A portrayal of Woodrow Wilson's legislative leadership and administive methods has more uses than as a reminder of achievements durably impressive in themselves. His practice partly answered his own unresolved thinking about the presidency; in turn it implied theories that serve as foils in looking at later developments. The centennial of Wilson's birth is a fitting time to recount the story drawing on memoirs that accumulated after his death. The emphasis may well be on domestic policy in view of the greater attention that has been given to Wilson's role in war and peace.

First we must examine the prior development of Wilson's thinking about the presidency. Our concern is the working conception of the office of American elected chief executives that he had come to hold by the time of his full entrance into public life.

As a college senior Wilson wrote on “Cabinet Government in the United States.” He deplored, as real cause of solicitude and doubt, “the absorption of all power by a legislature which is practically irresponsible for its acts.”

“Civilian control of the military is a basic principle of the American Constitution”; so runs the commonplace. It is the thesis of this article that the cliché could hardly be more inaccurate, for actually the American Constitution in the twentieth century obstructs the achievement of civilian control. It is well known that civil supremacy was a major concern of the Framers. They provided for it in the only form in which they knew it. But civilian control in the eighteenth century is very different from civilian control in the twentieth century: the Constitution which was expertly designed to provide for it then, for this very reason, frustrates it now. In presenting this thesis, it is necessary: (1) to show how the meaning of civilian control has changed over the intervening years; (2) to describe the Framers' concept and show how it was embodied in the Constitution; and (3) to demonstrate how the provisions which they thought would guarantee it impair its effectiveness today.

The dual status of the National Guard as a component of the national defense establishment and as a military force under state control has long been an object of Congressional and military concern, and lately has drawn some scholarly attention. It has not been generally appreciated, however, that without benefit of legislation or much public notice the domestic function of the Guard has been subtly and radically transformed during the past decade. From an embodiment of force it has become largely an instrument of rescue and relief. The change appears to be bringing a welcome increase in local prestige to this sometimes neglected and often controversial organization. But it suggests a serious problem in case an atomic attack should result in the mobilization of the Guard into national military service just at a time when its new domestic services are most urgently needed at home.

The existence of one-party systems of politics within the larger framework of the democratic society merits an increased share of the attention of students of American politics. For too long the common conception has been that one-party politics is a problem unique to the Southern states. This misconception persists even though systematic studies such as the monumental work of V. O. Key and Alexander Heard have illustrated that the politics of the so-called Solid South is in many respects the politics of the nation.

As a case in point, an examination of the composition of contemporary legislative delegations indicates that monopolistic control of elective offices is clearly not the exclusive province of the Southern Democrats. In 1955, three out of every four state legislative bodies or congressional delegations were so completely dominated by a single political party that that party controlled more than 66 per cent of the members of the group. Excluding the 15 Border and Southern states, fully half of the remaining 33 state legislatures were controlled by one party holding at least two out of every three seats; in only six states was the controlling margin below 55 per cent. Within the same group of non-Border, non-Southern states, 25 of the 33 congressional delegations were dominated by one party controlling two-thirds or more of the delegation members; only four delegations were so evenly divided as to give the majority party less than 55 per cent of the members.

The resurgence of conservatism may be described as the most significant postwar development in American thought. “No intellectual phenomenon has been more surprising in recent years,” Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., concedes, “than the revival in the United States of conservatism as a respectable social philosophy.” No longer can one lament, as Alpheus T. Mason did in 1948, that “conservatism, once more than respectable political theology (especially among the educated), now carries overtones of reaction well nigh as discrediting as the rabidities attributed to communism.” Intellectual spokesmen are now, on the contrary, making a concerted effort to revisit and revitalize the conservative point of view.

Although most of this “egg head” element in the conservative camp may be, and has been, dismissed as expressing an anachronistic yearning for the anticommercial traditions evolved in British feudalism, the business leaders whom they neglect have themselves been revising and actively selling a conservatism that appears to be more closely related to the realities of the American social situation.

James W. Prothro's hypothesis is that, while there has been a resurgence of “conservatism” in American political theory and practice, the actual intervention of the New Deal between the conservative government of Hoover and the conservative government of Eisenhower makes the complete rejection of New Deal appeals by a conservative administration difficult, if not impossible. There can be little quarrel with that thesis itself. Once given the assumptions that “conservatism” is an adequate frame of reference, that Hoover and Eisenhower may in some understandable way be classed as “conservatives,” and that, since the administration did in fact reluctantly accept certain New Deal symbols, they were necessarily obliged to do so, there is some question as to whether the thesis is not obvious. Prothro, however, gives serious reasons for buttressing “impressions” with precision, and presents a careful content analysis which strengthens his argument and should serve to enhance our understanding of current political trends.

The experience of modern totalitarian regimes suggests that they are not likely to perish through internal revolt unless that occurs at a time when the totalitarian regime is in mortal danger from an external challenge, as in the marginal Italian case, or these the totalitarian movement in power is about to undertake decisive measures to turn the country into a totalitarian system, as in the case of the counter-revolution against Peron in Argentina. Other than that, and even considering the succession crises, modern totalitarian regimes have shown themselves capable of maintaining their totalitarian character in spite of domestic and foreign opposition. More recently it has been argued (e.g., by I. Deutscher, Russia: What Next) that modern totalitarian regimes, if not overthrown by external forces, will nevertheless in the end be quietly and inevitably transformed into more democratic states by the subtler but irresistible influence of rationality inherent in the bureaucratic and managerial apparatus that no modern state can do without. This proposition will be developed more fully and given critical consideration in subsequent pages in order to test whether rationality, regarded in this context as a certain mode of thought and behavior induced by the requirements of modern industrialized and bureaucratized societies, is in fact incompatible with modern totalitarianism.

The world listened attentively while the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was in session in the spacious vaulted white and gold Great Hall of the Kremlin palace from February 14 to February 25, 1956. This was the first congress since the death of Stalin, and in the interim events had prompted some bewilderment and much speculation among interested observers everywhere. Specifically, outside spectators looked to the congress to illuminate the pattern underlying a series of developments between March, 1953, and February, 1956: the resignation of Georgi M. Malenkov as Premier; the ascendancy of First Secretary Nikita S. Khrushchev; Soviet assent to a peace treaty with Austria, politically “neutralizing” that country; Soviet withdrawal from bases in Porkkala, Finland, and Port Arthur; the visits of Khrushchev and Premier Nikolai A. Bulganin to India, Burma, and other countries; the announced reduction of Soviet military forces and military budget; the attempted rapprochement with Yugoslavia; initiation of an unprecedented Soviet economic offensive; and many other “unexpected,” Soviet-instigated moves.

Latin views toward the United States are not merely those of the weak toward the strong. They are, by the Latins' own definition, those of the poor toward the rich, the cultured toward the uncultured, the idealist toward the pragmatist. They are those of a people largely inexperienced and misled in the political arena, and without practical criteria for the Anglo-Saxon notion of “democracy,” either political or cultural. But they are bitterly experienced in the ways of dictatorship, economic exploitation, and grinding poverty. Born in Iberian feudalism and Catholic fervor, the Latin plainly does not understand the largely Protestant, industrialized, politically and culturally democratic, radical (and yet conservative) United States. It is certainly a slight exaggeration to say that the most important thing the two groups have in common is the hemisphere in which, by geographic accident, they live.

To them we are Yanquis, past and present exploiters, rich because they are poor, slightly drunk with our new postwar power, and verging toward fanaticism in our anti-communism. But their principal current complaint against us is our overflowing generosity toward Europe and Asia and our niggardliness toward themselves.