Government by the people

I'm afraid Abraham Lincoln stored up a heap of woe – of disappointment anyway – when he coined that resounding phrase, 'government of the people, by the people, for the people'. Without doing an autopsy on a long-dead horse, let me simply say that every kind of government, from the most rigid dictatorship to the loosest sort of democracy, is a government of the people, and all governments, however tyrannical, pretend that they're governing for the people. But, government 'by' the people?

Surely Lincoln, piping away there in his thin voice at Gettysburg while very few people listened, surely he got caught up in the lilt of the sentence and had to throw in 'by the people' because it made a rhythmic end? Government by the people might be possible in a town of, say, ten inhabitants, though I've noticed that in the smallest towns in the United States, the famous institution of the town meeting is devoted not so much to everybody running everything as electing one or two people to take charge and then complaining about them. 

In Plains, Georgia, you may remember, there was an election a few months ago for mayor. Now, Plains has over 600 inhabitants, prominent among whom – prominent since about last autumn – is Billy Carter, the president's permanently cheerful brother. He was defeated in the election and the job went back to the man who already had it. Now, you'd think that in a small, democratic community the jobs would be carefully distributed so that everybody had the chance to do his little bit and feel important, yet the mayor of Plains is also the town barber and also the head of the fire department. It seems that most people are either unequipped or uninclined to want 'government by the people' and in a big country, say, in this one of 215 millions, government by the people would be government by chaos. But the phrase has a ring to it and promises wonderful vague things and few people have stopped to think about it and no politician dare bring it out into the light of day and say what every politician knows – that it's impractical to the point of absurdity. 

Yet nowadays every ambitious politician running for anything, but running mainly to throw the rascals out, has to promise that he's going to set up a new administration that will be 'a people's' government. It must be eight years ago that John Lindsay, a tall, gangling man with a gorgeous profile, ran again for mayor of New York and, if elected, he promised his administration would be so much a people's government that he would set up, at every street corner – well not at every street corner but at regular intervals – little offices housed in empty shop windows or unleased garages, places where people, anybody, could come, make a complaint and have a direct pipeline to the mayor himself. It was a rousing idea and suggests the sort of picture of the... the little man running the country that we used to get in the movies of the 1930s from Frank Capra, 'Mr Deeds Goes to Town', 'Mr Smith Goes to Washington', etc. 

Need I say that, so far as I ever heard, not a single first-aid station of this sort was ever set up. Once back in the mayor's mansion, Mr Lindsay evidently thought better of it. Not because he didn't mean his original promise, not because he was cynical, but because he was the mayor and it was bad enough delegating responsibility to the city council and the police commissioner and the health commissioner, and the Port of New York Authority, and so on, and so on, let alone asking seven or eight million people to come in and participate. 

Well, during the presidential campaign, Mr Carter made a regular point of saying he was going to give the government back to the people. No more imperial presidency, no longer a tight little ship with a small crew, ignoring the Congress, the people and, sometimes, the law, a gang of cronies responsible to nobody but the chief. After Watergate, it was certainly necessary for any intending president to promise that the administration would not be a hunter, would stop the secret taping of conversations, would not swipe large sums of money for one purpose and launder them for another. Naturally. 

Mr Carter announced this week that there would be no secret monitoring of telephone calls in the White House or the State Department. That's to say, nobody phoning the White House will need to fear that someone, the presidential secretary or aide, will be taking notes. This is not necessarily a sneaky proceeding. We know now that it was a regular thing during the Kennedy administration and from then on. And every businessman, at some point, receives an important call and asks his secretary to get on the extension and take down notes. That's fair enough. But in the White House under the gentleman from San Clemente, as we all know, everybody from foreign ambassadors to hatchet men were recorded in some form or another, without their knowledge. 

Well, that's all over and a necessary thing too. But, some time ago, Mr Carter also promised that he would set up 'a people's' telephone line in the White House, which any and all of us, all 215 million, could call and say what was on our minds. Well, all I can say is, anybody who has every tried to call an airline or the weather bureau when a storm's brewing, knows that they are just about permanently busy. And I predict that if that line is ever installed and publicised, what we'll have is not half a million Americans enjoying the glow of running their government, but half a million a year speechless with frustration at not being able to get in on the government at all. 

Why do I say only half a million? Well, I figure – and I think I'm being an optimist – that every caller can say what he or she wants to say and get a satisfactory answer in one minute. There are 530,600 minutes in a year. The line will be going full blast, of course, 24 hours a day. What about the other 214 and a half million? We've heard no more about it and I doubt we ever shall. 

But, in some other ways, Mr Carter has given us very welcome reassurances. Since time immemorial, the president's executive aides, the White House press secretary, the National Security advisor, assistant secretaries of state, economic advisors, all his so-called kitchen Cabinet running to scores, maybe hundreds, they've each had a private limousine and a chauffeur to pick them up at home, drive them to work or wherever they wanted to go, bring them back at night, sit around outside till the aide said, 'We'll not be needing you any more, you can go home, Joseph!' No more! White House aides, even as you and I, will take the bus. Cars only available for official conferences, going, say, from the White House to the state department or the treasury, or wherever. 

And in two notable ways, President Carter dramatised another promise – not explicitly stated the way I'm stating it – that he would preside over a government which, if it was not a government 'by' the people, would have the people always in mind and would not 'flaunt' privileges they could not afford, or pomp and circumstance more fitting to a monarchy or a fuehrer. 

On inauguration day, the most warming sight was the president getting out of his car and walking the long walk from the Capitol to the White House, holding hands with his wife and daughter, Amy. A small, sentimental gesture, maybe, but it impressed millions of people, the way Thomas Jefferson impressed the people by dispensing with a horse and coach and walking up to the Capitol when he was sworn in. Once the president is sworn in, he usually goes into the Capitol and has a big fancy luncheon of many wines and courses, and the Marine band plays 'Hail to the Chief'. Well, Mr Carter had only his family and the vice president's family and they had sandwiches and soft drinks and were out within half an hour. And when a bunch of Cabinet officers trooped in before the Chief Justice to take their oaths of office, the president ordered that there should be no spotlights and no band playing 'Hail to the Chief.' 

It would be a solid achievement, by the way, of the Carter administration if we never heard 'Hail to the Chief' again. It's a wretched tune but, nevertheless, it reminds us that the president is above and beyond the ordinary citizen. There's even been a rumour that the president would like to abolish the convention of being called 'Mr President' and let himself be addressed simply as Mr Carter. All of these are small things but in a republic, where the head of state is elected, they're surely not bad things. 

However, Mr Carter has already discovered that being president is such a full-time job of running everything and consulting only the few people who are always round you that he has neglected what other presidents have found to be not simply a courtesy, but an essential chore of the office if he is to get, and hold, in the Congress a majority of votes sympathetic to the bills he means to put before them. And that is to be in constant touch with his two party leaders in the Senate and the house, especially with the enormously powerful figure, his party's key figure in the Senate, the so-called 'majority leader'. 

Now Washington already knows that Mr Carter is an alert and knowing politician but Washington was astounded to hear on Wednesday that President Carter has never, in a single instance, consulted the majority leader, Senator Robert Byrd, about any of his appointments. The president had called him several times to announce that he'd made such and such appointment but he never asked advice. And Senator Byrd said to the press that if, for instance, Mr Carter had called him and mentioned Theodore Sorensen for head of the CIA, he could have warned him that the nomination would have a very rough time being approved by the Senate, which we all know it wasn't. Senator Byrd is an equable and generous man and is not given to indignation or hurt pride but, very quietly, he said he hoped the president would initiate himself into 'a process of learning'. 

'Otherwise,' Senator Byrd said, 'we'll see some slowing down when legislation hits the hill.' Senator Byrd, more than anybody, is the man who can ease the president's bills through the Senate or freeze them, and the first process of learning for any president who wants his party in Congress to be on his side is to cuddle up as soon as possible to the party's leader. 

The cuddling had better begin.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

Letter from America audio recordings of broadcasts ©BBC

Letter from America scripts © Cooke Americas, RLLP. All rights reserved.