HOW, WHAT AND WHY OF THE MAN WHO

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000400410008-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 5, 1999
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: October 18, 1964
• Content Type: NSPR

BOOK WEEK
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-
NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE
OCTOBER 18, 1964
FOIAb3b
CPYRGHT
How, what and why.
of the man who
By Arnold A. Rogow
THE PRESIDENT AS WORLD LEADER. By Sidney Warren.
Lippincott. 480 pp. $6.95.
THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE. By Louis W. Koenig. Harcourt, Brace
The authors of The Federalist, who were the first
!to write about the powers and responsibilities of the
Presidency, our unique institutional contribution to
the art of government, were unable to look back on
any election when they wrote that the electoral process
practically guaranteed "that the office of President
will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in.
an eminent degree endowed with the requisite quali-
`fications.. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts
of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to
the first honors in a single state; but it will require
other talents, and a different' kind of merit, to estab-
ilish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole
!union ..." One wonders what they would have said
about the selections made at the Cow Palace and in
Atlantic City.
-But even if they 'had taken the worst possible view
of the candidates, they might have reminded its that
Plato's insight-"Power snakes the man"-becomes, in
the American setting,. the truism that the Presidency
makes the man. As these two 'books demonstrate,,
many a man has come to the White House without
distinction of any kind and with little or. no reputa-
tion for rectitude. Yet we have never had a corrupt
President although we have had many corrupt gov-
ernors, judges, senators, congressmen, and mayors.
Of the books under review, only the Koenig volume
can be regarded as'a major contribution to our knowl-_
edge of the American. Presidency. Sidney Warren's
The President .'as World Leader begins with Theodore
Roosevelt and ends with John F. Kennedy, but that
is the least of its limitations. In essence, Mr. Warren,
who teaches political science at California Western.
University in San Diego, has n9thing new or provoc-
ative or definitive to say about his subject. Like
most political scientists he is partial to the "do-some- i
thing" Presidents; he therefore prefers the Roose-
velts (both of them), Wilsons, Trumans and Ken
Indeed, his esteem for JFK might appear excessive
even to the most devoted Kennedypltile when he writes i
that the late President "elevated the presidency to
the highest eminence it had ever reached." The basis
of this statement is not Kennedy's "actual accom-
plishments" which, the author' admits, "were few,"
but "the ideas he generated, the forces he set in mo-
tion." Mr. Warren seems to believe that there would
have been no civil rights act, no test-ban agreement,
no awareness that poverty is a national disgrace, had
Kennedy not been President for 34 months. The author
thus, manifests ignorance of those world-wide and
national social forces that moved JFK, and will move
future Presidents, in certain.
Continued
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000400410008-8