Responsible party government. These three words are often thought an oxymoron by scholars and voters alike. Academics contend that responsible party government is possible and that it is the ornery voter, ignorant of the benefits associated with responsible party government, who poses the principal obstacle to its realization. The electorate wants a responsible government but without the political wrangling responsible parties entail.
The American dislike of political parties stems from the earliest days of the Republic. In his Farewell Address, George Washington warned that parties "distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration" by their "ill-founded jealousies and false alarms."[1] Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of American parties, was not especially proud of his achievement. Shortly after he assumed the presidency, he promised "to obliterate the traces of party and consolidate the nation, if it can be done without the abandonment of principle."[2]
By the time of the nation's Second Founding in the 1830s, political parties were viewed more favorably. Martin Van Buren, for example, believed parties could render an important public service if they were organized around issues of principle:
Doubtless excesses frequently attend [parties] and produce many evils, but not so many as are prevented by the maintenance of their organization and vigilance. The disposition to abuse power, so deeply planted in the human heart, can by no other means be more effectually checked; and it has always therefore struck me as more honorable and manly and more in harmony with the character of our people and of our institutions to deal with the subject of political panics in a sincerer and wiser spirit--to recognize their necessity, to prove and to elevate the principles and objects to our own [party] and to support it faithfully.[3]
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in a similar vein. In Democracy in America, he maintained that "parties are an evil inherent in free governments" but that their bad influences could be ameliorated if a nation were to have "great" political parties.[4] In Tocqueville's view, "great" political parties were "more attached to principles than to consequences, to generalities rather than to particular cases, to ideas rather than personalities, " whereas "small" parties were "not elevated and sustained by lofty purposes...." Tocqueville thought small parties "selfish," adding: "They glow with a factious zeal; their language is violent, but their progress is timid and uncertain. The means they employ are as disreputable as the aim sought."[5] He concluded that the United States lacked great parties and was teeming with small ones, the result being that "public opinion is broken up ad infinitum about questions of detail."[6]
Acting in the spirit of Van Buren and agreeing with Tocqueville, the American Political Science Association (APSA), in 1946, established the Committee on Political Parties. Its report, "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System," was published in 1950.[7] The committee's goals were lofty, even quixotic. But the group hoped that its small, ninety-six-page document would achieve some notice: "Nothing would be more satisfying to the whole committee membership than to know that its report has served as a starting point for constructive public debate, creative political action, and more intensive scientific studies."[8]
Forty years after its publication, the report remains required reading for political scientists. Austin Ranney heralded its publication as "an event which has evoked a considerable and ever-growing volume of literature on these important and difficult problems."[9] Evron M. Kirkpatrick, a member of the committee who later became a prominent critic of it, praised the report as "a landmark in the history of political science as policy science."[10] Clinton Rossiter wrote that he would "recommend it. . .to all who are interested in moving toward stronger party government."[11] Theodore J. Lowi ranked the report as "second only to the 1937 President's Committee on Administrative Management as a contribution by academics to public discourse on the fundamentals of American democracy."[12] William J. Crotty claims that the publication of "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System" "may have been the most significant influence on the debate over the operation of political parties that occurred between the Progressive period and the party reform movement of the 1970s."[13] A survey of several textbooks on political parties finds the report mentioned in all of them, with most devoting several pages to it. Frank B. Feigert and M. Margaret Conway use the report to introduce the concept of responsible party government and measure its progress.[14] David E. Price writes that "much of the debate on the role of American parties" began with publication of the report.[15] In a similar vein, Robert J. Huckshorn tells students that the report was "a wide-ranging study of party responsibility. . . [that] triggered a controversy that simmers to this day in political science circles."[16] Frank J. Sorauf and Paul Allen Beck lavish praise on the committee's work, calling it "the classic American statement on party government."[17]
The uncertain state of political parties during the past three decades has enhanced the report's standing in the political science community. Gerald M. Pomper argues that the failure to heed the committee's plea for responsible party government resulted in many of the ills foreseen by it besetting the American party system including the "incoherence in public policies, a dangerous enlargement of presidential power, public cynicism, and the growth of extremist movements."[18]
Pomper's apoplectic tone was anticipated in the report. The committee believed that the American party system was "ill-equipped to organize its members in the legislative and executive branches into a government held together and guided by the party program." In the words of the committee, this was "a very serious matter, for it affects the very heartbeat of American democracy."[19]
E. E. Schattschneider, chairman of the Committee on Political Parties, likewise wrote in his masterful book, Party Government, that "modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties."[20] Thus, if the parties were in trouble, so too was democracy.
These suppositions guided the committee's deliberations, and, in the post-World War II years, it appeared that the parties were in trouble. Democrat Harry Truman was president, but there were doubts about his leadership. In 1946, voters gave the Republicans control of the Congress, producing the first divided party government since 1930. The New Deal was floundering as the bipartisan conservative coalition in Congress strangled liberal initiatives for new civil rights laws. In 1948, the national Democratic coalition seemed to splinter. The Democratic National Convention applauded Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey's call for southern Democrats "to get out of the shadow of states rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights,"[21] but Humphrey's speech prompted a Dixiecrat revolt, which kept the Democratic party off the ballot in some states. The revolt did not allay the Left, however, which broke to support the Progressive candidacy of Henry Wallace. Truman's surprise win did not relieve the anxieties of many Democrats, some of whom hoped that Dwight Eisenhower, whose party affiliation remained a mystery, could be persuaded to accept their party's presidential nomination in 1952. At the same time, Thomas E. Dewey's defeat in 1948 sharpened divisions between moderates and conservatives in the Republican party. Theodore Lowi writes that the committee's diagnosis of the New Deal's anemia was "remarkable . . . when the dust had hardly settled over FDR."[22]
In its charge, the American Political Science Association made it clear that the Committee on Political Parties "should center its attention on the condition and improvement of national party organization."[23] The committee made several recommendations to that end, including:
1. Biennial convening of national party conventions.
2. Active participation of national conventions in selecting national committee members.
3. Strengthening the national Democratic and Republican parties by reapportioning their national conventions and committees to reflect population and actual party strength in the states, and upgrading their headquarters and operations.
4. Establishing a party council that would draft the platform and interpret it in relation to current problems, review prospective presidential candidates, endorse congressional candidates, and make disciplinary recommendations with respect to conspicuous departures from general party decisions by state or local party organizations.[24]
5. Lengthening the terms for the House of Representatives from two to four years, with members to be selected in the presidential election year.
The report also contained what might be called a "wish list." It expressed hope that Congress would rely somewhat less on the seniority system in choosing committee chairmen. As for the presidential selection procces, the committee wrote: "In time it may be feasible and desirable to substitute a direct, national presidential primary for the indirect procedure of the convention."[25] Some of these wishes have come true. Congress has strengthened the party caucus, and Democrats in particular have used it to dislodge recalcitrant committee chairmen. In 1975, they ousted three from their posts; and in 1984, the caucus chose the seventh person in seniority to be chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.[26] As for presidential selection, the McGovern-Fraser Commission began a revolution that has given greater weight to primaries and caucuses, thus advancing the destruction of the party structures that once housed the infamous "smoke-filled rooms."
The report claimed that its findings represented "a summation of professional knowledge" available at the time.[27] It is remarkable that so many of the report's recommendations were realized, considering they were made in an era when television was a novelty and presidential candidates whistle-stopped from one railroad station to another. The 1974 Democratic Party Charter established a party conference between quadrennial conventions. These so-called "mid-term conferences" convened in 1974, 1978, and 1982 but were abandoned after that.[28] The charter also reapportioned the Democratic National Convention and Committee to reflect party strength in the electorate. Republicans, meanwhile, have been faithful to the report's call for revamping and modernizing party operations. Beginning in 1975, the GOP began turning its party headquarters into a computerized hum of fundraising activity and began to offer an extensive menu of campaign services. Democrats have more recently struggled to match the Republican capacity for technological innovation, but continue to lag behind. In addition, both national parties have their own office buildings in Washington and have been working more closely with their parties' congressional campaign committees.
Even the report's call for a party council was briefly adopted. In 1956, Democratic National Chairman Paul Butler created the Democratic Advisory Council, whose purpose was to "provide a collective voice for the Democrats who may or may not be represented in either House of the Congress" and help write the 1960 party platform.[29] Congressional Democrats led by Sam Rayburn and Lyndon B. Johnson ignored the council, and after John F. Kennedy won the White House, it was disbanded. Later, informal organizations (such as the Democratic Leadership Council) were created to shape the party's agenda. House Democrats, led by Tony Coelho, coordinated retreats to consider legislative initiatives.
Despite its prescience, the Committee on Political Parties was subjected to a barrage of criticism, the most prominent critic being one of its members, Evron M. Kirkpatrick.[30] In 1970, he renounced the report as both "relevant and disturbing," explaining it was relevant to our collective past, to current discussion of party reform, and to any serious consideration of political science as policy science: disturbing to any political scientist who believes that the discipline can provide knowledge applicable to the solution of human problems and the achievement of human goals.[31]
Kirkpatrick described the committee's product as being more like "a political campaign document or program for political action than the report of a committee of scholars." He added that the work of the McGovern-Fraser Commission "is more like reading political science than reading the APSA Committee Report."[32]
Others criticized the report for its disparagement of federalism. The committee itself had noted that the national and state party organizations were "largely independent of one another, without appreciable common approach to problems of party policy and strategy" and urged greater nationalization of power.[33] However, the committee said that not federalism but "the right balance of forces" was the issue.[34] To committee members, most of whom were New Deal Democrats, the "right balance of forces" meant a diminishment of the southerners. Julius Turner maintained that the problem was not federalism, but the abuses inherent in a one-party Democratic South:
In most southern districts the parties never present a practical alternative in the general election, since Republican candidates have no chance of election. While the behavior of Southerners rarely corrupts Democratic discipline to the extent that the national parties cannot be distinguished, there is an obvious need for party reform in the South and in all one-party areas.[35]
The report's grudging acceptance of federalism gave way to a movement to ameliorate it by scrapping existing constitutional arrangements. The committee itself refrained from any drastic overhaul of the Constitution, noting that "party responsibility cannot be legislated." Instead, the report urged parties "to adapt the usages under the Constitution to their purposes."[36] By the late 1980s, several political scientists agreed with Henry Jones Ford's diagnosis of the separation of powers as a "constitutional disease" and advocated several remedies.[37] The Committee on the Constitutional System (whose ranks included James MacGregor Burns, an admirer of the 1950 report) proposed several amendments to the Constitution on its two-hundredth anniversary. These included coterminus scheduling of presidential and congressional elections and allowing cabinet members to keep their congressional posts.[38]
Such revisions and extensions of the Constitution were not advocated by early party government theorists. Woodrow Wilson argued that responsible party government would "establish rather than shake those arrangements of our Constitution . . . to which our national pride properly attaches, namely, the distinct division of powers between the state and the federal governments."[39] The movement toward constitutional reform gained momentum when admirers and critics of the report saw what was in their view a continued erosion of responsible party government.
In a similar vein, many critics believed the Committee on Political Parties was unduly influenced by a preference for the British parliamentary system. Clearly, the committee admired what it called the British example of "responsible cabinet government."[40] Evron Kirkpatrick thought that the committee wanted American parties "to become like the British parties were believed to be."[41] Leon D. Epstein speculated that the British system had an unusual hold on the committee and noted that the British Labour Government after World War II enacted a sweeping program of social welfare legislation coupled with nationalization of key industries. Party-line voting in the House of Commons was at an all-time high, reflecting a time when class divisions were sharp and meaningful.[42]
In contrast, the Democratic liberals in America could not muster much support for President Truman's domestic program. A Republican-controlled Congress passed the Taft-Hartley law over Truman's veto in 1947. The 1948 Democratic convention endorsed new civil rights laws, but none was forthcoming. Truman wanted Congress to enact Medicare, but nothing happened until Lyndon Johnson got it passed in 1965. Thus, the Committee on Political Parties, a number of whom had been in the Roosevelt administration, could not help but notice the contrast between the political stalemate in the United States and the enactment of a liberal agenda an ocean away.
The inability of Democratic liberals to prevail in Congress prompted a debate between supporters and critics of the report over the proper balance between majority rule and minority rights. Unlike Great Britain, the United States had deliberately resisted placing total political power in the hands of the majority. To the Federalists, the word "power" had such negative connotations that they substituted the word "energy" for it.[43] Their concerns were justified. A Democratic-Republican party leader spoke out against the Federalist energizers in 1802: "I would as soon give my vote to a wolf to be a shepherd, as to a man, who is always contending for the energy of government."[44] Thus, the Framers were quite reluctant to mediate the debate over the proper relation of majority rule and minority rights--deferring it to the First Congress, which enacted a Bill of Rights, and successive congressional and Supreme Court decisions. If anything, the Framers tried to make a virtue out of the political stalemate. Writing in "Federalist Number 51," James Madison extolled the Constitution his peers had written, claiming that the ambitions of one branch would be countered by those of another.[45] A proper arrangement of interests, each with checks upon the others, was, in Madison's view, the ultimate guarantor of a republic, that is, of a free and popular government. That it might also result in political stalemate was not Madison's primary concern.
Responsible party advocates, however, do not like stalemate. They are drawn to active, purposeful government like moths to light. Their aim is that the majority be able to govern. But in the two centuries since the Constitution was ratified, the debate between advocates of majority rule and defenders of minority rights has continued, with minority rights advocates strengthening their position since the committee published its report in 1950.[46] Blacks and Hispanics have protection under the umbrella of "civil rights" to insure their voting and employment privileges. Women's rights organizations claim they are due comparable pay for work comparable to that performed by men. Homosexuals assert their right to an alternative lifestyle. All claim their "right" to exercise a veto over the majority. This proliferation of minority rights only complicates the argument for responsible party government. But, as Austin Ranney observes, the Committee on Political Parties believed that they could "sell" their fellow countrymen on the benefits of a more responsible party government without dealing with such "theoretical" subjects as majority rule and minority rights.[47]
Critics also noted a tension in the report between those who advocated
intraparty debate and those who preferred interparty conflict. Austin Ranney
wondered if it is "possible for twenty-seven million Democrats to `participate'
in the close supervision of their government any more than it is for one-hundred-fifty-million
Americans to do so?"[48] Clearly, the committee envisioned an enlightened
issue-activism, with the rank and file guiding the party's direction and
emboldening it with purpose. But the committee also envisioned a party
council--an elitist, national body that suggested party responsibility
was something that flowed from the top down. Murray S. Stedman, Jr., and
Herbert Sonthoff thought the party council was another illustration of
the "increasingly administrative or even quasi-military approach to the
study of political problems."[49] Julius Turner worried that such placement
of power in the hands of party elites would result in control by unrepresentative
factions. He feared, in particular, that the party council would disrupt
the Republican party, giving its unpopular conservative wing undue influence.[50]
In the midst of the Iran-Contra Affair, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North reminded his boss, John Poindexter, that the White House lived "in a world of perceptions, not reality.[51] Much the same can be said for advocates of responsible party government. Although publication of "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System" produced a plethora of critics, two perceptions that guided the Committee on Political Parties still shape the literature about responsible party government. Ironically, far from furthering academic inquiry, the report froze the debate on various points because both supporters and critics accepted the critical assumptions contained in the report. Foremost among these were (1) that only political parties could produce responsible party government, and (2) the equating of responsibility with accountability.
The Party or the Individual?
The Committee on Political Parties began its work on the following premise: "Throughout this report political parties are treated as indispensable instruments of government."[52] This assumption followed the thinking of committee chairman E. E. Schattschneider. Shortly before his death, Schattschneider said, "I suppose the most important thing I have done in my field is that I have talked longer and harder and more persistently and enthusiastically about political parties than anyone else alive."[53] Schattschneider's 1942 book, Party Government, set the themes for his academic career:
The parties, in fact, have played a major role as makers of governments, more especially they have been the makers of democratic government. It should be stated flatly at the outset that this volume is devoted to the thesis that the political parties created democracy and that modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties. As a matter of fact, the condition of the parties is the best possible evidence of the nature of any regime.[54]
Schattschneider was not alone in believing that parties were catalysts for democratic success. Long before the completion of Party Government, political science accepted the inevitability of parties and assigned many desirable characteristics to them. Leon Epstein notes that, despite a prolonged debate between "defenders" of traditional parties and "reformers" who wanted them to act more responsibly, both sides firmly believed "that effective parties are desirable and probably essential in American politics as in democratic politics elsewhere."[55] Nearly forty years after Schattschneider completed Party Government, Gerald Pomper echoed the majority view: "We must either acknowledge the mutual reliance of our parties and democracy--or lose both."[56] This article of faith has remained sacrosanct, even when it is universally acknowledged that today's parties have lost much of their former influence.
The clinging of political science to parties stems from a notion that the party system, not individual officeholders, should be the object of greatest concern in a democracy. Among the first to follow this prescription was James Bryce. In his masterpiece, The American Commonwealth, Bryce devotes nearly two hundred pages to the political parties.[57] His conclusions remain simple, but powerful: "Parties are inevitable. No free large country has been without them. No-one has shown how representative government could be worked without them. They bring order out of chaos to a multitude of voters."[58]
The premise that parties are vital to the success of governing appears so self-evident that it is often forgotten that it was a contentious subject in the early years of political science. At the turn of the century, some scholars wondered whether the American polity could (or should) be characterized by a commitment to collective (meaning party) responsibility or individual responsibility. M. 1. Ostrogorski criticized the infatuation of some with collective responsibility: "This theory appeared alluring enough to be adopted by some writers of prominence, and expanded in certain cases, with brilliancy of literary style. It has, however, one defect: it is not borne out by the facts."[59]
William Graham Sumner agreed. A believer in individual responsibility, Sumner wrote in 1914 that it was an inevitable consequence of the American constitutional division of power: "I cannot trust a party; I can trust a man. I cannot hold a party responsible; I can hold a man responsible. I cannot get an expression of opinion which is single and simple from a party; I can get that only from a man."[60]
A debate was underway. In 1900, Frank A. Goodnow argued the case for collective party responsibility: "The individual candidate must be sunk to a large extent in the party. Individual responsibility must give place to party responsibility."[61] The Progressives disagreed. Herbert Croly maintained that party government was undesirable because it "interfered with genuine popular government both by a mischievous, artificial and irresponsible [i.e. parochial and localistic] method of representation, and by an enfeeblement of the administration in the interest of partisan subsistence."[62]
Perhaps no scholar's evolution of thought better demonstrates the movement of political science toward party responsibility (and the inherent conflicts contained therein) than Woodrow Wilson's At first, Wilson maintained that party responsibility was more fiction than fact. Addressing the Virginia Bar Association in 1897, he declared:
I, for my part, when I vote at a critical election, should like to be able to vote for a definite line of policy with regard to the great questions of the day--not for platforms, which Heaven knows, mean little enough--but for men known and tried in public service; with records open to be scrutinized with reference to these very matters; and pledged to do this or that particular thing; to take definite course of anion. As it is, I vote for nobody I can depend upon to do anything--no, not if I were to vote for myself.[63]
Later, Wilson saw collective responsibility as not only desirable, but necessary. In a 1908 book, Constitutional Government in the United States, Wilson wrote: "There is a sense in which our parties may be said to have been our real body politic. Not the authority of Congress, not the leadership of the President, but the discipline and zest of parties has held us together, has made it possible for us to form and to carry out national programs." He added, "We must think less of checks and balances and more of coordinated power, less of separation of functions and more of the synthesis of action."[64]
There is a creative tension in Wilson's scholarship. He believes that collective responsibility is essential, but couples it with a plea for individual responsibility by emphasizing the president's role as party leader.[65] In an article about Grover Cleveland's cabinet, Wilson observes: "What we need is harmonious, consistent, responsible party government, instead of a wide dispersion of function and responsibility; and we can get it only by connecting the President as closely as may be with his party in Congress."[66] In subsequent editions of Constitutional Government, Wilson goes further in placing the president at the apex of responsible party government:
If there be one principle clearer than another, it is this: that in any business, whether of government or of mere merchandising, somebody must be trusted, in order that when things go wrong it may be quite plain who should be punished.... Power and strict accountability for its use are the essential constituents of good government. A sense of highest responsibility, a dignifying and elevating sense of being trusted, together with a consciousness of being in an official station so conspicuous that no faithful discharge of duty can go unacknowledged and unrewarded, and no breach of trust undiscovered and unpunished,--these are the influences, the only influences, which foster practical, energetic, and trustworthy statesmanship.[67]
Wilson's predilection for individual (read presidential) responsibility was not universally accepted by subsequent generations of political scientists. Ironically, the idea of collective responsibility may have been enhanced by Franklin D. Roosevelt. To the members of the Committee on Political Parties, Roosevelt was a formative and formidable political figure. He reinvigorated the Democratic party and brought into its ranks those, like Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, who shared his programmatic commitment to the New Deal. The lively partisan debate that followed was welcomed by political scientists, most of whom agreed with FDR. The party itself seemed at the center of the American political universe. In 1955, former Committee on Political Parties member V. O. Key introduced the concept of "critical elections," in which political parties act as catalysts in electoral realignments.[68]
By 1950, collective party responsibility had become political science's First Commandment and digressions from it were considered heretical. In a now-famous warning, the Committee on Political Parties predicted that placing individual responsibility in the president rather than the parties would endanger liberty itself:
When the President's program actually is the sole program. . ., either his party becomes a flock of sheep or the party falls apart. In effect, this concept of the presidency disperses the party system by making the President reach directly for the support of a majority of the voters. It favors a President who exploits skillfully the arts of demagoguery, who sees the whole country as his political backyard, and who does not mind turning into the embodiment of personal government.[69]
Another reason for the espousal of collective party responsibility was the desire of many political scientists to limit conflict. In The Semi-Sovereign People, E. E. Schattschneider wrote: "The best point at which to manage conflict is before it starts."[70] His argument reflected one made by social scientist Lewis Coser. Schattschneider heavily underlined this passage from Coser's The Functions of Social Conflict: "One unites in order to fight, and one fights under the mutually recognized control of norms and rules."[71] Parties, therefore, became a sort of "thought police" in the establishment and maintenance of order.
In sum, publication of "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System" placed the argument between collective and individual responsibility on ice. It is time to revisit the argument and to discard assumptions once thought to be sacrosanct.
Responsibility Equals Accountability
Defenders and critics of the report tacitly accepted another assumption--namely, that responsibility could be equated with accountability. In its report, the Committee on Political Parties joined the two concepts: "An effective party system requires, first, that the parties are able to bring forth programs to which they commit themselves and, second, that the parties possess sufficient internal cohesion to carry out these programs."[72] The implication is that when the parties fail to do this, elections become devoid of meaning. The committee, in fact, believed this to be the case: "By and large, alternatives between the parties are defined so badly that it is often cliff cult to determine what the election has decided even in the broadest terms."[73] The committee believed that meaningful choices enhanced prospects for responsible party government and legitimated its actions.
Defenders of the report shared the committee's view that elections are often characterized by vague promises about the future or are restricted to encouraging retrospective decisions based on the immediate past. In 1936, for example, Franklin Roosevelt declared: "There's one issue in this campaign. It's myself, and people must either be for me or against me."[74] Voters made a retrospective decision about FDR's performance, with a majority voicing approval. Similarly, Ronald Reagan based his 1984 reelection campaign on the question: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Reagan poll taker Richard Wirthlin found that 49 percent answered the question affirmatively, whereas only 20 percent believed they were worse off. Of those who thought their wallets had grown fatter, 84 percent voted for Reagan.[75] In 1988, George Bush struggled to define the future, calling the oft-repeated question "the vision thing." Bush policy adviser Deborah Steelman counseled her candidate that if he were to declare himself for or against on a few big issues, "we'd have less of a chance to win than we do."[76] The prevailing view that there is "not a dime's worth of difference" between the Democrats and Republicans is often cited as a reason why relatively few Americans go to the polls.
The Committee on Political Parties accepted this supposition, but its critics were quick to challenge it. Julius Turner maintained that "you cannot give Hubert Humphrey a banjo and expect him to carry Kansas. Only a Democrat who rejects at least a part of the Fair Deal can carry Kansas, and only a Republican who moderates the Republican platform can carry Massachusetts."[77] Such nuances, however, contain important cues for governance. Turner examined the 1948 party platforms, citing several planks that were matters of contention between Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey.[78] Subsequent writers such as Jeff Fishel have also found significant differences in party platforms with resultant policy consequences in the administration of government.[79]
In sum, both supporters and critics of the report believed responsible party government could be achieved only through "meaningful elections." But just how meaningful (meaning policy-oriented) are elections of the American variety? During the last thirty years, the presidential election with the highest voter turnout was the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon contest. Kennedy promised "to get America moving again," but was vague about just where he would move the country. Nixon, like other incumbent vice-presidents seeking the presidency, promised more of the same. The vacuousness of the campaign prompted historian Arthur M. Schlesinger to write a tract titled Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference?[80]
In fact, the differences between Kennedy and Nixon that determined the outcome were cultural ones. Seventy-eight percent of Catholics voted for Kennedy, whereas 63 percent of white Protestants voted for Nixon.[81] Michael Barone argues that the question voters answered in 1960 is a quintessential one: "Who is really an American?"[82]
The Committee on Political Parties had no way of forecasting what would happen in 1960. But a look at the 1928 Herbert Hoover-AI Smith presidential bout should have told the committee that cultural differences frequently matter far more than so-called issue differences. As in 1960, most Catholics supported their coreligionist, Smith, believing in an Americanism that would allow them to aspire to the highest office the nation had to offer. White Protestants feared that a Catholic president would submit to the ministrations of the Papacy rather than the Republic and overwhelmingly backed Hoover. Prior to the balloting, the Springfield Republican noted that when Massachusetts voters discussed politics, they talked "in terms of French, Irish, Pole, and Yankee or Catholic and non-Catholic." The paper concluded, "Votes will undoubtedly be cast on other issues, particularly prohibition and prosperity, but when you get down to the ground there's dirt!"[83]
Finally, political scientists must consider whether responsibility can
be achieved only through accountability in the election process or whether
there might be other ways of attaining responsible party government. The
actions of party elites suggest more than one answer. In 1990, George Bush
asked Congress to enact a "responsible" program of deficit reduction, and
the Democratic congressional leadership responded in kind. Bush and the
Democrats promised to "do the right thing" by agreeing to a $50 billion
deficit package at a budget summit. The deal included items that each party
leader knew to be unpopular, such as a ten cent increase in the gasoline
tax (rejected by 72 percent of respondents in a Time/CNN survey) and an
increase in Medicare premiums (opposed by 83 percent in the same poll).[84]
Those who voted for the package, a minority in the House of Representatives,
said that it was time for "fiscal responsibility." They sought to position
themselves as responsible legislators, no doubt arguing that their votes
were "profiles in courage."
Any rethinking about whether responsible party government is either desirable or attainable must take into account the major contours of the American political landscape, among the most prominent features of which is the persistence of divided party control of the federal government and of most of the states as well. In the four decades since the publication of "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System," Republicans have resided in the White House for twenty-six years and Democrats have controlled the Senate and House of Representatives for thirty-two and thirty-six years respectively. Moreover, the gap between reelected presidents of one party and a House of Representatives dominated by another has widened considerably over time. The first instance of divided government occurred in 1792 when Federalist President George Washington was reelected and Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican party won a nine-seat majority in the House. When Republican Ronald Reagan was reelected in 1984, the opposition Democrats had a seventy-one-seat margin in the lower chamber. The pattern persisted in 1988, when Republican George Bush easily beat Democrat Michael Dukakis in the presidential election, but Democrats increased their majority in the House to an impressive eighty-nine-seat plurality.
Voters seem to approve of divided party government. An Institute for Social Inquiry survey conducted after the 1988 balloting asked Connecticut voters whether it was "good for the country" that Bush had won the presidency and the Democrats controlled Congress. Sixty-seven percent gave their stamp of approval to the election outcome. Moreover, 55 percent of Bush supporters welcomed divided government.[85] Recent polls show little change of opinion. One 1990 survey found 51 percent believing that divided government is "a good thing, because it has kept either political party from having too much power." Only 37 percent deemed it "bad because it has made it impossible to work on solutions to the important problems facing the country."[86] This extraconstitutional "check and balance" is not new. In a 1944 Elmo Roper poll, only 31 percent agreed that it would be a bad thing "if a president from one party is elected next time, and the majority in Congress belongs to the other party."[87] But this relatively new balancing act by the voters rests on firmer foundations. The electorate has decidedly mixed assessments of the two major parties, something that was not true in 1950. In a March 1991 ABC News/ Washington Post survey, respondents said the Republicans were better than the Democrats on a litany of what can be termed "presidential issues," including: maintaining a strong national defense, increasing U.S. influence overseas, handling foreign affairs, making American industry competitive, handling the economy, controlling inflation, controlling the spread of illegal drugs, handling crime, holding taxes down, reducing the threat of nuclear war, and shrinking the federal budget deficit.[88] The same poll showed the Democrats winning support on "congressional issues," most of which involve some redistribution of federal monies. Respondents, for example, thought the Democrats better at protecting the social security system, handling the problems of the homeless, and helping the elderly and the poor. Democrats had somewhat more modest advantages on reducing unemployment and helping the middle class.[89]
These mixed assessments reflect voters' contradictory feelings about government. In 1967, Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril noted the dissonance between the public's preference for "ideological conservatism" and its equal affinity for "programmatic liberalism."[90] Voters want government in the abstract to be kept to a minimum, but when asked about specific programs, they voice strong support for a more intrusive federal establishment. Today, the contradictions are translated in partisan terms with the Republicans playing the role of the "ideological conservatives" and the Democrats acting as the "programmatic liberals."
With the passage of time, the allure of divided party government is becoming stronger. Early in 1990, Democratic poll taker Peter Hart found that the mixed partisan assessments were being reinforced by the gargantuan federal budget deficits and the growing public concern about them: "While George Bush personally is at an all-time high in both job rating and how he is viewed personally, when we ask the public who they trust more to make the right decisions on the federal budget deficit cuts-28 percent say the president and 55 percent say the Congress."[91]
Divided government results in partisan behavior different from that anticipated in the responsible party literature. The Committee on Political Parties prescribed a code of conduct for the party-in-government and its loyal opposition:
The party in power has a responsibility, broadly defined, for the general management of the government, for its manner of getting results, for the results achieved, for the consequences of inaction as well as action, for the intended and unintended outcome of its conduct of public affairs, for all that it plans to do, for all that it might have foreseen, for the leadership it provides, for the acts of all its agents, and for what it says as well as for what it does.
Party responsibility [also] includes the responsibility of the opposition party, also broadly defined, for the conduct of its opposition, for the management of public discussion, for the development of alternative policies and programs, for the bipartisan policies which it supports, for its failures and successes in developing the issues of public policy, and for its leadership of public opinion.[92]
Historically, such patterns of party behavior are anomalies. Only four times in this century have the parties acted in the manner prescribed by the report: once in 1913-1914 with Democratic passage of Woodrow Wilson's New Freedoms, again in 1933-1936 with the enactment of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, in 1964-1965 when a Democratic Congress passed Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program, and in 1981-1982 when Congress enacted Ronald Reagan's tax and budget cuts. Each of these illustrations represents a party articulating a national program with the public's approbation resulting in unified party control of the government.[93] Today, the parties are not conforming to the model envisioned by the responsible party supporters-nor can they-because neither the Democrats nor the Republicans can articulate a national program that is compelling enough to win an outright majority. Those who believe that the Democrats should cast themselves in the role of the opposition party and confront a Republican president recently received this retort from House Speaker Thomas Foley:
I keep having people say to me, "you ought to be the constant daily scourge of George Bush," that I ought to get up in the morning and figure out what I can say or do to embarrass the president or obstruct the president or whatever. That's not my concept of the job.... There are issues on which you have to stand even if you fail, but for the most part I would rather have a successful and important achievement in cooperation with the executive branch than just have a political issue.[94]
New York investment banker Felix Rohatyn agrees with Foley, and describes the new patterns of partisan behavior:
[T]he Democrats are not an opposition party; they share power, they do not seek it. Seeking power requires putting forward alternatives to the voters and competing for their allegiance; sharing power is an entirely different matter. The Democratic leaders in the Congress are excellent men, but they are part of the existing political power structure, and have formed something close to a coalition government with a Republican administration.[95]
This coalition government has acted in ways not predicted (or liked) by responsible party advocates. Divided government is supposed to result in political paralysis-yet the nation has experienced more than its fair share of what Speaker Foley terms "successful and important achievements." During the past forty years, landmark legislation has won approval from a Democratic Congress and a Republican president, including a federal highway program, revenue sharing, the 1981 tax cut, the 1986 overhaul of the federal tax code, a Free Trade Agreement with the Canadians, an Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty with the Soviet Union, clean air law, child care, an increase in the minimum wage, a defense budget that outlines Pentagon spending for the 1990s, and a landmark "bill of rights" law for the disabled. This is far from the do-nothing Congress that the Committee on Political Parties thought the norm in periods of divided party control. George Bush, in a 1991 interview, characterized the successes of the Democratic Congress and his Republican administration as "rather impressive on a wide array of issues."[96] In short, Democratic Congresses and Republican presidents have done "big things"-or, more accurately, about as many "big things" as the public wants. When Congress has failed to support the president-as in its refusal to back either the proposed Reagan and Bush reductions in entitlement programs or Reagan's call for military aid to the Nicaraguan Contras-its rejection has reflected the majority view.
Thus, it can be argued that the American polity is acting more responsibly than many political scientists believe. Moreover, the government is responding to pleas for action in a more responsible fashion. James Q. Wilson writes that
policy making has been rationalized in the sense that partial interests are now suspect and "general" interests are thought paramount. Everywhere the "old-style client politics" is on the defensive: Even the redoubtable tobacco farmers of North Carolina and their champion Jesse Helms have been forced to abandon any hope of large federal subsidies for their crops, and to turn instead to a federally administered plan that is financed by the contribution of the farmers themselves.[97]
Today, Wilson argues that the claims made upon government are not producer or territorial in nature, but "national, ideological or system-wide interests such as those pressing for tax reform, abortion on demand, the right to life, campaign finance reform, an end to the civil war in El Salvador, or the prevention of global warming."[98] Wilson's system-wide interests are code words for responsible government.
The challenge, then, is to think anew about responsible party government. Such a reformulation should reconsider older (and previously presumed to be settled) arguments. It should not postulate some ideal world, but see the American polity for what it is and determine whether or not responsible party government is attainable. The answers may be far more encouraging than previously thought.
This article is based on chapter I from the book Challenges to Party
Government, John Kenneth White and Jerome M. Mileur, eds., to be published
in August 1992 by Southern Illinois University Press.
[1.] From George Washington's Farewell Address quoted in David E. Price, Bringing Back the Parties (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1984), 97.
[2.] Ibid., 98.
[3.] Ibid., 100.
[4.] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1969), 174.
[5.] Ibid., 175.
[6.] Ibid., 176. Tocqueville added that the demise of great parties in the United States has resulted in a "great gain in happiness but not in morality. "
[7.] The report was first published as a supplement to the American Political Science Review 44 (3), part 2 (September 1950). It was subsequently published as a small book by Rinehart and Company, Inc.
[8.] Committee on Political Parties, "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System" (New York: Rinehart and Company, Inc., 1950), ix.
[9.] Austin Ranney, The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government: Its Origins and Present State (Urbana, Illinois: The University of Illinois Press, 1954), preface.
[10.] Evron M. Kirkpatrick, "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System: Political Science, Policy Science, or Psuedo Science?" (Paper presented at the Sixty-sixth Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Los Angeles, 8-12 September 1970), 36. This paper was subsequently published in the American Political Science Review 65 (December 1971): 965-990.
[11.] Clinton Rossiter, Parties and Politics in America (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1960), 180.
[12.] Theodore J. Lowi, The Personal President: Power Invested promise Unfulflled (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985), 68.
[13.] William J. Crotty, "The Philosophies of Party Reform," in Party Renewal in America, ed. Gerald M. Pomper (New York: Praeger, 1980), 35.
[14.] Frank B. Feigert and M. Margaret Conway, Parties and Politics in America (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1976), 380-384.
[15.] Price, Bringing Back the Parties, 104.
[16.] Robert J. Huckshorn, Political Parties in America, 2d ed. (Monterey, California: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1984), 17.
[17.] Frank J. Sorauf and Paul Allen Beck, Party Politics in America, 6th ed. (Boston: Scott, Foresman/Little Brown, 1988), 393.
[18.] Gerald M. Pomper, "The Contribution of Political Parties to American Democracy," in Party Renewal in America, ed. Pomper, 15.
[19.] "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System," v.
[20.] E. E. Schattschneider, Party Government (New York: Rinehart and Company, Inc., 1942), 1.
[21.] Quoted in Carl Solberg, Hubert Humphrey: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 17.
[22.] Lowi, The Personal President, 68.
[23.] "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System," viii-ix.
[24.] "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System," 43. The fifty members of the party council would consist of five members from the national committee, ten members of Congress (five from each house), ten members of state party committees (determined by region), five governors, representatives from other recognized groups such as the Young Democrats or Young Republicans, and twenty at large members to be chosen by the delegates at the presidential nominating convention. The president, vice-president, and members of the president's cabinet would be ex-officio members of the council. The idea for a party council did not originate with the Committee on Political Parties. It had been proposed by Charles E. Merriam in an article entitled "Nomination of Presidential Candidates" published in the February 1921 issue of the American Bar Association Journal. Merriam's council would be as large as seven-hundred members, including the president, vice-president, and cabinet for the majority party (while the presidential candidates in the last election would be included on the minority party council), the majority party members of Congress (and the minority for its counterpart), state governors (and their runners-up), the chair of the national committee, state party chairs, and party leaders chosen by the national or state party committees. The Republican party did establish a party council in 1919, which consisted of twenty-four members: twelve from the Republican National Committee and twelve prominent non-committee Republicans. But after a few years, the Republican council ceased to function, as the GOP won consistent control of the presidency and Congress.
The Committee on Political Parties also suggested that a smaller subgroup of the party council could form what it called the "party cabinet." This would consist of the chair of the national convention, the chair of the national committee, the chair of the party council, the chairs of the joint congressional caucus, congressional floor leaders, the vice-president, and the Speaker of the House.
[25.] "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System," 10.
[26.] That was Les Aspin. The three ousted from their posts in 1975 were Wright Patman, chairman of the House Banking Committee; F. Edward Hebert, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and W. R. (Bob) Poage, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. Both national parties have also acted to denounce congressional candidates not to their liking. In 1980, Democratic party leaders condemned a California congressional candidate who had once been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Ten years later, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and the Republican National Committee denounced David Duke, a former Klan member from Louisiana, who was seeking election to the U.S. Senate. Several Republican senators also condemned Duke and backed Democrat J. Bennett Johnston.
[27.] "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System," v.
[28.] The 1974 conference saw an unknown Georgia governor named Jimmy Carter occupying a hospitality suite in order to court prospective presidential delegates. The 1978 gathering proved to be an embarrassment to the Carter administration, and the 1982 meeting saw Walter Mondale and Edward Kennedy face off in anticipation of a prospective presidential nomination battle.
[29.] Quoted in Stephen K. Bailey, "Our National Political Parties," an unpublished paper, 5. This paper was given to the author by Jerome M. Mileur. In it, Bailey notes that it is abridged and adapted from an earlier article, `'The Condition of Our National Political Parties," published by The Fund for the Republic, 1959.
[30.] One reason the report may have been subjected to so much criticism is that its recommendations appeared to have the imprimatur of the American Political Science Association. The report was first published as a supplement to the American Political Science Review. But the APSA took no position as to the recommendations made in the report and, in fact, the Review provided a forum for critics, including Julius Turner's "Responsible Parties: A Dissent from the Floor," American Political Science Review, March 1951, 143-152.
[31.] Kirkpatrick, "Political Science, Policy Science, or Pseudo Science?," 1.
[32.] Ibid., 47. Asked why he signed the report, Kirkpatrick blamed it on "group-think": "Social norms--`not rocking the boat,' being a good fellow-come into play; so may careerism, unwillingness to alienate influential and respected colleagues, and even the desire to end an interminable committee meeting!" (p. 53).
[33.] "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System," 3.
[34.] Ibid., 26.
[35.] Turner, "Responsible Parties," 148.
[36.] "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System," 35.
[37.] Quoted in Ranney, The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government, 76.
[38.] Cited in Sorauf and Beck, Party Politics in America, 449.
[39.] Woodrow Wilson, "Government Under the Constitution," quoted in Ranney, The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government, 47.
[40.] "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System," 35.
[41.] Kirkpatrick, "Political Science, Policy Science, or Pseudo Science?," 42.
[42.] Leon D. Epstein, Political Parties in the American Mold (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 36.
[43.] In The Federalist Papers, Hamilton stoutly defended the presidency, maintaining: "Energy m the executive is the leading character in the definition of good government." " See Alexander Hamilton, "Federalist Number 70," in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: New American Library, 1961), 423.
[44.] Quoted in Ronald P. Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s-1840s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 8. The spokesman was John Leland and the emphasis is his.
[45.] James Madison, "Federalist Number 51," in Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, The Federalist Papers, 322.
[46.] James MacGregor Bums writes that there have been seven "bills of rights" in the United States: the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the presence of an opposition party (first tolerated by the ruling Federalists in the 1790s); the 1803 Supreme Court ruling in Marbury v. Madison, which established the principle of judicial review; the emancipation of the slaves and their subsequent reception of legal and political rights by the Civil War amendments: the extension of the franchise to women; Franklin Roosevelt's "economic bill of rights," including the freedom from fear and want; and the "social bill of rights" contained in Lyndon Johnson's much maligned Great Society. See James MacGregor Bums (with L. Marvin Overby), Cobblestone Leadership: Majority Rule, Minority Power (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990).
[47.] Austin Ranney, "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System: A Commentary," American Political Science Review 45 (1951): 498.
[48.] Ibid., 491.
[49.] Murray S. Stedman, Jr., and Herbert Sonthoff, "Party Responsibility-A Critical Inquiry," Western Political Quarterly 4, no. 3 (1951): 460.
[50.] Turner, "Responsible Parties," 151.
[51.] "In Their Own Words: How the Iran-Contra Affair Took Shape," New York Times, 28 February 1987, 8.
[52.] "Toward a More Responsible Two-Pany System," 15.
[53.] Quoted in Epstein, Political Parties in the American Mold, 32.
[54.] Schattschneider, Party Government, 1.
[55.] Op. cit., 10.
[56.] Pomper, "The Contribution of Political Parties to American Democracy," 5.
[57.] Although Bryce believed political panics were in need of reform, he thought they mattered more in the United States than in Europe. Bryce wanted to curb the excesses of party patronage. The discipline's early entanglement with reform led to what Leon Epstein calls "an uncertain start."
[58.] Quoted in Epstein, Political Parties in the American Mold, 18.
[59.] Moisei lakovlevitch Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Party System in the United States (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1910), 380. Quoted in Ranney, The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government, 116.
[60.] From The Challenge of Facts and Other Essays, ed. A. G. Keller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1914), 367. Quoted in Ranney, The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government, 14.
[61.] Quoted in Ranney, The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government, 96.
[62.] Quoted in Price, Bringing Bock the Parties, 102.
[63.] Woodrow Wilson, "Leaderless Government," an address before the Virginia Bar Association, 4 August 1897, in Public Papers 1, 336-359. Quoted in Ranney, The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government, 33.
[64.] Quoted in Price, Bringing Back the Parties, 103.
[65.] Wilson may have been influenced by Theodore Roosevelt's presidency. Roosevelt's vigor and passions dominated American politics for more than a decade.
[66.] Woodrow Wilson, "Mr. Cleveland's Cabinet," in Public Papers 1, 221-222. Quoted in Ranney, The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government, 30.
[67.] The emphasis is Wilson's. Quoted in Ranney, The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government, 29.
[68.] V. O. Key, "A Theory of Critical Elections," Journal of Politics 17 (February 1955): 3-18.
[69.] "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System," 93.
[70.] E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America (Hinsdale, Illinois: The Dryden Press, 1975 reprint), 15.
[71.] Lewis Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1956), 121. 1 am grateful to Professor Morton Tenzer of the University of onnecticut for providing Schattschneider's marked copy of Coser's book.
[72.] "Toward a More Responsible Two-Pany System," 17-18. The emphasis is the report's.
[73.] Ibid., 30. The emphasis is the report's.
[74.] Quoted in James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1956), 271.
[75.] Of those who thought their wallets had grown slimmer, 85 percent voted for Mondale. Source: Decision/Making/lnformation, post-election study for the Republican National Committee, 7-10 November 1984.
[76.] Quoted in Fred Barnes, "Campaign '88: Bush's Mandate," New Republic, 14 November 1988, 12.
[77.] Turner, "Responsible Parties," 151.
[78.] Ibid., 144-148. Turner noted that the Democratic platform called for repeal of Taft-Hanley while the Republicans commended their legislators for supporting it. Republicans chastised the Democrats for supporting the Marshall Plan; Democrats boasted of the "generous sums" they gave to the devastated nations of Western Europe. Republicans promised lower taxes for industry; Democrats advocated a reduction for low income groups only. Republicans encouraged volunteerism; Democrats pointed with pride to federal legislation enacted by their party. Turner concluded that although the Democrats failed to repeal Taft-Hanley, they did enact the Marshall Plan, expansion of and increases in Social Security, an increase of the minimum wage, a housing bill, crop insurance, rural electrification, irrigation, and reclamation, and European armament legislation.
[79.] Jeff Fishel, Presidents and Promises (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1985), especially 37-38.
[80.] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference? (New York: Macmillan, 1960). One subject of much of the Kennedy-Nixon debates was what to do about Quemoy and Matsu, two islands off China's coast threatened with a Communist takeover A trivia question would be to ask students what Kennedy's and Nixon's positions were on the matter.
[81.] Michael Barone, Our Country: From Roosevelt to Reagan (New York: Free Press, 1990), xii.
[82.] Ibid., xi.
[83.] Quoted in J. Joseph Huthmacher, Massachusetts: People and Politics, 1919-1933 (New York: Atheneum, 1969), 162.
[84.] Time/CNN survey, 3 October 1990. Reported in Lawrence 1. Barrett, "1,000 Points of Spite," Time, 15 October 1990, 36.
[85.] Cited in Everett Carll Ladd, "Public Opinion and the 'Congress Problem,' " The Public Interest 100 (Summer 1990): 66.
[86.] Market Opinion Reports, May 1990, 4.
[87.] Ladd, "Public Opinion and the 'Congress Problem,'" 67.
[88.] ABC News/Washington Post poll, 4-6 March 1991. Strong Republican leads were found on such issues as maintaining a strong national defense (68 percent to 17 percent); increasing U.S. influence overseas (60 percent to 26 percent); handling foreign affairs (59 percent to 23 percent); and making U.S. industry competitive overseas (55 percent to 26 percent). The Republicans had modest advantages on handing the nation's economy (49 percent to 32 percent); controlling inflation (49 percent to 34 percent); reducing the problem of illegal drugs (48 percent to 26 percent); handling crime (46 percent to 28 percent); holding taxes down (44 percent to 35 percent); reducing the threat of nuclear war (43 percent to 34 percent); and reducing the federal budget deficit (43 percent to 35 percent).
[89.] Ibid. On keeping unemployment down the Democrats led 45 percent to 38 percent. As to helping the middle class, the Democrats had a 48 percent to 34 percent advantage. Stronger Democratic leads were found on issues such as helping the poor (64 percent to 22 percent); helping the elderly (60 percent to 24 percent); handling the homeless problem (54 percent to 27 percent); and protecting the social security system (52 percent to 29 percent).
[90.] Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril, The Political Beliefs of Americans (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1967).
[91.] "An Interview with Peter Hart," The Public Perspective, March/April 1990, 7.
[92.] "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System," 22.
[93.] The Republicans controlled the Senate in 1981-1982 and had a working majority in the House of Representatives with the "Boll-Weevil" Democrats.
[94.] Tom Kenworthy, "Democratic Critics Want for Foley to Push Back," Washington Post, 7 June 1990, A-1.
[95.] Felix Rohatyn, "Becoming What They Think We Are," New York Review of Books, 12 April 1990.
[96.] "Determined to Do What Is Right, An Interview with George Bush," Time, 7 November 1991, 32.
[97.] James Q. Wilson, "The Newer Deal," The New Republic, 2 July 1990, 35.
[98.] Ibid.