Limey's eye view
JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE
The New American Commonwealth Louis Heren (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 50s) The trade of a modern resident foreign corres- pondent is a delicate one. Ideally he should be the candid friend of the nation on which he is reporting: biased in its favour, but alert to its shortcomings and the shortcomings of its rulers. Like diplomats stationed overseas, foreign correspondents do not attain maturity until they have been resident for several years. But the longer they stay, the greater the danger they will lose touch with the audience to which they are supposed to be reporting; and, at the same time, if they overestimate their liberty to report without fear or favour, they may find the hos- pitality of their hosts withdrawn.
Louis Heren is one of the most distinguished of all modern practitioners of the trade. For four years at the end of the 'fifties he covered western Germany for The Times, by which time he had exhausted the limited patience of Chan- cellor Adenauer. He then moved to Washing- ton, where he rapidly became one of the most acute observers of the American scene. He has now produced a fascinating and erudite study of the operation of the modern American political system.
His theme is that the American Presidency is best understood as 'a latter-day version of a British mediaeval monarchy.' This is an illuminating paradox, though one Mr Heren wisely refrains from pressing too far. But there is one essential element missing: heredity. It is no coincidence that what he calls 'the Heron Theory' was evidently inspired by the nearest approach to a dynasty the Americans have yet experienced, namely the Kennedys. Yet recent events have reminded us that even the Ken- nedys may not find it so easy to impose a hereditary system on their fellow-countrymen.
Nevertheless in many other respects the thesis is tenable. Because of the unprecedented scale of the resources at his disposal the American President is in theory infinitely more powerful than the mediaeval English monarchs. Yet in practice his power, like theirs, is circumscribed by the feudal independence of the barons on Capitol Hill. Indeed, I suspect that Mr Heren tends to underestimate the powers remaining in the hands of Congress. He rightly points out that since the war Congress has suffered from a revulsion against what is now seen as its cardinal error in intervening to block President Wilson's plans for the League of Nations. But in recent months Congress, and in particular Senator Fulbright's Foreign Relations Com- mittee, has been using the opportunity pro- vided by the unpopularity of the Vietnam war, to reverse the balance to some extent: and there are some observers in Washington who now believe that we are heading back again towards a new era of Congressional authority. Much will depend on the personality of the next President.
Mr Heren is far from being an uncritical admirer of the American political system. He reminds us of a fact which is too often over- looked: that since the last war the United States, whether or not one accepts the explana- tion that it has been acting in defence of the `free world,' has in fact proved far more aggressively interventionist in international affairs than has the Soviet Union. He is worried by the haphazard nature of the transfer of power from one President to the next, and the parting words of his book, 'The President, God bless him' are to be understood in their most literal and admonitory sense. He feels, in fact, that the British system of Cabinet government (he does not fall for the fashionable fallacy of seeing the Prime Minister as a President) has merits which could with advantage be trans- posed across the Atlantic.
It is here, in his almost uncritical assessment of the modern British system of Cabinet govern- ment, that glr Heren seems to me to show that prolonged absence lends enchantment. Any- body who has lived through recent weeks in the House of Commons must be forgiven for doubting whether the United States or any other country has anything to gain from copying our methods of government. Nor can one readily accept, as one watches the progress of the American primaries, that a system which entrusts the selection of the majority of its elected representatives to handfuls of self- appointed party stalwarts in the constituencies is in any sense more truly democratic.
This does not detract from the merits of a remarkable book. Mr Heren, as those who have read his reports in The Times would expect, is lucid, educational in the best sense, and fre- quently entertaining. He has produced a work which should be read with profit on both sides of the Atlantic.
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