Congress and the presidency : their role in modern times

Few political issues are more funda mental or controversial than the question of what roles Congress and the Presidency should play in governing our country in modern times. This first in a series of Rational Debates was not designed to resolve disagreements on this issue, but to bare their roots in the form of conflicting matters of fact, value, or judgement.

In the argumentation presented here, Professors Alfred de Grazia and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., have met this aim with clarity and dispatch, as we had every reason to expect. Those from Govern ment, academia, and the press who wit nessed the debate towards the end of 1966 are surely wiser for it, and public policy will reap the benefit. For it is through the eyes of an oponent that one's own philosophy is usually most clearly perceiv ed and rationally conceived.

This book now brings the debate, just as it took place, into the homes of the general public. Only the sequence has been rearranged, the lectures and rebuttals of Professors Schlesinger and de Grazia being grouped together to make it easier for the reader to follow the basic argument without interruption.