"COS COB, Conn. — The American Presidency has become a greater risk than
it is worth. The time has come to seriously consider the substitution of cabinet government or some form of shared executive power.

There is no use continually repeating that the form arranged by the
Framers of the Constitution must serve forever unchanged. Monarchy too
was once considered immutable and even divinely established but it had
to give way under changed conditions. The conditions of Ainerican
executive power, today, commanding agencies, techniques and instruments unimaginable in the eighteenth century, no more resemble the conditions familiar to Jefferson and Madison than they do those under Hammurabi.

..
The Presidency has gained too great a lead; it has bewitched the
occupant, the press and the public. While this process has been apparent
from John F. Kennedy on, it took the strange transformation of good old open‐Presidency Gerald R. Ford to make It clear that the villain is not
the man but the office.

Hardly had he settled in the ambiance of the White House than he began
to talk like Louis XIV and behave like Richard M. Nixon. If there was
one lesson to be learned from Watergate it was the danger in overuse of
the executive power and in interference with. the judicial system.
Within a month of taking office Mr. Ford has violated both at once. The swelling sense of personal absolutism shows in those disquieting
remarks: “The ethical tone will be what I make it....” “In this
situation I am the final authority...,” and, in deciding to block the unfolding of legal procedure, “My conscience says it is my duty....” Our judicial system can operate well enough without the dictate of Mr.
Ford's conscience. To be President is not to.be

But Mr. Ford is not alone responsible. The press overplayed him as it overplayed John Kennedy and the absurd pretensions of Camelot. The New
York Times published Mr. Ford's picture twelve times on the front page
in the first fourteen days ‘of his tenure. Why? We all know what he
looks like. But if it can be said that the press gives the public what
it wants, then all of us are responsible. By packing our craving for
father ‐worship into the ,same person who makes and executes policy a
system no other country uses we have given too much greatness to the Presidency. It seizes hold of the occupant as we have seen it do with
Mr. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Mr. Nixon. It has led Mr. Ford into
an entirely unnecessary breach of our last rampart, the judicial
process, an act that can only be explained as being either crooked—that
is, by some undercover deal with his predecessor — or stupid. We cannot
at this date afford either at the head of the American Government.

Nor is the Presidency getting firstrate men. The choice between
candidates in the last three elections has been dismal. Things now
happen too fast to allow us time to wait until the system readjusts
itself. The only way to defuse the Presidency and minimize the risk of a
knave, simpleton or a despot exercising supreme authority without check
or consultation is to divide the power and spread the responsibility. Constitutional change is not beyond our capacity.

Barbara W, Tuchman, a historian, is author of “Stillwell and the
American Experience in China.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1974/09/20/archives/defusing-the-presidency.html

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