This is why, first of all, the President of the Reich must not resemble the President of the French Republic. The fact that in France the President is elected by the National Assembly engenders a constitutional situation full of inconveniences. The President there is only a purely representative figure, Parliament having acquired absolute omnipotence which is directly contrary to true democracy. The parliamentarism which Germany wants is a parliamentarism whose mechanism is controlled by the people; and not a parliamentarism in which the President is reduced to complete inactivity and has no other care than to remain on the best possible terms with the Chambers. The members of the Constituent Assembly in supporting this condemnation--unanimous in Germany--of the French system quoted Professor Redslob, according to whom parliamentarism in France is completely adulterated.[40] But neither must the President of the Reich resemble the President of the United States. True, there were many in Germany at the end of 1918 and at the beginning of 1919 who wished for a chief of state a man who could act and represent the Reich with the independence and the authority of a Wilson. But this wish does not seem to have prevailed. The Constituent Assembly, in any event, wanted to inaugurate in Germany a parliamentary régime; whereas in America, the House of Representatives has only legislative power and the executive power rests wholly in the hands of the President. The Assembly resolved to give the Reichstag the right to co-operate in executive action and to exercise a control over the administration. In addition the President in America himself nominates his Cabinet without concern as to whether or not his Secretaries have the confidence of the Chamber, to whom they are not responsible. He is invested with a dangerous omnipotence, incompatible with parliamentary régime. The American system therefore, like the French system, must be rejected. None of the forms of existing republican governments were entirely suitable for the German Republic; there would have to be created for its use a new type of chief of state. There would have to be created for the first time true parliamentarism, different from the imperfect parliamentarism such as exists in France. French parliamentarism consists of the omnipotence of Parliament which for four years acts free of all control on the part of the people. After each election democracy in France plays no part. In the true parliamentarism, however, Parliament is not omnipotent; but is subject to a control exercised by a democratic authority and this authority must be, in Germany, a President.