The Nationalization of American Politics

By William M. Lunch

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Apr 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520329294

William M. Lunch

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The Nationalization

of American Politics

The Nationalization of American Politics

William M. Lunch

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley • Los Angeles • London

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

© 1987 by

The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lunch, William M.

The nationalization of American politics.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. Political participation—United States.

2. Politicians—United States. 3. United States— Politics and government—1945-. 4. Ideology.

I. Title.

JK1764.L86 1987 323’.042'0973 86-16105

ISBN 0-520-05661-2 (alk. paper)

Printed in the United States of America

123456789

Contents

Contents

Tables and Figures

Preface

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

CHAPTER I The Old Washington

POSTWAR POLITICS IN ALBEN BARKLEY’S WASHINGTON

NEW FORCES IN NATIONAL POLITICS

CHAPTER II Presidential Elections

POLITICAL PARTY RULE CHANGES

THE CONVENTIONS AND THE NEW PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION SYSTEM

THE NEW NOMINATION SYSTEM

THE CONVENTIONS

THE NEW ORDER IN PARTY REPRESENTATION

PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN FINANCING AND REGULATION

CHAPTER III The President in the White House

PRESIDENTS AND THE POLITICAL PARTIES

THE CABINET AND INTEREST GROUPS

THE WHITE HOUSE STAFF

THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET (OMB)

PRESIDENTIAL TELEVISION

TELEVISION AND PRESIDENTIAL REMOTE CONTROL

THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS

PRESIDENTS AND THE BUREAUCRACY

PRESIDENTS AND THE PRESS

THE PRESIDENT IN THE POLITICAL SYSTEM

CHAPTER IV Congress

PROLOGUE: THE OLD CONGRESS

NEW CANDIDATES, NEW MEMBERS, NEW PARTY ORGANIZATIONS

SOUTHERN POLITICAL CHANGE AND CONGRESS

THE NEW CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS

NEW RESOURCES FOR INCUMBENTS

THE NEW CONGRESS

ASSESSING THE NEW CONGRESS

CHAPTER V The Judiciary

LEGALIZATION IN POLITICAL LIFE

FROM THE OLD COURT TO THE NEW: THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING

THE NEW JUDICIAL POWER, I: MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE BENCH, WHO IS THE FAIREST?

THE NEW JUDICIAL POWER, II: LEGISLATORS IN COURT

FINANCING LITIGATION

PUBLIC INTEREST LAW FIRMS AND IDEOLOGICAL LAW

IDEOLOGY AND CENTRALIZATION IN JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS

LEGAL IMPERIALISM IN POLITICS AND LIFE

CHAPTER VI The Bureaucracy

NEW TASKS AND BUREAUCRATIC POWER

STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS: SEDUCTION IN THE FEDERAL SYSTEM

BUREAUCRATIC POWER

THE EMERGENCE OF THE ISSUE NETWORKS

THE REACTION AGAINST BUREAUCRATIC POWER

BUREAUCRATIC POLITICIANS IN THE NEW WASHINGTON

CHAPTER VII Interest Groups

INTEREST GROUPS IN THE OLD SYSTEM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

THE ROOTS OF CHANGE

THE TRADITIONAL INTERESTS RESPOND

THE FECUNDITY OF THE NEW WASHINGTON

THE NEW IDEA-BASED GROUPS

THE NEW ORDER AMONG INTEREST GROUPS

CHAPTER VIII Political Parties

THE OLD PARTIES IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: A BRIEF RETROSPECTIVE

MASS PARTIES IN DECLINE

ORGANIZATIONAL PARTIES IN TURMOIL

GOVERNMENT WITHOUT PARTIES— POLITICS WITHOUT LIMITS

NATIONALIZED POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE NEW WASHINGTON

CHAPTER IX The New Washington

THE NEW EQUALITY AMONG POLITICIANS AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

A COOK’S TOUR OF THE NEW WASHINGTON

A DIGRESSION ON AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT

THE NEW POLITICAL SYSTEM: A FEW IMPLICATIONS

THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW WASHINGTON

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Tables and Figures

Preface

Political change is the subject of this book, but so are patterns of political change. Everyone will agree that much political change has occurred in our time; not everyone will agree with my characterization of its patterns. The patterns I see have been heavily influenced by changes in the political parties.

In the years roughly since 1960, political scientists have spent a large part of their time just keeping up with major developments such as the rise of the White House staff, the new influence of congressional subcommittees, or the greatly expanded political role of the courts. The literature describing such specific developments has revealed a number of threads in the fabric of change. These are discussed in chapter 1. But the most sophisticated and persuasive descriptions repeatedly included the political equivalent of Sherlock Holmes’s dog that did not bark: the local and state parties are no longer able to influence or limit national government institutions as they did for at least a century. The old parties could enforce a measure of restraint on national institutions because of the influence they had in both congressional and presidential elections. As the influence of local party organization in national elections faded, so did local limitations on the national government. In our time, ideologies (or at least consistent political ideas) increasingly perform the role party identity once did, but ideologies are far more demanding than party loyalty ever was.

I came to see this change in part through first-hand observation. In these pages, particularly in chapters 4 and 8,1 report the results of inter views I have done with party, campaign, and movement activists. I started these as part of my dissertation research at Berkeley in the mid- 1970s, and in the years since I have continued them off and on as a participant or observer at a number of campaign, political party, and interest group meetings in California, Oregon, and Washington. This largely unstructured investigation included a lot of standing around before and after speeches, in lecture halls, lobbies, hallways, elevators, kitchens, garages—where politicians, both amateur and professional, might gather. Mostly I listened as they talked. Occasionally I asked a question to stimulate the discussion. Although some of the interviews were structured by questions drawn up in advance, most politicians are talkative people whose comments frequently take off in unexpected directions and lead to points that could not have been anticipated. The sampling, the interview techniques, and the analysis of the resulting information were not scientific. By far the most elegant defense of this method of doing research is Richard Fenno’s appendix to Home Style (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), called A Note on Method: Participant Observation. He describes his research method as largely one of soaking and poking—or just hanging around (p. xiv). I learned from and have tried to follow his example.

One of the lessons I have learned from politicians is that words count. In politics no less than academic life, as George Orwell and now William Salire have reminded us, the definition of terms is crucial. In these pages, I use the popular (and more permissive) definition of political ideology rather than the narrower definition traditionally used in describing European thought and politics. As I define the term, it refers to the politics of ideas rather than the politics of material interests. In 1962, James Q. Wilson wrote in The Amateur Democrat, If ideology is [defined] as referring to a comprehensive world view which explains and offers a moral judgment on social phenomena (as does, for example, Marxism) then there is very little ideology in contemporary amateur politics (p. 156). A quarter-century later, what Wilson called amateur politics have become by far the dominant type, at least at the national level—but I am getting ahead of the story. In brief, when ideology is discussed in these pages, I am referring to belief systems considerably less constrained and demanding than those one would encounter among European politicians and party activists. They are, nonetheless, considerably more sophisticated and demanding than those upon which American political observers, from Alexis de Tocqueville to Theodore H. White, reported for nearly a century and a half.

Similarly, I use the popular rather than the academic definition of liberalism. When academics refer to liberalism, they usually mean classical liberalism, which favors limited government and reliance on interest group representation. Among the European democracies this position is still one choice in an ideological smorgasbord, but in the United States classical liberalism has been all but taken for granted in our politics since the ratification of the Constitution. When politically active Americans refer to liberalism, however, they have something quite different in mind, and their definition is the one used in these pages: the broadly shared (if loosely defined) belief system that looks toward the national government for the solution of problems, that favors government intervention in the economy but opposes it in personal choices. Conservatism, by contrast, opposes government intervention in the economy but favors government social controls on personal behavior perceived as dangerous. Libertarians object that both liberals and conservatives are inconsistent; of course, they are right, but at a deeper level these choices reflect the liberal preference for equality and the conservative preference for hierarchy. Does anyone seriously doubt that Thomas Jefferson would be a liberal Democrat if he were alive today or that Alexander Hamilton would be a conservative Republican?

In closing, perhaps I should say something about working on a book concerning the national political system while located on the Pacific coast. While researching and writing this book, I was far from Washington, New York, and other centers of power but was able to follow developments in such places with relative ease. The national edition of the New York Times is available even at news stands in Corvallis, Oregon. However, one professor at my institution, recently returned after a stint as head of a Washington think-tank, reports that while there he was asked, in all apparent sincerity, What do you think intelligent people do in [Oregon]? As Bernard Malamud once suggested, distance sometimes provides perspective. Readers will have to judge if it has had that effect on my work.

August 1986 William M. Lunch

Corvallis, Oregon

Acknowledgments

Aaron Wildavsky is my teacher and my friend. It was he who suggested the topic of this book to me. He encouraged my work, reviewed my highly imperfect efforts chapter by chapter and suggested improvements that I have sometimes had the sense to make. My debt to him, which was already substantial, has thus grown at least as large, in relative terms, as the current annual difference between what the U.S. government spends and what it collects. The difference is that my debt is moral rather than fiscal, so it will last longer. It should not be thought, however, that Aaron and I agree on everything. In our discussions of public policy while walking along Benvenue and Haste Streets in Berkeley, we have sometimes agreed to disagree. Aaron should not be required to bear the burden of responsibility for my views.

Charles Adrian of the University of California, Riverside, also carefully reviewed an earlier (and lengthier) version of the entire manuscript. He was both sympathetic and critical, making suggestions that improved every chapter. I very much appreciate his willingness to share his enormous store of knowledge of the American political system with me and the painstaking care he took in his review.

Others have helped with this project as well. I am grateful to colleagues and friends who reviewed earlier drafts of chapters in the book. Their comments have helped me avoid errors and reminded me of important points. So that no one will impute responsibility on their part for the chapters they read or my use or misuse of their advice, I have listed them here alphabetically.

Clive Beauchamp: Mitchell College, Australia

Glen Dealy: Oregon State University

Milton F. Lunch: National Society of Professional Engineers

Robert C. Lunch: State of California, retired

William K. Muir: University of California, Berkeley

Larry Peitzman: Los Angeles, California

Stanley Rothman: Smith College

Byron Shafer: Florida State University

Robert Waste: San Diego State University

Bill Wilkins: Oregon State University

I would also like to acknowledge the help I received from Darrell Beers, Columbia Basin College; Nathan Glazer, Harvard University; Richard Johnson, Oregon State University; Eugene Lee, University of California, Berkeley; Paul Mishkin, Boalt Hall, University of California, Berkeley; John Picchi, A.I.A.; and James W. Stuart, Sangamon State University.

Their willingness to help should not, however, implicate any of these thoughtful individuals in my errors of fact or interpretation.

I am very pleased to acknowledge support from the Earl C. Anthony research grant at the University of California, Davis, in 1976-77 that provided support for my initial interviewing in Los Angeles of members and supporters of the Waxman-Berman party organization discussed in chapters 4 and 8. I also wish to thank the Institute for Educational Affairs, which provided a grant that made it possible for me to spend academic 1981—82 writing. Neither of these organizations bears any responsibility for the views I have expressed here, of course.

The Department of Politics at Sonoma State University in California provided me with a pleasant academic home while a substantial fraction of the book was written. I am particularly indebted to Don Dixon, John Kramer, Cheryl Peterson, and David Ziblatt of Sonoma State, who went out of their way to be helpful and supportive while I was with them. Since coming to Oregon State University I have also been blessed with supportive colleagues who know how to encourage and stimulate without creating undue pressure.

I must also thank the numerous typists who have worked on what must have seemed to be unending drafts of the manuscript. These in trepid translators of my hieroglyphics are Maureen Z. Strain, Marolyn Welch, Molly Collette, and Bonnie Hummel.

At the University of California Press, James Clark has consistently been helpful and supportive, despite missed deadlines and frustrations. I only can hope that the book proves worthy of his hopes for it.

Finally, just as this project would not have begun without Aaron, it never would have been completed without Caroline Kerl. She read virtually the entire manuscript and always offered comments that sliced directly to the core of the issue in question. She encouraged, prodded, reorganized, consoled, edited, and finally set a series of deadlines, one of which I finally met. She also tried to restrain my tendency to hyperbole (not always with success, as readers will see). To her, although she does not agree with everything in these pages and certainly bears no responsibility for anything contained in them, this book is dedicated with gratitude and love.

In this context, I must also apologize to Ben and Claire Lunch for the games not played, stories not read, and the need for telephone hugs instead of real ones during the seemingly endless writing and rewriting. I am pleased that I can finally give an affirmative answer to their question, "Aren’t you done yet, Daddy?"

Abbreviations

CHAPTER I

The Old Washington

Talking and drinking well were valued skills among professional politicians of the old school. Alben Barkley, who spent over forty years as a congressman, senator, and, ultimately, vice president to Harry Truman in the old Washington was good at both. At home in the Senate cloakroom with a bourbon in one hand and a story on his lips, he would charm his listeners and then, all other things being equal, return to the floor to gather in their votes.

If Barkley could return to Washington now, Rip-Van-Winkle-like, the monuments and public buildings would look familiar and the weather would be just as bad, but he would find political life in the national capital significantly changed. Within the past twenty-five years, national politics and the national government headquartered in Washington have been transformed.

The president is nominated in an almost unending, frenzied series of primaries and open caucuses, quite unknown when Truman and Barkley were nominated. This new selection process is dominated by latter-day moralists in both major political parties whose criteria for presidential nominees have relatively little to do with winning elections and virtually nothing to do with governing the nation.

Once in office, presidents selected in this new system have attempted to centralize responsibility for the day-to-day operation of the government in the White House staff, thus greatly weakening the cabinet and attenuating links to the nation.

The Speaker of the House now presides over a body that actually elects committee chairmen every two years. More important, the subcommittees now usually have more legislative importance than the full committees, which were the real centers of legislative authority when Barkley was a member of Congress. Senators would now rather get on the six o’clock news than the Appropriations Committee.

The Supreme Court has become a major and unpredictable source of innovation in the political system; its political significance is greater now than ever before.

The bureaucrats downtown have also taken on a political prominence they did not have in Barkley’s time. Partially as a result, bureaucratic politics have become far more complex and a powerful backlash against bureaucratic power has taken place.

Lobbyists are even more inclined now to declare themselves as representatives of the public interest, but many of them really mean it. Ideologically motivated public interest groups have proliferated on both the left and the right.

Perhaps most significant for the future, the national political parties now have a measure of genuine authority over their state and local subdivisions.

Something important is happening to any nation when all its political institutions change so notably in such a relatively short period. These developments are pieces in a larger puzzle; the political system has become much more centralized and truly national. The federated system of state and local political systems that was dominant in Barkley’s time has been eclipsed. In the sense that Paris is the capital of France, Washington is becoming the capital of the United States. This transformation is not yet complete, but the process is advancing in Ronald Reagan’s administration at least as much as it did in those preceding it.¹

Of course, centralization of political power in Washington is not a new phenomenon. Ever since the struggle over ratification of the Constitution, the national government has become successively stronger in fits and starts. In this century, the Progressive Era and the New Deal concentrated power in the national capital. During World War II, the national government exercised truly extraordinary powers, directing virtually every aspect of the American economy and social life. The past is prologue; in our time the responsibilities and power of the national government extend further than ever before.

Indeed, a new political system has emerged in the United States. It is distinct in many respects from the New Deal system from which it evolved, but two dimensions are particularly notable. These features alone would be enough clearly to distinguish the new political system from the old even if the rest of the political system had remained as undisturbed as Lake Placid in the dead of winter.

First, the new political system is much more truly nationalized than was the New Deal, meaning that to a much greater extent significant choices in American society are made directly by the national government, or at least with the approval of the national government.

Second, the new, nationalized system is driven in large measure by political ideas rather than political interests. This means that the crass, but reliable, materialism that was the foundation of the old system is being rendered increasingly obsolete by a politics frequently dominated by abstract ideas that have mobilized a new class of political activists on both the left and the right.

The centralization of power in Washington during the New Deal was of historic significance because the national government became a major force in the management of the economy. This was and is vital, but the changes of the sixties and seventies extended the reach of the national government much further into the details of administration and the daily lives of citizens than it had ever penetrated before, except during wartime.

By contrast, the local impact of New Deal programs was in practice frequently restrained because of the influence of local and state political party organizations and interest groups in the administration of the programs. For example, the national government gained very significant leverage over transportation policy by offering to pay most of the cost of highway improvements and construction, but in practice control actually rested with city and state governments that were often heavily influenced by the dominant party organizations. Similarly, the soil conservation programs begun in the aftermath of the dust bowl were, de facto, directed by local committees of farmers. The construction projects of the Army Corps of Engineers were also dominated by local political considerations, even though the program was a national one in authority and funding. The famous Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), virtually the symbol of big government in the thirties, was found on examination to be subject to substantial policy modification by pressures applied by local groups. Even the famous Works Progress Administration program for artists was significantly influenced by Democratic politicians at city halls and statehouses.²

Moreover, regulatory agencies established during the New Deal years, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Civil Aeronautics Board, were later criticized on the grounds that they had, over time, established intimate or even incestuous relationships with the regulated industries.³ Thus, whether one refers to local influence over national programs or industry influence over regulators, the effect was largely the same, restricting what the national government could do without consultation.

The contemporary elaboration and extension of national government control over state and local political institutions would not have been possible without the foundation built during the Roosevelt administration. There is, however, a difference between government making major decisions but leaving implementation largely to those most affected by the new national policies, which was the heart of the bargain struck during the New Deal, and government extending its control to include the details of administration, which has increasingly been the practice since the sixties.⁴

Because local and state governments now spend so much more money, employ so many more people, and carry out so many more functions, it may appear that they are stronger rather than weaker. But as virtually any experienced local bureaucrat or state legislator will explain, much of the money that pays the increased staff to carry out the new functions comes from Washington, and policy decisions—including many very small ones—are increasingly made beside the Potomac. Public posturing aside, the Reagan administration has not changed this patron-client relationship with the states and local governments, nor is there evidence of any serious intent to do so.⁵

The Reagan administration has been the most self-consciously ideological in this century, perhaps ever, in the United States. Like the French politicians they resemble, Reagan and his appointees think deductively—that is, deducing specific policies from the general commands of their ideology. The demands of ideology, or at least consistent ideas in politics, are increasingly given much the same respect they have long been afforded in Paris.⁶ But it is not just the Reagan administration. Jimmy Carter appointed a number of liberal ideologues to positions just below the cabinet level (the subcabinet).⁷ As appointments by Reagan and Carter illustrate, the new political system uses ideology—or at least consistent political ideas—to perform the function party loyalty did in Truman’s and Eisenhower’s time.

Not long after Eisenhower departed the White House for Gettysburg, V. O. Key, Jr., wrote:

The longer one frets with the puzzle of how democratic regimes manage to function, the more plausible it appears that a substantial part of the explanation is to be found in the motives that actuate the leadership echelon, the values that it holds, in the rules of the political game to which it adheres, in the expectations which it entertains.⁸

I translate this to mean that those who are active in the political system, mainly those for whom politics is a daily activity, are centrally important to the survival of democracy. In contemporary American politics one would, of course, include elected officials such as legislators, mayors, and even elected road commissioners among those Key had in mind, but also top bureaucrats, judges, reporters and editors, lobbyists and interest group leaders, political party and campaign organizers, and some others.

The members of this political class illustrate the shift from the old system to the new with great clarity. From one end of the political class to the other, from campaign workers slogging their way door to door in a local campaign to the highest councils of the national government, ideologues and near ideologues are now more than quixotic figures outside national politics. They are dominant in both major political parties and in very large segments of the government.

In the old system, from the precinct captain on the block to national officials in Congress and the bureaucracy, winning elections and dividing the fruits of victory were of paramount importance. Most contemporary political activists are motivated, however, not by the hope of securing a poorly paid government job, but by the thought that their principles (to quote a term many of them use) might be reflected in public policy.

At this point, I should probably say that I have interviewed many political activists, both conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, and they are frequently impressive as individuals. Their political involvement usually arises out of sincere and very strongly held beliefs and a strong sense of duty.⁹ But as admirable as the activists may be individually, collectively they make demands that are exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for the political system to meet. There are so many groups in a large, complex society that the most frustrating responsibility for politicians is to bargain, compromise, and deal in a way that will be acceptable to most. Under those circumstances, demands for purity, whatever their source, are impossible to meet.

When James Q. Wilson studied Democratic party activists in three cities in the late fifties, he described spirited clashes between them and patronage-conscious urban party organizations.¹⁰ Similarly, when Aaron Wildavsky interviewed Goldwater delegates to the 1964 Republican convention, their struggle was against moderate Republicans concerned first with winning elections.¹¹ When the paperback edition of his book The Amateur Democrat appeared in 1966, Wilson had written a new preface, in which he said: Americans are more and more trained to think in terms of large issues, causes, and principles. … If I had foreseen the Goldwater nomination (who did?), this book would have been about the Amateur Republican and would have said essentially the same things [as it did about the Amateur Democrats].¹²

In both major parties in the two decades since Wilson wrote these words, the principled faction has decisively defeated the opposition. Democratic party councils are largely dominated by the ideological left, and the Republican party is controlled by deeply conservative activists even more ideologically driven than the Democrats.

Nor is this pattern restricted to those active in campaigns and the political parties. In another corner of the political system, foreign policy elites have also abandoned pragmatism for ideology and confrontation. I. M. Destler, Leslie Gelb, and Anthony Lake, who are insiders in foreign policy making, have recently described the transformation they have seen: At home, policy makers devour one another in a game that approaches a national blood sport. … Political play acting is better rewarded than hard work; political speechmaking passes as serious policy making. Our debates give more weight to ideological ‘certainties’ than the ambiguities of reality.¹³

Very recent work has suggested that this type of ideological rigidity is increasingly rooted, not in the economic differences that have traditionally defined our politics, but in cultural distinctions such as those between rural fundamentalists and cosmopolitan urbanites. Fragmentary evidence for the proposition that this type of schism is becoming increasingly significant has been found in a number of places,¹⁴ but it is too early to tell whether cultural cleavages are in the process of replacing more manageable political differences among Americans.

If deeply held personal beliefs are perceived to be at stake in politics, particularly if such feelings are reinforced by religious conviction, conflict could without much difficulty rise to levels currently observed in Lebanon, Ireland, and India.¹⁵ Ideologically based political systems are notoriously brittle. When inflexibility is nationalized, so that very little escapes the claims of politics, losers in political contests may not be inclined to accept the outcome and wait for the next round.

When consistent political ideas are imposed by a truly national government, very little of social significance can escape their claims. Allencompassing ideologies have found supporters in both major political parties, on the right as well as the left. Ralph Nader’s impact on the left may have come first, but Richard Viguerie made up for lost time quickly. Ronald Reagan has been our most ideological president so far this century, but the next tenant of the White House has yet to be selected. Wherever one cares to look, the fundamental changes that are the focus of this book have affected all the participants in the American political system, although it is important to stress that institutional structure and public policy are not synonymous.

The new policies enacted during the sixties and seventies have not necessarily proven to be poor ones. Most significantly, the American political system no longer condones the official racism that was the infected open wound of the old system. The air and water are cleaner now. The frustrating child-proof caps on medicine bottles have driven many an adult nearly to distraction, but hundreds of children are now alive because they were not poisoned. In short, many if not most of the new policies enacted in the past two decades were successful, as John Schwarz has shown.¹⁶ Of course, not all the policy innovations of the era of change have been as effective as the child-proof caps, but it is possible to view most of the new policies with favor without sacrificing skepticism about the institutional changes made at much the same time.

Let us be clear from the start: the worst aspects of the old system are gone. We would not want them back. In many respects, the old system was venal and closed, but it worked to a surprising degree because it responded to the very real material needs of Americans during the mid-century years. The changes in the old system have been somewhat obscured by the continuing popularity of many of its most important innovations, such as Social Security. Alben Barkley was one of those who helped to shape the old system both from Capitol Hill and, later, the executive branch.

To better understand the magnitude of the political changes since his time, a feel for the logic and rhythm of life in the Washington that Barkley knew will be helpful. He was reelected to the Senate after the end of his vice presidency. Had he lived, his term would have ended just as the last president to work in the unalloyed old system, John Kennedy, was being inaugurated. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, a year of transition in more ways than one.

POSTWAR POLITICS IN

ALBEN BARKLEY’S WASHINGTON

To understand the old Washington, it is best to begin not on the banks of the Potomac, but out in the country—say, in Chicago. Chicago because if you were Robert Kennedy in 1960, you went there to talk with Mayor Richard J. Daley, as did other presidential campaign managers, because he controlled the votes of the Illinois delegation to the Democratic convention. Republican national campaign managers went to Philadelphia to bargain with the leaders of the suburban War Board, who were vital in any serious effort to secure the votes of the Pennsylvania delegation. Even in small states not associated in the public mind with organization politics, delegates to the presidential nominating conventions were often controlled by their state political leaders. For example, Edward Kennedy went to talk to Teno Roncalio, the Wyoming Democratic state party chairman (and later, congressman) because in that small state it was he who had the most influence among the convention delegates.¹⁷

Actually, by 1960, it had become possible for someone like Kennedy, who was something of an upstart, to ram his way through to the presidential nomination, which had not been the case even eight years earlier, when Estes Kcfauver tried to accomplish the same thing. But in 1960, as before, it was necessary for a presidential hopeful to win the nomination by getting the support of a relatively small number of state and local party leaders, such as Daley and Roncalio, and interest group leaders. In the Democratic party hard-fisted leaders of organized labor such as George Meany were indispensable, while in the Republican party Eastern brahmins such as Nelson Rockefeller could hardly be ignored by a serious candidate.¹⁸

The party leaders in particular were relatively unconcerned with abstruse issues; Mayor Daley did not care very much what the president did in foreign policy, but he wanted assurances that when federal funds were divided, Chicago would receive its share, and he absolutely wanted control over those funds in the city.¹⁹

In 1960 the great bulk of delegates to the national conventions were thus selected in both major parties by meetings of local and state party leaders. These meetings were generally closed to the public and even to elected officials if they were on bad terms with the party leadership. At the convention a delegation selected this way could be expected to follow instructions. There were formal rules requiring the delegation to vote together—the unit rule—which reinforced discipline on any potential dissenters or representatives of rival blocs within the state party.

Fund-raising in this system was very private. There were no effective laws requiring disclosure of the sources of campaign contributions, but it is safe to generalize that both parties depended in the main upon relatively small groups of wealthy individual contributors and large institutional contributions. For example, accountants from large corporations were temporarily detailed to GOP campaigns, and labor organizers used their skills on behalf of Democratic candidates.²⁰ In presidential elections these financial arrangements reinforced the ties between each of the parties and its core constituency, but it should be remembered that as long as there were healthy state and local party organizations, levels of campaign spending were notably lower and contributions less important in most elections of that time than in current politics; party loyalists could be counted upon to vote for the candidate endorsed by the organization. This loyalty was created neither by ideology nor by advertising, but by material rewards, such as jobs or contracts, which the parties delivered.²¹

The delegates to the national conventions under the old system were primarily professional politicians, interest group leaders, and major contributors to the parties and campaigns. Occasionally a middle-class political activist was tossed in for spice, but activist concerns were usually submerged by the interest of the professional politicians in selecting a candidate and conducting the convention so as to maximize the chances of winning the upcoming election.²²

The few primaries in the old system served mainly to prove that the likely candidate could attract voters in the fall, but defeat in the primaries was not fatal, and neither did winning the primaries make a candidate invincible. In 1952, under the old system, maverick Senator Estes Kefauver won most of the primaries, defeating, among others, Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson got the nomination.

Though the old nomination system was largely closed, it produced presidential nominees with experience in government and some capacity to deal with the complex realities of American politics. Among the candidates selected this way were Truman and Dewey (in 1948) and Stevenson and Eisenhower (in 1952 and 1956).

The old presidential nomination system was a reflection of the power of the state parties. Both Adlai Stevenson and John Kennedy got their start in state political systems dominated by political machines that regularly attempted to improve their public images by offering ethically unimpeachable patrician candidates for national office. From the point of view of those in control of state nominations, it did not make a great deal of difference what a U.S. senator did in Washington, which was distant both geographically and politically. The choices made by a senator in the state legislature were much more important to the continued success of the party organization.²³

Many senators and representatives in the mid-century years can thus properly be viewed as emissaries from state and local political organizations sent to the national capital either as a reward for decades of loyal service where it really counted—in city hall or the statehouse—or to get them out of the way. Harry Truman was nominated for the Senate by the Pendergast machine in Missouri in this fashion. As the nation learned, Truman was hardly mediocre, but the same cannot be said of many others sent to Congress the way he was. The politicians who were crucial to the operation of the organization normally stayed home.

Nor should it be thought that these organizations were all Democratic and urban. In suburban and rural areas outside the South, they were frequently Republican. Congressmen from Long Island in the middle of this century were the creatures of a rock-ribbed Republican political machine. And in Southern rural areas the courthouse politicians satirized by Mark Twain and William Faulkner performed many of the same functions machine politicians did in the city.²⁴

But whether the organizations were Democratic or Republican, urban or rural, viewed from Washington the country had a regular, reasonably predictable, political topography. For any given politician, any one place might be friendly or hostile, but the existence of localized political baronies and fiefdoms meant that national leaders knew with whom they had to bargain. Presidents dealt this way with the leaders of the decentralized political system, and so did congressional leaders such as Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson. They negotiated not out of friendship but out of a mutual need to serve their constituents and thus improve their chances of political survival. Working this way, postwar congressional leaders were able to secure a quite considerable degree of independence and power for the national legislature.

This much legislative discretion did not make everyone happy. Most notably, presidents and their intellectual aides-de-camp argued that the White House should be the dominant force among the institutions of government in Washington. The relative weakness of the president in the real world ran counter to popular perceptions, particularly against the background of World War II, when the president really did have extraordinary powers. As Richard Neustadt observed, people were used to thinking of powerful presidents almost astride the world. In fact, as Neustadt demonstrated, the president was much weaker than commonly believed.²⁵

In 1960 this popular misperception was exacerbated, no doubt, by the presidents who had filled the office within recent memory—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower was very highly regarded by the public at large, but was perceived by many opinion leaders as having been insufficiently energetic as president. The thrust of Neustadt’s work was consistent with the direction of most commentary on the national government at the time. He was hardly alone in calling for a more energetic president with greater powers at his disposal.²⁶

The presidency already embodied substantial centralization and nationalization, which had begun during FDR’s presidency, particularly during World War II, but there was unhappiness about the remaining obstacles to complete presidential domination of the political system. Franklin D. Roosevelt had greatly strengthened the White House staff, but the continuing influence of interest groups, expressed through the cabinet, and of state party organizations, expressed through their emissaries in Congress, was very frustrating to those on White House staffs. It was often ex-members of the White House staff who retired to write of the desirability of greater centralization of power at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.²⁷

It seemed only reasonable to assume that the president would have eight years to complete the tasks he had set out to accomplish at the beginning of his administration. After all, between them, FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower had served for twenty-eight years in the White House. Against this background, a series of institutional changes were urged, designed mainly to weaken Congress, the states, and the local political parties so that an Oval Office activist might have his way.

Congress, in particular, was the bete noire of those who wanted a stronger national government. During the postwar years, both houses of Congress were dominated by the conservative coalition—that is, Southern Democrats and Republicans, who frequently combined to block proposals that would have strengthened the national government, such as federal aid to education or civil rights legislation.²⁸ This coalition was strengthened by the congressional committee and seniority systems then in force.

Committee chairmen were selected from among the members of the majority party (almost always the Democrats in the postwar years) by a rule that followed seniority very strictly. Because Southern states routinely reelected their Democratic, if conservative, legislators term after term, Southern Democrats held a disproportionate share of committee chairmanships in both the House and the Senate in 1960. This was particularly true of the most sensitive committees, such as Appropriations and Rules in the House. And because Southerners differed so spectacularly from the dominant views of the national Democratic party—particularly on the crucial question of civil rights—there were numerous proposals aimed at increasing national party control over the chairmen. But as long as the Southerners represented nearly half of the total Democratic strength in Congress, proposals to strengthen the national party were doomed.²⁹

During the postwar period committee chairmen could be little dictators within their committees, and some were. Subcommittees could be created and dissolved as the chairman decreed; staff were assigned and reassigned, sometimes arbitrarily; hearings could be scheduled or not with very little regard for the other members. Most chairmen did not behave in this capricious fashion, but some did, and some used their powers to frustrate the will of the majority of members of the committee. They could get away with this because there were no effective checks on reappointment as chairman. There was simply no question: the member with the longest continuous service on the committee in the majority party, whether capable or senile, sensitive or boorish, energetic or lazy, was going to be chairman.

In the Senate, the conservative tendencies built into the committee system were reinforced by an exclusive men’s club atmosphere fostered by patrician members such as Richard Russell of Georgia and Clinton Anderson of New Mexico. In an institution that emphasized mutual deference among its members, proposals to which many senators strongly objected would have had a difficult time even if the committee system had been different.³⁰

The congressional staff was not insubstantial in 1960, but only a few hundred staffers worked directly for members on Capitol Hill. It was unusual, too, for congressional staff to work in a district office back home; local and state party leaders would have strongly disapproved had a member of the organization sought to establish his own service delivery system. In Washington the number of staffers available to most members was relatively small. Although staff could certainly have an important effect on a bill, it was largely because of their professional knowledge and experience with prior legislation. The congressional staff was not discussed as an independent source of public policy.³¹

The staff was limited, but so was the work. The pace of life on Capitol Hill was simply slower than it is today. Many members who were emissaries from big-city party organizations in the East belonged to the so- called Tuesday-Thursday Club, arriving in Washington on Tuesday morning and leaving by Thursday night to get back to their districts. Travel by jet aircraft was still largely reserved for the military, so members from more distant states were not expected to return regularly to their districts during the congressional session. On the whole the demands on a legislator’s time, while not small in 1960, were far more manageable than is the case today. Sid Yudain, the editor of Roll Call, the campus newspaper of Capitol Hill, has described the difference in ambiance this way: Problems were more solvable, there were less people and less pressure, staffs were smaller, and Congress was more like a college campus.³²

This national legislature could be cajoled into parceling out tangible benefits (roads, dams, and hospitals, among other things) by master political tacticians such as Sam Rayburn, the Speaker of the House, and Lyndon Johnson, the Majority Leader in the Senate, but it was also characterized by many veto points, such as the House Rules Committee, at which broader national commitments, such as to civil rights or health care, were regularly rejected.

For many years the Supreme Court, too, had appeared to observers of national politics as a formidable veto point in the political system. In 1937 the Court had bowed to popular pressure and abandoned a genuinely reactionary role in which it—or at least the majority of conservative justices—had attempted to overthrow the New Deal by declaring program after program unconstitutional. Confronted by a president who had just been reelected by a huge margin, however, the Court had retreated.³³

Subsequently guided by the doctrines of Chief Justice Harlan Stone, Justice Hugo Black, and Justice Felix Frankfurter, the Court then adopted a stance in which it generally supported government intervention in the economy, but increasingly struck down government controls over the individual lives of citizens. This was the formula for Frankfurt er’s famous preferred-position doctrine, which represented a major departure in jurisprudence but was largely invisible to most citizens. In practice the preferred-position doctrine allowed the Supreme Court to support the government in the most heated debates of the time—that is, the economic ones.³⁴

By 1960, with Earl Warren as chief justice, the Court had begun to move beyond supporting government action in the economy to requiring the national government to act in a variety of quite explicitly political disputes. Under Warren’s leadership the Court had begun, in Brown V. Board of Education (1954), to redefine what was permissible for the state governments in race relations. This was mainly a Southern issue in mid-century America. The massive black migration out of the South had begun, but its effects had not yet been fully felt. Discrimination against blacks had been written into Southern state codes after the end of Reconstruction, and the Court had rightly begun to move against these Jim Crow laws. But crucial as the effort against racial discrimination was, the idea that the Supreme Court might become a vital source of change in the American political system would have seemed like a throwback to any well-informed observer in 1960. The limiting influence of Frankfurter’s doctrine and the Court’s retreat after its defeat in 1937 seemed to preclude any major activist role for it.³⁵

Only a political reporter blessed with a working crystal ball or superior intuition would have wanted an assignment to the Supreme Court in 1960, and neither reporters nor editors were interested in the national bureaucracy, unless a scandal of some sort was brewing. The bureaucracy, it is fair to say, was perceived as gray, dull, and politically invisible. That is not the same thing as saying it was powerless, of course. But if you mentioned the bureaucracy in 1960, Washington insiders would probably have thought of an agency such as the Post Office, which was very different from the Postal Service we know today.

The Post Office Department, with the postmaster general (who had cabinet rank) at its head was, in reality, an extension of the ubiquitous local and state party organizations. To become a local postmaster, one labored for one of the major political parties, usually for a long time, since these appointments were considered among the more significant patronage a president had to dispense. In those days, the Post Office was often pointed at by liberals as an example of a government agency that worked well and cheaply.³⁶

Like the Post Office, other prominent bureaucracies provided services directly to the public in 1960. The Veteran’s Administration, the Social Security Administration, and the Post Office were the largest civilian employers in the bureaucracy, except for the Department of Defense. The Department of Agriculture also had a large number of employees, many of whom were out in the field, helping farmers.³⁷

If many federal bureaucrats were out in the hustings, it was relatively rare for state and local government officials to come to Washington. Daniel P. Moynihan, who was an aide to Governor Averell Harriman during this period, reflects that in the old days, You’d spend time planning how many shirts to take. Going to Washington was a very big deal.³⁸

The responsibilities of the bureaucrats in Washington had become truly national in many respects during the New Deal, and the departing Eisenhower administration had shown that though they might nibble at the edges, the Republicans were not going to attempt a counterrevolution against the major innovations of the New Deal. Following the expansion of government during the depression and the war, there was a reaction against government, just as there had been during the twenties following the Progressive Era. But the Eisenhower years were only a pause, as it developed. The agenda of political change that had been debated during the presidential campaign of 1960 included a national civil rights act and federal aid to education, both of which had been extensively discussed in the preceding decade. When these and other long- awaited acts were passed into law, the national bureaucracy was given far greater powers than ever before; but we are getting ahead of the 39 story.

When Harriman and Moynihan went on their rare trips to Washington, they saw cabinet and subcabinet officials who were usually politicians with links to significant groups in the country. Thus, John Kennedy appointed Stuart Udall, a Democratic congressman from a well-connected political family in Arizona to be his secretary of the interior. This was in keeping with the traditional ties between the West and the Interior Department, which manages vast tracts of land in the region. Similarly, the Commerce Department was normally headed by a politician with good relations with the business community, while Labor was led by someone who enjoyed good relations with the unions. But by 1960 winds of change were blowing through the cabinet.

Kennedy appointed the young technocrat Robert McNamara to be secretary of defense not because of his good connections with the defense establishment—he had none—but because of his reputation for skill in managing large organizations.⁴⁰ The appointment of McNamara was unsettling to the cognoscenti of the old Washington because it violated the unwritten rule whereby most major bureaucracies were tied to interest groups in the country through their congressional representatives. In this system cabinet officials were almost always at least acceptable to the interests represented by the agency. Presidents routinely consulted the leaders of farm groups before announcing their choice for secretary of agriculture, for example.⁴¹

In selecting McNamara, who was a dangerous unknown to the defense contractors and others with a direct stake in the defense establishment, Kennedy were sending a signal that the old cabinet politics were ending. At the same time, however, he followed the old rules in other selections, such as that of Udall at Interior.

The Udall appointment was a reflection of the predictability of the old political system. In the old Washington an experienced hand could, well in advance of a national election, divine within a very small tolerance the Democratic vote in New York City and the corresponding Republican vote on Long Island, or the liberal choices in San Francisco and the conservative reaction on the San Mateo Peninsula, or the strength of the Republican grip on Vermont or the Democratic hold on South Carolina. These regularities translated into votes by congressmen representing New York City and San Francisco versus those from Long Island and San Mateo, and senators from Vermont versus those from South Carolina.⁴²

These regularities in elections meant that much of political life in Washington was predictable too. Without knowing their names, for example, a savvy national political reporter could describe the positions congressmen from Wyoming or Montana would take on water policy and the reception they would be afforded by the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers.

The relationships between members of Congress and the federal bureaucracies most important to their constituents were almost always close. Ranchers in the Mountain states voted for congressmen who would, upon arrival on Capitol Hill, ask for appointment to the Interior Committee, which was responsible for overseeing the Bureau of Land Management among other bureaucracies. BLM, in turn, established policy over vast lands in the Rockies and