EVENTS THAT HAVE TAKEN AWAY THE POWER OF POLITICAL-PARTY OFFICIALS

            For many decades in American history, the political-party organizations and their leaders had significant influence over political campaigns, elections, and public policy.  However, events over the past 140 years have drastically eroded the power of the political-party organizations and their leaders.  Here is a discussion of these milestone events.

1.       Civil Service Act of 1883

            After about half a century of experience with the “spoils system” that President Andrew Jackson established when he was elected in 1828, Americans decided that the spoils system encouraged corruption in the national government.  The assassination of President James Garfield by a so-called “disgruntled job seeker” was the final impetus for Congress to enact the Civil Service of Act of 1883, whose purpose was to begin the phasing-out of the spoils system and the installation of the civil-service or “merit” system.  Jobs in the national government’s executive branch below the policymaking level (i.e., below such positions as Cabinet members, agency directors, and their immediate subordinates) are covered by the civil service.  This includes a variety of professional jobs such as agents, analysts, inspectors, accountants/bookkeepers, scientists, engineers, etc.  It is a violation of the Civil Service Act of 1883 for appointments to those jobs to be determined based on partisan affiliation.  The only acceptable criterion for appointment to the civil service is merit.  This law eliminated influence by the party organizations and leaders in the selection of executive-branch employees below the policymaking level.  (At the policymaking level‑‑the highest levels in the executive branch‑‑the appointments are “partisan appointments” and the appointees are selected by the president and his assistants.  The president is entirely entitled to take political loyalty into consideration when he makes these partisan appointments.)

2.      The “seniority system” was installed as a reform to break up the speaker’s oligarchy (Joe Cannon vs. Champ Clark)

            Up until 1910, the speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives had enormous power over the legislative/policymaking process.  He single-handedly decided who would be the chairmen of the standing committees.  He also determined who would be the members of the House Rules Committee, which determines which bills will come to the House floor for debate and a vote.  The speaker worked closely with the chairman of his party’s national committee and, together, they could decide which policies would be established by law and which ones would not.  In 1910, there was an uprising against the last of the all-powerful speakers‑‑Republican Joe Cannon‑‑led by Champ Clark.  Cannon was ousted.  The members of the House took away the speaker’s unilateral power to appoint the chairmen of the standing committees.  Thereinafter, on each standing committee, the committee member who belonged to the majority party and had the most seniority on the committee automatically became the chairman.  This took enormous power away from the position of speaker and from the position of the party’s national chairman, in so far as they could not dictate policy anymore.

3.      The Hatch Act was enacted in 1939, prohibiting national-government civil-service employees from openly participating in politics

            Even after the civil-service system had been installed to reduce the power of the party organization and leadership (so that they could not control appointments to executive-branch positions as they did during the days of the spoils system), suspicion persisted that, somehow, the party leaders were still involved in placing loyal party members into government jobs and that such loyal members were tithing their pay to the political parties.  Therefore, to extinguish the link between the political-party organizations and the civil service, Congress enacted the Hatch Act of 1939.  This law prohibited civil servants from openly participating in politics.  Thereinafter, they could not be a member of any political organization or committee, they could not donate to campaigns, they could not put yard signs in front of their homes indicating their support for a candidate, etc.

4.      Primary elections for nominations took party leaders out of the process (no more “smoke-filled rooms”)

            In the 1910s, Robert La Follette of Wisconsin led the Progressive Movement.  The centerpiece of the Progressive Movement’s beliefs was a familiar one in American political history:  The movement’s members were convinced that all of the corruption in American politics originated in the political-party organizations.  They demanded that the power to decide who the parties’ nominees for elected offices would be should be taken away from the party leaders (who were denounced as “kingmakers” who would make such decisions in “smoke-filled rooms”) and transferred to the voters through the use of party primary elections.  Journalists joined the Progressives’ demands that primary elections become prevalent for selecting party nominees.  State by state, legislatures changed election laws to require primary elections.  A principal influence of party leaders‑‑selection of party nominees for elections‑‑was gradually eliminated across the United States.

5.      U. S. Supreme Court:  Smith v. Allwright (1944) – “white primaries” are illegal; parties are “inclusive”

            In many of the racist, mostly southern, states, one of the tricks used by the white, racist, elite class to disfranchise black citizens was to declare the Democratic state organizations to be private associations and to say that, as private organizations, they possessed the right to deny membership to black citizens.  Thus, the Democratic primaries in these states were “white primaries.”  The nature of the abuse of this arrangement was based on the Democrats’ monopoly of politics in the “Solid South”:  These states had banished the Republican party after the Civil War to punish the party for prosecuting the war against the southern states.  If Democratic voters could not vote in the Democratic primaries, then, by the time that they could vote in the general election, there was only one candidate for each position:  the winner of the Democratic primary.  Thus, there was no way for black voters to have any influence over who would get elected.  The U. S. Supreme Court accepted the case of Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944).  In this case, the Supreme Court rejected the Democratic state organizations’ claim to be private associations; instead, the court said that these organizations are unmistakably public because of their influence in the process of elections.  The side-effect of the court’s opinion is that, since then, the law has recognized that American political parties are inclusive.  That means that anyone who wants to join either party has the unqualified right to do so.  This characteristic of the political parties decreases the party organizations’ and leaders’ power in this regard:  If anyone who wants to be a member of either party is free to do so, then the party leaders have very little ability to impose discipline on members.  Notably, the leaders lack the power to use excommunication as a form of discipline over disloyal individuals.

6.      Television allowed candidates to take their case directly to the people

            In the 1950s, many Americans purchased a new piece of furniture for their living rooms:  television sets.  The development of television stations and networks excited the political parties’ leaders:  They anticipated that they could use the new medium to carry out their linkage function by sending messages over the airwaves to the public to support the parties’ platforms and candidates.  However, candidates had their own idea:  They could run their campaigns independent of the political-party organizations by appearing and advertising on television!  Over time, it has become clear that the candidates’ vision prevailed:  The vast majority of campaign advertisements are now made by and paid for by candidates’ campaigns.  “I’m John Doe and I approve this message.”  Rare are campaign ads offered by, say, a Republican State Central Committee advocating that voters should vote for the Republican ticket in an upcoming statewide election.

7.      Members of Congress took over the “liaison” (ombudsman) function

            The ability of political-party leaders (e.g., local ward chairmen and precinct captains) to deliver services to individual party members has generally declined as legislators have developed the function of constituent service (often known informally as “case work”).  Today, when a citizen is not getting a service from the executive branch to which she believes she is entitled, she does not contact a political-party leader.  Instead, she contacts the office of her U. S. senator, U. S. representative, or state legislator, depending on which level of government has the service to which she feels entitled.  Legislators essentially stole this way of ingratiating themselves with the public from the political-party organizations.

8.     McGovern-Fraser Commission

            In 1968, Democrats held a disastrous Democratic National Convention in Chicago.  The delegates assembled there to nominate a candidate for president.  Outside Chicago’s International Amphitheater, a variety of anti-Vietnam War activists and civil-rights demonstrators rioted in the streets.  The turmoil seeped into the arena, and the delegates proceeded to demonstrate heated animosity toward each other.  The Democratic ticket led by Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey went down to a painful defeat that November.  In the aftermath of this misfortune, the Democratic National Committee appointed a Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection.  The commission became popularly known as the McGovern‑Fraser Commission, after the two members of Congress who served as the chairmen at various times.  The commission focused on a deficiency of both parties’ national conventions.  Those of us who would watch the conventions on television would notice that the delegates were almost uniformly older, affluent, white men.  These older, affluent, white men, by the way, were almost all experienced party leaders and their loyal supporters.  Thus, the commission developed rules that would require state delegations at subsequent conventions to properly represent women, black voters, Hispanics, laborers, and young people.  The Democratic National Committee implemented the commission’s recommendations.  When it was time for the 1972 Democratic convention to convene, this time the delegates actually did include a proportionate number of women, black voters, Hispanics, laborers, and young people‑‑and, if the truth be told, they were to a large extent amateurs.  A lot of the older, affluent, white, male party regulars‑‑many of them members of Congress, state legislators, and other experienced party activists‑‑were watching the convention on television in their homes.  The amateurs bypassed former Vice President Humphrey, who was making another attempt to become president, and instead nominated U. S. Sen. George McGovern (D‑S. D.).  McGovern ran an anti-Vietnam War campaign during which he presented the possibility that, as president, he might pay a call on North Vietnamese Communist dictator Ho Chi Minh and, on McGovern’s hands and knees, beg Ho for peace.  The imagery troubled countless voters.  Republican incumbent Richard Nixon cleaned up the floor with McGovern.  Causing the “party regulars” to stay at home and allowing amateurs to make the final decision about the Democratic nominee was just another insult for party leaders and an indication of what happens when their power is taken away.  Incidentally, to dampen the effect on the diversity rules that excluded party regulars, the Democrats later added a class of delegates known as “superdelegates”‑‑elected government officials who would become delegates automatically (i.e., without running in state presidential primaries) and balance the diverse amateurs with their experience.  Years, later, the presence of “superdelegates” would complicate and inflame the bitter competition between candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders during the 2016 contest for the Democratic nomination for president.  Sanders’ supporters have been bitter about the effect of the superdelegates, who overwhelmingly supported Clinton, ever since.

9.      Nixon’s Committee to Reelect the President

            President Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign remains famous as a milestone event because his campaign was not run by the Republican National Committee.  Instead, his campaign was run by his own candidate committee, the “Committee to Reelect the President.”  The RNC’s chairman, Bob Dole, was irritated about being bypassed in this manner, and referred to the committee contemptuously as “CREEP.”  The committee ended up securing another prominent place in American history:  Operatives of the committee burglarized the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate hotel and office complex in Washington, D. C., as they hoped to steal documents that would reveal the Democrats’ campaign strategy.  The operatives were caught in the act and arrested.  A lengthy investigation followed.  Hoping to cover the operatives’ tracks, President Nixon instructed his chief of staff and assistant for domestic policy to direct the Federal Bureau of Investigation to terminate its investigation to protect (nonexistent) national-security secrets.  On account of obstructing justice by trying to mislead the FBI, the president was forced to resign in August 1974.  Arguably, he almost ended up in a federal penitentiary, were he not pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.

            In fairness, it should be pointed out that Nixon’s decision to entrust his reelection campaign to his own campaign committee was not an irrational thing to do.  In modern times, thanks to such influences as La Follette’s Progressive movement, political-party organizations and leaders do not decide who the parties’ nominees will be.  Instead, every person who aspires to be elected has a need, on her own, to secure the party’s nomination and‑‑to do so‑‑she has to run against other aspirants in her party’s primary election.  Obviously, the party organization is in no position to run each such candidate’s primary campaign.  Each candidate must establish her own campaign committee to help her win the primary.  Once one of the candidates has won the primary, is she inclined to dissolve her committee and turn her campaign over to the party organization?  Of course not!  Her campaign committee has proved to be a winning team.  Inevitably, she will rely on this committee to help her win the general election.

10.  Transition committees

            One might think that, when a candidate for president of the United States has won the general election and he now has about 3000 partisan appointments to make, he will call on the chairman of his party’s national committee to help him decide whom to appoint.  One who thinks that would be wrong.  In recent decades, the president-elect has reorganized his campaign committee into a transition committee, which will help the incoming president fill the 3000 positions.  The transition committee collects recommendations, résumés, and other resources, and advises the new president how to fill the partisan appointments.  The political-party organization is uninvolved in this process, too.

11.   Open primaries

            About half of the states have election laws that call for “open primaries.”  Open primaries are the final insult to our political-party organizations as policy-oriented institutions.  Open-primary laws allow any voter‑‑regardless of any notion of party affiliation‑‑to vote in either party’s primary on primary-election day.  This allows, for example, unaffiliated voters (“independents”) to vote in the Republican primary.  It even allows Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary!  The original notion of political parties is that each political party would present for the election a nominee who represents the party’s policy-oriented mission.  Open primaries turn this notion into a joke.  They indicate just how much contempt our American political system developed for the significance and coherence of political parties.

            The developments described above have certainly dispirited political-party leaders.  Then-RNC chairman Bob Dole was trying at one point to make an appointment with President Nixon.  He got as far as being able to discuss the matter in a telephone call with Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. “Bob” Haldeman.  Dole later reported this only-somewhat-fictionalized dialogue:

            DOLE:  I'm the national chairman and I need to see the president.

            HALDEMAN:  You need to see the president?  Tune in Channel 9 tomorrow night at 10 o'clock.

An NGCSU political-science alumnus, Michael Shane McGonigal, told me about how he was an intern in Washington, D. C., and at a gala event he met Ken Mehlman, then Republican national chairman.  “Wow!” Shane said.  “You’re the national chairman!  You are a powerful man!”  “Not really,” Mehlman replied.  “I’m just a glorified fund-raiser.”