Socialism, Class Struggle and The American Presidency

From Farewell, America (1968) :

"Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt were accidents along the way, deviates from the American mythology. 

An American who enters politics for unselfish reasons is regarded with suspicion. 

His attitude can only conceal a lust for power or a senseless and dangerous devotion to the "public welfare." Politics and the public welfare have little in common, and the activities of a politician are not considered normal or comprehensible unless they are pursued for selfish and material gain. 

President Jackson was condemned in 1831 by Vincenne's Gazette

in these terms: "Ambition is his crime, and it will be his undoing."

Harold Laski has written that "a strong President is a moral threat" to all those who have toiled to build an American society whose prosperity is based on initiative, energy and efficiency, but also on what Europeans call corruption, an additional arm made available to those whose sole motivation is profit. America, wrote George Washington, is a country where political offices bear no proportion to those who seek them.

America accepted Franklin D. Roosevelt only because she had no other alternative. She found herself again in Harry Truman, a solid citizen with no perverse ambitions who declared that "the combined thought and action of a people always lead in the right direction." 

 Eisenhower was the ideal President. A victorious commander, he dazzled the crowds. Inconsistent, he had no dangerous political philosophy. A petty bourgeois, he dared not oppose the Titans.

And suddenly Kennedy appeared, the first President born in this century, a millionaire, a liberal, and an intellectual. 

The Democratic candidate nevertheless made no attempt to conceal his aims.

"In the decade that lies ahead -- in the challenging revolutionary sixties -- the American Presidency will demand more than ringing manifestoes issued from the rear of the battle. It will demand that the President place himself in the very thick of the fight, that he care passionately about the fate of the people he leads, that he be willing to serve them at the risk of incurring their momentary displeasure." "

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tdauwz8srspafic/Farewell_America.pdf