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On the Superiority of National Conventions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Aaron B. Wildavsky
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Extract

The appraisal of national conventions as mechanisms for nominating presidents involves many problems of political theory. Who should be entrusted with the task of nomination? Can we reconcile the desirability of popular participation with the need for maintaining a strong party leadership? To what extent does the nominating convention contribute to the maintenance of the political system in which it is imbedded? Does the apparent lack of decorum in this high political body adversely affect the kinds of decisions it makes? What are the implications of increasing the visibility of convention nominations? Any attempt to deal with these and similar questions necessarily involves an admixture of normative and descriptive theory. Postulation of what ought to be can hardly be separated from consideration of the actual or likely consequences of alternative courses of action. The merits of existing party platforms, for example, cannot be fruitfully discussed apart from knowledge of the relevance of issues to voters. In this context, I propose to evaluate national conventions and the various proposals for altering or abolishing them in the light of the degree to which they meet widely shared goals for the American political system.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , July 1962 , pp. 307 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1962

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References

1 One of the earliest and still one of the best discussions of conventions is found in Ostrogorski, M., Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties (New York, 1911)Google Scholar. A brief but important paper which summarizes a great deal of existing knowledge in short compass and relates it to other knowledge about politics is Polsby's, Nelson, “Decision-Making at the National Conventions,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. XIII (09, 1960), 606–617Google Scholar. For a comprehensive survey of a single convention see David, Paul, Moos, Malcolm, and Goldman, Ralph, Presidential Nominating Politics in 1952, Vols. IGoogle Scholar through V. A vast amount of data about conventions is presented in David, Paul, Goldman, Ralph, Bain, Richard, The Politics of National Party Conventions (Washington, D.C., 1959)Google Scholar.

2 Conventions have been subject to criticism for many years and in many places. A brief introduction to this literature might include Bryce, James (Lord), The American Commonwealth (New York, 1891)Google Scholar; M. Ostrogorski, op. cit.; Overacker, Louise, The Presidential Primary (New York, 1926)Google Scholar; Schattschneider, E. E., Party Government (New York, 1942)Google Scholar; American Political Science Association, Committee on Political Parties, Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System (1950)Google Scholar; Kefauver, Estes, “Indictment of the Political Convention,” New York Times Magazine, 03 16, 1954Google Scholar; Bailey, Stephen K., The Condition of Our National Parties (New York, 1959)Google Scholar.

3 See Key, V. O. Jr, American State Politics: An Introduction (New York, 1956), especially pp. 133–169Google Scholar.

4 Such a theory is implied in Key, V. O. Jr, Southern Politics (New York, 1950), pp. 298–311Google Scholar, and his descriptions of demagoguery in several of the southern states.

5 The party leaders — governors, state chairmen, national committeemen, county officials, mayors, elder statesmen — are often men of independent influence and somewhat different interests and there may be only a limited range of agreement among them. In addition, they are severely limited in their choice by their estimate of what other delegates will stand for and what the voters will accept at the polls. David, , Moos, , , Goldman, op. cit., “The National Story,” p. 191Google Scholar, state: “There were not many delegations at Chicago in 1952 in which a single leader could make the decisions and vote the delegation without even asking his colleagues' views; it would be difficult to name even one where this was completely the case.”

6 The situation of the delegate is explored in my paper, “What Can I Do? The Ohio Delegate's View of the Convention,” to be published by the Eagleton Institute of Politics in a forthcoming volume on the 1960 conventions.

7 See Herring, Pendelton, “The Uses for National Conventions,” in The Politics of Democracy (New York, 1940), 225–239Google Scholar.

8 McCloskey, Herbert, Hoffman, Paul J., and O'Hara, Rosemary, “Issue Conflict and Consensus Among Party Leaders and Followers,” American Political Science Review, Vol. LIV (06, 1960), 406–427CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This study is especially relevant for our concerns because the authors turned to the Democratic and Republican national conventions for their samples of party leaders.

9 See his Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago, 1956), pp. 127–131Google Scholar.

10 Campbell, Angus, Converse, Phillip, Miller, Warren, Stokes, Donald, The American Voters (New York, 1960), especially pp. 168–265Google Scholar.

11 Only if one assumes that it is the characteristic behavior of parties in a two-party system to disregard its chances for election, does it make sense to speak of popularity in a derogatory way. Glancing at the recent history of such nations as England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, it appears that party leaders who continually lose elections either lose their posts or are subject to severe attack from within their own party. On the theoretical aspect of this problem see Lindblom, Charles, “In Praise of Political Science,” World Politics, Vol. 9 (01, 1957), 240–253CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Lowenberg, Gerhard, “The Transformation of British Labour Party Policy Since 1945,” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 21 (05, 1959), 234–257CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Carleton, William, “The Revolution in the Presidential Nominating Convention,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. LXXII (06, 1957), 224–240CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 One of the limitations imposed on Kennedy's opponents by his religion came out clearly when (as an observer attached to the Ohio delegation) I discovered that the Johnson staff men did not use the traditional tactic of claiming that Kennedy could not win the election. “That,” in the words of a Johnson man, “would have been interpreted to mean a reference to the religious issue.”

14 By contrast, the ineptness of the Stevenson people is illustrated by a scene I witnessed early on the morning of the day the voting was to take place. Although no staff person supporting Stevenson had previously showed up at the Ohio delegation's hotel, one arrived around 8 a.m., tapped me on the shoulder and inquired: “Do you know who's supporting Stevenson here?” Discovering that I was not a delegate and the near-by representative of the city police vice-squad (sent to watch for pickpockets and prostitutes) could not help him either, he went in search of aid. An hour later he returned full of confidence and figures indicating support for his man; but Stevenson received not one vote.

15 A common criticism of primaries is that they are held at widely separated intervals so that some candidates do not declare themselves in time to enter and others are exhausted by a grueling series of campaigns. Unfortunately, this is not always the best of all possible worlds and we cannot have everything we want. If primaries were all held at the same time they would take on the aspect of a national primary with all its disadvantages and without the one great advantage of being open to all interested voters in the nation. Candidates like Hubert Humphrey and Estes Kefauver and possibly even Robert A. Taft could not have afforded the enormous expenditures required to put their views before the public in so many places at once.

16 The two major party splits in this century occurred while an incumbent was securing his own nomination. Nelson Polsby, op. cit., suggests that the Progressive split in the Republican Party led against President Taft in 1912 and the Dixiecrat revolt led against President Truman in 1948 indicate that incumbent Presidents, as hierarchical leaders, are particularly prone to underestimate the costs of their actions to party unity.