TWO INTERESTING TOPICS ABOUT AMERICAN POLITICS
1. POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE UNITED STATES
Kay Lawson defines “political culture” as “a set of attitudes,
beliefs, and values that are widely shared and that permit the members of that
polity to ‘order and interpret political institutions and processes, and their
own relationships with such institutions and processes.’”
Political culture of the United States (until 2016):
n
Disputes are resolved peacefully in one of
two major ways:
• Voting
• Litigation
Americans would understand that games (baseball, business, elections, etc.) have rules. All abide by the rules, and the losers respect the results. Americans would respect the legitimacy of the outcome. There was a quaint ritual marking the end of an election for public office. In the case of a local election, for example, the loser of the contest for a seat on the city council would visit the winner’s headquarters, shake his hand, and congratulate him. In the case of a state or national election, where distance might not facilitate travel between the campaign headquarters, the loser would make a telephone call to the winner, congratulate her, and concede defeat. The concession was a signal to the loser’s supporters that the election was over, they should go back to their usual activities, and they should refrain from any unlawful effort to undo the result of the election.
n
Extreme ideologies‑‑though it may be legal to
advocate them‑‑are rejected and denounced.
(“Liberal consensus”; “tyranny of the majority”)
n
Criminal penalties are expected to be
proportional to the criminal offenses (we don’t shoot or hang horse thieves any
more).
n
Brazen acts of discrimination, verbal abuse, and
other actions that systematically mistreat members of minority groups are
considered immoral.
2. 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.”
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Last updated on March 23, 2020, by
Barry D. Friedman.
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