For a Life-Size Presidency

The presidency, said Minnesota Senator Walter F. Mondale last week, has become "larger than life and larger than the law." In a direct challenge to President Nixon's view, Mondale insisted in a major Senate speech that the people "want desperately to uncover the lessons of Watergate."

Immediate governmental reforms, he went on, would help considerably. But at the heart of the offenses issuing from Watergate, Mondale declared, is the disproportionately large role the presidency has come to play in all the affairs of Government. "We need a life-size presidency," he said, "with its faults recognized, its virtues praised, and its interaction with Congress and the courts one of mutual respect." How to scale down the scope of the presidency with out impairing the necessary powers of the office? Mondale, who has presidential aspirations of his own for '76, suggested appointment of a presidential commission to study the problem. Such commissions historically have been short on answers, but Mondale has surely posed some of the right questions.

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