Deadlock of Democracy

How is the country really governed? Are there really only two major politi cal parties? How does a President gain and use political power? Can the Amer ican political system overcome the deepening deadlock in government?

These and many other urgent ques tions concerning American politics are probed in this brilliant study of Amer ican political structure and power. James MacGregor Burns says that we have lost control of our politics, that we have a government by fits and starts that cannot supply the steady leadership for the conduct of our af fairs, that we react to change instead of dominating it. This condition exists, he maintains, because there are in re ality four political parties, not two.

Both Republicans and Democrats are split into a presidential party and a congressional party. These are not sim ply wings but separate entities. They have their own lines of power, com munication and organization, their own aims and policies, their own mech ods of governing. The result, says the author, is a complex web of power, leadership and loyalty, and a national government that seems facing the two great challenges of incapable of this century-communist competition abroad, and the degradation of urban man at home.