have effective collective leadership in our parties, then Presidents who are elected would be in a much better position to move quickly ahead with their new budget and their new legislative programs than they are today.

I think 1968 is a very good example of a late convention that led to a tremendously traumatic presidential campaign. And if Mr. Humphrey had been elected, he would have had, it seems to me, a lameduck period that was not particularly conducive to solving the kinds of problems you have mentioned.

Perhaps I better stop there because otherwise this gets into complications about the nature of the party system. But my basic point is that if we had more of a collective party leadership, not necessarily made up just of people trying to become President, but also leaders of the party in Congress and in present or past administrative circles, then we would have a kind of continuous shadow opposition, a continuous party opposition which like the party opposition in Great Britain could take power immediately.

You may have been interested to notice when the parties change office in Great Britain, it happens quite quickly. There no longer is a lameduck period. A new party, a new government will quickly come in. They have no budgetary problems because they have been thinking these problems out all of the way through.

Senator BAYH. They have a going shadow government and shadow program.

Mr. BURNS. Exactly, this is what I am talking about, a shadow government that is prepared to govern on the promises it has made to the people in order to achieve power.

Senator BAYH. I can see that the possibility of having this happen would be greater if we followed your other suggestion of a 4-year Senate and House term. It would be very difficult perhaps to implement. Would the Members put party loyalty above duty to their

constituents?

Let me ask you something further about the whole relationship to the President and the party. I have studied this and although I haven't really been cognizant of it as long as you have. I can recall my brief tenure in Washington. I don't know all the facts, but under the Kennedy administration the powers of the National Committee seemed to be exercised from the White House. The same was true with the Johnson administration-perhaps even more so under the Johnson administration. When President Nixon was elected one of the first things he did was to remove the National Chairman, Chairman Bliss, and put in effect the type of program nationally that elected him.