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Party Reform as Failed Democratic Renewal in the United States, 1968–1972*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

David Plotke
David Plotke
Affiliation:
New School for Social Research
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Extract

Between 1968 and 1972, with political conflict in America unusually high, major changes were made in rules for consituting Democratic national conventions and selecting Democratic candidates. Basic issues about the practical meaning of democratic commitments were sharply contested, and debates about party organization proved vigorous and substantial. The reforms enacted aimed partly to enhance participation and restore public respect for political life. They did not escape criticism. In fact, critics of reform became the dominant voice in subsequent discussion of what happened to the Democratic party and to party politics in the United States more generally.

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Articles
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Studies in American Political Development , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Fall 1996 , pp. 223 - 288
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1. On the origins and development of the Democratic political order, see Plotke, David, Building a Democratic Political Order: Reshaping American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Democratic Breakup (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

2. See Kirkpatrick, Jeane, Dismantling the Parties: Reflections on Party Reform and Party Decomposition (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1979)Google Scholar and The New Presidential Elite (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1976). Critiques of party reform often converged with broader arguments about the costs of democratic excesses in American politics in the 1960s and 1970s. See Steinfels, Peter, The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America's Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 53–58Google Scholar.

3. Hirschman, Albert examines this trope in The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991), 11–42Google Scholar.

4. Wilson, James Q., The Amateur Democrat: Club Politics in Three Cities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

5. Wildavsky, Aaron, “The Goldwater Phenomenon: Purists, Politicians, and the Two-Party System,” in Wildavsky, , The Revolt against the Masses (New York: Basic Books, 1971), 259Google Scholar.

6. Wildavsky, Revolt Against the Masses, 268; Wilson, Amateur Democrat, 340–70.

7. Polsby, Nelson, Consequences of Party Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Polsby, Nelson and Wildavsky, Aaron, Presidential Elections 5th ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1980)Google Scholar. Epstein's, Leon analysis resembles Polsby's, but is less pessimistic about American parties, in Political Parties in the American Mold (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

8. Wilson, James Q., “The Rise of the Bureaucratic State,” in Glazer, Nathan and Kristol, Irving, eds., The American Commonwealth – 1976 (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 77–103Google Scholar; Polsby, Consequences of Party Reform, 131–56.

9. Kristol, Irving, Two Cheers for Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1978)Google Scholar.

10. In addition to the works by Polsby and Kirkpatrick cited above, see Ranney, Austin, Curing the Mischiefs of Faction: Party Reform in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

11. I construct this sequence of claims from several works cited here, primarily those by Kirkpatrick, Polsby, and Ranney.

12. It is doubtful that these strata form a coherent or distinct class. The “class” designation often functions as a populist device (targeting a privileged group) without doing much analytical work. The neoconservative version of the “new class” argument relied on Daniel Bell's analyses of postindustrialism, but with changes. Bell criticized hedonistic and nihilistic cultural tendencies, which he identified with an adversary culture linked with newer postindustrial middle strata. Neoconservative analysts repeated this critique in a sharper form, and often added a populist critique of “new class” strata as “unproductive.” This meant counterposing service, research, and cultural occupations to “productive” groups of entrepreneurs, engineers, craftsworkers, and production workers, who are approved for inventing, making, and selling real objects. This populist formulation was contrary to Bell's social and economic analysis, which stressed the centrality of multiple forms of knowledge in postindustrial development. See Bell, Daniel, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1976)Google Scholar.

13. On relations between the national state and growing strata of professionals, see Balogh, Brian, “Reorganizing the Organizational Synthesis: Federal – Professional Relations in Modern America,” Studies in Modern American Political Development 5 (Spring 1991): 119–72Google Scholar. For an influential argument linking the decline in machine politics to the diminishing interest of voters in the material inducements machines had to offer - a distinterest that was partly due to growing income and professional aspirations among middle class groups – see Banfield, Edward C. and Wilson, James Q., City Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 121Google Scholar.

14. On feminism, see Klein, Ethel, Gender Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, and Luker, Kristin, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar; on antitax efforts, see Sears, David O. and Citrin, Jack, Tax Revolt: Something for Nothing in California, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 96–110Google Scholar; and on the new right, Himmelstein, Jerome L., To the Right: The Transformation of American Conservatism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)Google Scholar. Neoliberal Democrats in the 1980s such as Jerry Brown and Gary Hart were straightforward about the importance of new middle-strata groups and experiences to their programs.

15. This approach was common across the political spectrum, including left-liberal analysts such as Edsall, Thomas Byrne, in The New Politics of Inequality (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984), 23–66Google Scholar.

16. Kirkpatrick, The New Presidential Elite, 64, 68.

17. James A. Farley, address at the “Victory '68” Regional Conference, Salt Lake City, January 13, 1968, in Folder-James Farley, Marvin Watson Papers, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.

18. Thus in factional battles in the Young Democrats in 1967, allies of the administration fought hard to retain power. See Wieck, Paul R., “How the ‘Young’ Were Kept in Line,” New Republic (12 12, 1967): 9–10Google Scholar. Archival materials show extensive involvement in this conflict by administration officials: see memorandum from R. Spencer Oliver to Marvin Watson, November 8, 1967, and memorandum from John Criswell to Marvin Watson, November 29, 1967; both in Folder-DNC/Young Democrats, Watson Papers, Johnson Library.

19. Ranney, Curing the Mischiefs of Faction, 142.

20. Several measures of (Democratic) party strength – issue voting, split tickets, party identification – show a decline in the 1960s and early 1970s. These shifts began before party reforms were enacted and continued afterward. See Wattenberg, Martin P., The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952–1984 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986, 21, 24Google Scholar.

21. Polsby, Consequences of Party Reform, 36.

22. Ranney, Austin, “The Political Parties: Reform and Decline,” in King, Anthony, ed., The New American Political System (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1979), 245–46Google Scholar.

23. These claims about the origins and development of the Democratic order are developed and supported in Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order. On American parties as “semimass” groupings that contain diverse modes of organization, see Eldersveld, Samuel, Political Parties in American Society (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 104Google Scholar, 126, 191.

24. Nor was there a golden age of party conventions as sites of extensive deliberation at any time in the recent past. The lack of any such referent is clear in David, Paul, Goldman, Ralph, and Bain, Richard, The Politics of National Party Conventions (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1960)Google Scholar.

25. In the imagery of a political spectrum, these efforts had a dual location. They were moderately to the left of center among Democratic positions and distinctly to the left of center in terms of the entire range of legitimate national political positions.

26. Kirkpatrick, The New Presidential Elite, 353.

27. Transcript, Democratic National Committee (DNC) Meeting, January 14, 1969, Box 26–DNC Meetings 1969, Papers of the Democratic National Committee, Office of the Secretary (1944–1973), National Archives, Washington, D.C.

28. Kirkpatrick, Dismantling the Parties, 21–22.

29. I distinguish between Democratic misjudgments and Democratic programmatic incapacity. The former designates flawed assessments of strategic alternatives – choices made with a view to sustaining Democratic commitments that turned out not to have that effect. The latter refers to problems in Democratic thinking about the political and social changes of the 1950s and 1960s, and to the lack of plausible and appealing new policies.

30. Two factors often cited as playing a major role in Democratic decline did not play such a role: domestic economic decline and shifts in the position of the United States in the international political economy. These factors are mainly relevant for understanding the post – Democratic course of national politics in the 1970s and 1980s.

31. Some Democratic state party organizations modestly expanded their activities in the 1960s. On such gains, which were compatible with an overall political decline, see Gibson, James L., Cotter, Cornelius P., Bibby, John F., and Huckshorn, Robert J., “Assessing Party Organizational Strength,” American Journal of Political Science 27, no. 2 (05 1983): 193–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar. ‘Democratic records are full of complaints about the weakness of Democratic organization: “It will come as no great surprise that dissatisfaction has been expressed with the present operation of the Democratic National Committee among Senators and their staffs.” See a memorandum from Bed I. Bernhard to Marvin Watson, December 18, 1967, Folder-Campaign Committee–Senate, Watson, Papers, Johnson Library.

32. Democratic National Committee materials from 1966–68 make clear the weakness of the Democratic party, the subordination of the party to the executive and the presidency, and the lack of serious political discussion of the party's condition. For example, see True Davis to Watson, January 6, 1967; Watson to President Johnson, January 8, 1966, with an attached report by Cliff Carter on proposals for party organization; and Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. (Accountants) to John M. Bailey, January 13, 1966, regarding an audit of DNC finances; all in DNC-Misc, Watson Papers, Johnson Library.

33. Wyman may have been exaggerating for effect, but his prediction was partly realized; see Washington Daily News, December 13, 1966, in Box 17, DNC after 1966 Election, Papers of the Democratic National Committee, National Archives. Democratic records at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library and the National Archives lack any systematic accounting of the weight of various types of local organizations, but they contain nothing to contradict the judgment that strong party organizations existed among only a small part of the nation's population.

34. I arrive at the 20 percent estimate this way: if states with strong major party organizations made up 40 percent of the national population, cities and counties in those states with such organizations included less than half that figure, perhaps 15 percent of the national population. Some of these cities and counties had Republican rather than Democratic organizations - outside these states, a presumably larger part of the population lived in cities and counties that had Democratic organizations. The latter number might outweigh the former by enough to raise the overall figure to 20 percent. Mayhew, David R., Placing Parties in American Politics: Organization, Electoral Settings, and Government Activity in the Twentieth Century Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 19–20Google Scholar, 196–200.

35. See Everett Carl Ladd, Jr., and Charles D. Hadley, Transformations of the American Party System (New York: W.W. Norton, 147–75.

36. As a result of these political and demographic changes, by the late 1960s analytical frameworks devised in earlier phases of the Democratic order were less useful in examining links between political and social relations. The “Index of Class Voting” constructed by Robert Alford to analyze the class dimension of electoral behavior was based on comparing voting rates between people in “manual” and “nonmanual” occupations. His analyses focus on the postwar years of the Democratic order, ending in 1960. In subsequent years the American index of class voting - always modest in comparative terms - declined further. More important, one would be decreasingly confident that this index was a real measure of anything we could reasonably call class voting, given the dramatic expansion of “nonmanual” strata in most sectors of the economy. Perhaps dividing the population by income, as in the Michigan studies, is the best starting point. Yet these data are difficult to interpret because of shifting relations over time between income and new and old class positions, and because of changing relations among households, gender roles, and occupations. Dividing partisan adherents by income levels reveals no major growth in Democratic partisanship anywhere between the 17th and 95th percentiles in the 1960s, except for a surge in 1964 that disappeared four years later. Alford, Robert, Party and Society: The Anglo-American Democracies (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963)Google Scholar; Miller, Warren E. and Traugott, Santa A., American National Election Studies Data Sourcebook, 1952–1986 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 103Google Scholar.

37. Gallup data show that while Democratic Congressional voting among white people with “high socioeconomic status” went from 46 percent in 1960 to 48 percent in 1972, for white people with “middle socioeconomic status” the comparable figures were 60 percent and 49 percent. Among white people with “low socioeconomic status” the decline was from 66 percent to 54 percent. Ladd, Transformations of the American Party System, 237.

38. Among blacks the gap between Democratic and Republican affiliations grew from 31 points in 1960 to 89 in 1968 and fell to 66 in 1972. Miller and Traugott, American National Election Studies Data Sourcebook, 88.

39. Cornelius Cotter and his coauthors argue that parties were making significant advances in the early 1960s. But the criteria they provide for assessing this growth are not demanding. One would expect most political agents to meet them, given general tendencies toward institutionalization in American politics. Measured against the sustained growth of other institutions, crucially but not only the presidency, the evidence these authors provide is better read as showing a combination of political decline and modest institutionalization. Cotter, Cornelius P., Gibson, James L., Bibby, John F., and Huckshorn, Robert J., Party Organizations in American Politics (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), 13Google Scholar, 20. Also see Reichley, A. James, “The Rise of National Parties,” in Chubb, John E. and Peterson, Paul E., eds., The New Direction in American Politics (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1985), 175–200Google Scholar, and Ware, Alan, The Breakdown of Democratic Party Organization (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

40. For a similar formulation regarding Johnson's presidency, see Skowronek, Stephen, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 325–60Google Scholar. In Skowronek's typology of forms of presidential authority, Johnson appears as a leader pursuing a politics of articulation – someone faithful to basic regime commitments at a moment when the latter are relatively resilient. In these terms, I think it is more accurate to consider that the underlying weaknesses of the Democratic order, combined with Johnson's misjudgments, in effect produced two Johnson presidencies. One, from Kennedy's death into 1966, is captured in Skowronek's category of an affiliated president in a resilient regime. The second phase of Johnson's presidency, from mid-1966 through the end of his term, eludes Skowronek's categories because Johnson continued to act with what he regarded as fidelity to Democratic commitments while the regime was breaking up.

41. Johnson is thus an attractive target for those who take a neoformalist view of presidential leadership. Jeffrey Tulis counterposes a legal and constitutional mode of governance to a popular presidential form, to the allegedly great disadvantage of the latter. He argues that Johnson's capacity to formulate effective policy was undermined by the demands of his popular role and its rhetorical style, and develops this argument via a critical study of the War on Poverty. While he points out the inflated claims that accompanied Johnson's initiatives, he chooses his case in a way that indicates the weakness of his position: his account of the domestic policies of the Johnson administration in the mid-1960s says nothing about the Civil Rights Act or Voting Rights Act. Considering them seriously would have called into question his position: if broad popular appeals seem inadequate for crafting a good labor market policy in Cleveland they were essential in summoning public support and weakening Congressional resistance with respect to far more important measures. Tulis, Jeffrey K., The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 161–72Google Scholar. For a critique of popular presidential politics similar to Tulis's, see Lowi, Theodore J., The Personal President: Power Invested, Promise Unfulfilled (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

42. Johnson's domination of the DNC continued, so that political decisions about party direction and organization were made primarily by the federal executive. There is ample evidence of this pattern in the Democratic National Committee records cited above, as in records of DNC meetings. It is apparent in other records, as in a 1967 organizational proposal for the DNC routed from John Criswell to Marvin Watson in the White House: memorandum from Watson to Johnson, January 18, 1967, and memorandum from John Criswell to Watson, Folder-DNC, Watson Papers, Johnson Library. Neustadt's account of Johnson's presidency makes clear the domination of his office vis-a-vis the congressional leadership and other political agents, in Neustadt, Richard, Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership from FDR to Carter (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1980), 170–85Google Scholar.

43. Ralph Ellison, “The Myth of the Flawed White Southerner,” and Burns, James MacGregor, “Confessions of a Kennedy Man,” in Burns, , ed., To Heal and to Build – The Programs of President Lyndon B.Johnson (New York: McGraw- Hill Book Company, 1968), 217, 419Google Scholar.

44. White, Theodore H., The Making of the President – 1968 (New York: Atheneum, 1969) 96–125Google Scholar.

45. Lawrence O'Brien wrote a long memo for Johnson in late 1967. He outlined a route toward reelection in narrowly organizational terms. He advocated a centralized campaign task force – apart from the DNC – to guide Johnson's reelection efforts. Although he acknowledged the weaknesses of the DNC and the Democratic party, he showed little under-standing of how serious the political situation had become and gave little indication of how Democratic political problems might be addressed. Memorandum from O'Brien to Johnson, September 29, 1967, Folder-DNC-Rowe, Watson Papers, Johnson Library.

46. The Presidential Nominating Conventions 1968 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1968), 84.

47. Thus Humphrey's total of 2.2 percent of the Democratic primary vote in 1968 is not indicative of his support, even if one adds all the unpledged delegates (8.9 percent) and the votes for Johnson (7.3 percent). McCarthy received 38.7 percent and Kennedy 30.6 percent of the total Democratic primary vote. Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections – 1975 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1975), 345.

48. On Humphrey's campaign, see Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson, and Page, Bruce, An American Melodrama: The Presidential Campaign of 1968 (New York: The Viking Press, 1969), 607–50Google Scholar; and Solberg, Carl, Hubert Humphrey – A Biography (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984), 372–408Google Scholar.

49. Transcript, “Face the Nation,” August 18, 1968, in The Presidential Nominating Conventions – 1968, 205.

50. On Humphrey's difficulty in breaking with the administration, due in part to his reluctance to antagonize Johnson, see Solberg, Hubert Humphrey, 285–313, 383–85.

51. This characterization of Humphrey's effort is based on the narratives of the 1968 campaign cited above, Humphrey's speeches, and Democratic and Humphrey campaign materials in the Democratic National Committee papers held at the National Archives. The latter are in two main files: 1968 Campaign Files and 1968 H.H. Humphrey Campaign. The Humphrey Campaign files, organized by state, indicate a very low level of strategic and political discussion in Democratic organizations in 1968.

52. A Kennedy victory would have required outmaneuvering Humphrey to gain some support from the center and center-right of the party, while maintaining enthusiastic sup-port from the party's left. A more realistic speculation is that had he not been murdered, Robert Kennedy would have run against Nixon in 1972, and would have lost while running a stronger race than McGovern did. On Robert F. Kennedy, measured accounts are hard to find. Positive accounts of his political career include Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr, Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1978)Google Scholar; Newfield, Jack, Robert Kennedy: A Memoir (New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1969)Google Scholar; and Halberstam, David, The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy (New York: Random House, 1968)Google Scholar.

53. Nixon's successful campaign for the nominations and his performance at the Republican convention are described in White, Theodore H., The Making of the President 1968 (New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1969), 126–49Google Scholar, 224–56.

54. For a sketch of the 1968 Democratic convention see Crotty, William J., Political Reform and the American Experiment (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1977), 238—41Google Scholar.

55. The records of the Democratic National Committee regarding preparations for the Convention are primarily organized by state in Democratic National Committee files. Office of the Secretary (1944–1973), National Archives. They make clear the factionalism and lack of serious political debate in the convention process.

56. The political involution of the AFL-CIO leadership in the mid-to-late 1960s is evident in Draper, Alan, A Rope of Sand: The AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education, 1955–1967 New York: Praeger, 1989)Google Scholar; Robinson, Archie, George Meany and His Times: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), 276–80Google Scholar; and Gillon, Steven M., Politics and Vision: The ADA and American Liberalism, 1947–1985 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 210–15Google Scholar.

57. The main instance of debate was on August 28, when the full convention debated the platform plank on Vietnam for four hours. The debate was conducted at a reasonably high level, considering the tumult in and around the convention. It is summarized in The Presidential Nominating Conventions – 1968, 150–52. The full record is in The Democratic National Convention, 1968, 343–442.

58. The key procedural debate was about the unit rule. A proposal to abolish it down to the precinct level was carried in a close vote, 1,350 to 1,206 – a substantial number of pro Humphrey delegates voted for this reform. The debate is summarized in The Presidential Nominating Conventions – 1968, 146–48; it appears in Democratic National Convention, 1968, 268–76.

59. Humphrey's inability to stake out a plausible position independent of the administration and make compelling programmatic proposals of his own reduced any prospects of recovery. See White, The Making of the President, 1968, 334–42, and Chester et al., An American Melodrama, 632–36.

60. Rae, Nicol C., The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans from 1952 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 90–98Google Scholar.

61. Solberg, Hubert Humphrey, 372–402.

62. The 1968 Democratic platform is in The Presidential Nominating Conventions – 1968, 167.

63. See Chester, An American Melodrama, 646–50, 730–35, and Wicker, Tom, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream (New York: Random House, 1991), 353–69Google Scholar.

64. In “Continuity and Change in American Politics: Parties and Issues in the 1968 Election,” American Political Science Review 63, no. 4 (December 1969): 1092, Philip Converse, Warren E. Miller, Jerrold G. Rusk, and Arthur C. Wolfe summarize the Wallace campaign: “All reasonable reconstructions of the popular vote as it might have stood without the Wallace candidacy leave Nixon either enjoying about the same proportion of the two-party vote that he actually won or a slightly greater share, depending on the region and the detailed assumptions made. In short … it is very difficult to maintain any suspicion that the Wallace intrusion by itself changed the major outcome of the election.” This formulation combines a correct judgment about the immediate situation in 1968 with inattention to context: while Wallace's departure from the campaign well into 1968 would have not helped Humphrey, the Wallace campaigns of 1964 and 1968 played a major role in weakening support for the national Democratic party and the Democratic order.

65. See Bartley, Numan V. and Graham, Hugh D., Southern Politics and the Second Reconstruction (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 126–35Google Scholar; and Phillips, Kevin P., The Emerging Republican Majority (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970)Google Scholar.

66. In a Gallup test election in May 1968 that posed a race among Nixon, Humphrey, and Wallace, the latter received 13 percent of the votes of Democrats as against 8 percent of the votes of Republicans. Wallace also received 23 percent of the votes of independents, a group composed disproportionately of weak and former Democrats. This test election preceded the dramatic events of summer 1968 and the fall campaign, yet produced a result similar to that in November. Gallup Opinion Index, Report 35 (May 1968).

67. Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1985), 415.

68. On Wallace's political career and his relation to the populist tradition in American politics, see Kazin, Michael, The Populist Persuasion – An American History (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 233–42Google Scholar.

69. Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections (second edition) (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1985); Scammon, Richard M. and McGillivray, Alice V., eds., America Votes 18 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1989), 6–7Google Scholar.

70. The Democratic National Committee showed little capacity for political deliberation in 1966–67, before the traumas of 1968. Thus its meeting of March 10, 1967, was concerned with fund raising and registration, with little consideration of the dramatic political issues on the national scene. At a meeting of October 9, 1967, Chairman John Bailey urged Democrats to circle the wagons and defend their president – followed by no substantive discussion. At the meeting of January 8, 1968, Bailey predicted a victory in the upcoming election and the members of the DNC engaged in no significant political or strategic debate. Records of DNC meetings are in Box 24, DNC Meetings 1965–67, Democratic National Committee, Office of the Secretary (1944–1973), National Archives.

71. See Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, 869–902.

72. Significant continuities extended from the American Political Science Association (APSA) report on responsible party government in the 1940s to the post-1968 reform efforts, but the proposals were not identical. Toward a More Responsible Two Party System tended to conceive parties mainly as agents while the McGovern-Fraser proposals considered the Democratic party as both an agent and an important site of democratic participation. The authors of the postwar report urged forming a Party Council that would centralize party activities and coordinate policy efforts. This proposal was echoed in the post-1968 proposal to have a midterm Democratic conference on policy and program. See The Committee on Political Parties, American Political Science Association, Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System (New York: Rinehart and Company, 1950)Google Scholar.

73. Fannie Lou Hamer, Testimony, Folder-Jackson, Mississippi Hearing May 22, 1969, Box 14, Papers of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

74. Folder-Recommendations: Rank and File, Box 4, General Subject File, Papers of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, National Archives.

75. Jesse Jackson, Statement at the Democratic National Convention of 1972, July 11, 1972, in Sheila Hixson and Ruth Rose, eds., The Official Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention 1972, 336.

76. The Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection, Mandate for Reform (Washington, D.C.: Democratic National Committee, 1970), 33–35, 41, 45. This publication is hard to find – a “Summary of the Official Guidelines of the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection” appears in Shafer, Byron E., Quiet Revolution: The Struggle for the Democratic Party and the Shaping of Post-Reform Politics (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1983), 541–45Google Scholar.

77. Mandate for Reform, 46.

78. Mandate for Reform, 49.

79. In summarizing Commission hearings in the first months of 1969, the Commission staff reported: “For the most part, there has not been lengthy discussion of the Call to the 1972 Convention at the hearings. This is explained by the fact that the timeliness of delegate selection and the use of unit rule below the state convention level do not raise questions on which there can be much difference of opinion.” Memorandum, Commission Staff to Commission Members, Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection, May 27, 1969, Box 3, General Subject File, Papers of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, National Archives. Shafer provides a detailed account of a key Commission meeting of November 19–20, 1969, when the main recommendations were adopted, in Quiet Revolution, 133–213. A transcript of this meeting is available in Folder-Transcript, Meeting of Commission, November 19, 1969, Box 4, Files on Meetings of Commission and Executive Committee, Papers of the McGovern- Fraser Commission, National Archives.

80. Mandate for Reform received a favorable reception from the press, and not only from reliably liberal papers such as the Washington Post. The official public presentation of the document tried to link the notion of participation with that of party effectiveness. Files on intraparty responses indicate a less than ringing endorsement by party leaders. Press response to Mandate Reform is collected in Folder-Mandate for Reform: Press Conference and Newsclips, April 28, 1970, Box 10, Papers of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, National Archives.

81. Donald Fraser, “A Report to the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection of the Democratic National Committee,” July 16, 1971, in Folder-Statements on Implementation of Guidelines, Box 11, Papers of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, National Archives.

82. Crotty, William J., Decision for the Democrats: Reforming the Party Structure (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 272–73Google Scholar; also see Nakamura, Robert and Sullivan, Denis, “Party Democracy and Democratic Control,” in Burnham, Walter Dean and Weinberg, Martha Wagner, eds., American Politics and Public Policy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978)Google Scholar; and Crotty, Political Reform and the American Experiment, 214, 228, 270–73.

83. Shafer, Quiet Revolution, 525. Also see Sullivan, Denis G., Pressman, Jeffrey L., and Arteron, F. Christopher, Explorations in Convention Decision Making: The Democratic Party in the 1970s (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1976)Google Scholar. The latter authors prefer a system in which an elite corps of moderate, pragmatic party professionals would define the course of conventions and manage them. This would allegedly enhance the legitimacy of both the conventions and the parties. As the authors reluctantly recognize, such methods would be regarded as exclusive and nondemocratic. In effect they wish the controversies about internal party procedures had not happened, so that pre- reform practices (in an idealized form) would continue.

84. Shafer, Quiet Revolution, 527.

85. Shafer rightly argues that the terrain was defined so as to favor reform efforts with a participatory flavor. And he notes that the deliberations of the Commission paid little attention to efficiency. See Quiet Revolution, 527–28.

86. Shafer attributes the origins of the party reform process to McCarthy forces trying to enhance their candidate's prospects in 1968. He does not much discuss the Vietnam platform battle, and thus misses a major part of the political framework in which centrist Democrats accepted the first steps toward party reform. See Quiet Revolution, 13–40.

87. The close vote for abolishing the unit rule (1,350 to 1,206) showed that a number of delegates voted both to abolish the unit rule and to support Humphrey's position on Vietnam. The Presidential Nominating Conventions – 1968, 146, 194.

88. James Tate, Testimony, Folder-Philadelphia Hearing, May 24, 1969, Box 14, Papers of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, National Archives.

89. The staff of the McGovern-Fraser Commission collected voluminous materials on delegate selection procedures, which can be found in State Reports on Delegate Selection Procedures, Boxes 27, 28, 29, Papers of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, National Archives.

90. An unsigned memorandum about the Democratic effort in New York in 1968 assessed the situation in a state where the party was relatively strong: “The victory for the Humphrey-Muskie ticket in New York scored a success for campaigning ‘by the extremes’. At one extreme was the high visibility, high price television programming (including spots) which blanketed the area in the closing weeks of the campaign. At the other extreme was a well-developed, tightly organized Get-Out-The-Vote operation mounted on time and built to a crescendo on Election Day. Very little else mattered. All the traditional campaign involvement and paraphernalia, the rallies, ads, buttons, literature, etc., were minor, last minute, unrational, and when they worked, they were the constructs of an unusually narrow group of reliable people. Campaigns like that should not become a habit in a democratic society. Unfortunately, as costs soar and political elements realign, they may become a necessity.” Memorandum–Eyes Only to Bob McCandless, “Campaign Wrap-Up: New York,” November 21, 1968, Folder-New York, Box 36, State DNC Records, Papers of the Democratic National Committee, Office of the Secretary, National Archives. Other state DNC materials are in boxes 38–40 of the same collection.

91. In 1968, challenges were made to delegations from Alabama, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. Racial exclusion was the main issue in the challenges to Southern delegations. See the The Presidential Nominating Conventions – 1968, 88–89. Also see Folder-1968 Credential Challenges, General, Box 23, Papers of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, National Archives.

92. Transcripts of DNC meetings are in Box 27, DNC Meetings, 1970–72, Papers of the Democratic National Committee, Office of the Secretary (1944–1973), National Archives. Transcripts of some DNC Executive Committee Meetings are in Box 28 of the same collection.

93. In March 1969, McGovern sent letters outlining the plans of his commission to Democratic leaders and elected officials. Then in November 1969, the commission sent a memo to one hundred party notables asking for responses to the proposed guidelines. The letters they received in response to both communications were not very critical. The modesty of the criticism was due both to disinterest in the commission's proceedings and to uncertainty about how to respond to a certified procedural reform initiative following electoral defeat. Memorandum from Commission Staff to Commission Members, November 12, 1969, in Folder- Correspondence: To Commission Members, Box 1, Papers of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, National Archives. Relevant materials are also in Folder-Correspondence: Congressmen and Senators and Folder-Correspondence: State Chairmen, Box 1, Papers of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, National Archives. The latter materials are full of equivocal formulations, as when Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii wrote, “While our Party should be open to the full participation by all who have a real and enduring interest in its affairs, it must also be protected from those who seek to involve themselves intermittently on a rule or ruin basis” (March 31, 1969).

94. Machines had not disappeared, but there were too few of them and they were too weak to stop party reform. For an influential but unsuccessful effort to show that machines remained powerful, see Wolfinger, Raymond, “Why Political Machines Have Not Withered Away and Other Revisionist Thoughts,” Journal of Politics 34, no. 2 (05 1972): 365–398CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95. The difficult relations between the party reform process and the majority of the AFL-CIO leadership are discussed in Battista, Andrew, “Political Divisions in Organized Labor, 1968–1988” Polity Volume 24 Number 2 (Winter 1991), 179–184Google Scholar; and Wilson, Graham K., Unions in American National Politics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979), 36–56Google Scholar.

96. In the 1960s and 1970s a number of political scientists were active in the party reform process. Samuel Beer and Austin Ranney were members of the McGovern-Fraser Commission. Other scholars wrote letters in response to requests for advice and participated in meetings and public hearings. Political scientists most often recommended that the Democratic party try to encourage increased participation while maintaining a strong role for the party organization.

97. Mandate for Reform, 46.

98. Mandate for Reform, 10.

99. These decisions culminated in a 1953 Supreme Court ruling that prevented Texas Democrats from setting up an all-white political association, nominally distinct from the Democratic party, whose sole aim was to shape the Democratic primary process. See Terry v. Adams, 345 U.S. 461 (1953). Also see Kester, John G., “Constitutional Restrictions on Political Parties,” Virginia Law Review 60 (05 1974): 735–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100. Critiques of party reforms often used the term “competitiveness” to question their effect on party performance: “ … the McGovern-Fraser commission's rules … were not mainly, if at all, intended to maximize the party's competitiveness.” Ranney, Curing the Mischiefs of Faction, 138.

101. Leon Epstein, Political Parties in the American Mold, 157. Also see Crotty, William, “Political Parties: Issues and Trends,” in Crotty, William, ed., Political Science: Looking to the Future, vol.4 American Institutions (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 143, 171Google Scholar.

102. For an effort to link issues of presidential character to a critique of party reform, see Ceaser, James, Presidential Selection: Theory and Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 309–39Google Scholar.

103. Polsby, Consequences of Party Reform, 167.

104. Ibid., 157–67.

105. Mandate for Reform, 11–12, 17.

106. Ceaser, Presidential Selection, 343.

107. Continuities between the reform proposals of Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System and the McGovern- Fraser proposals were noted by critics, who charged the earlier proposals with disguising ill-informed policy advocacy as social science and the post-1968 proposals with undermining the parties they purported to renew. For a critique of the earlier reform proposals, written as the later proposals were developed, see Kirkpatrick, Evron M., “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System: Political Science, Policy Science, or Pseudo-Science?”, American Political Science Review 65 (1971): 965–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System, 43.

108. Crotty, Decision for the Democrats, 145.

109. On the CDM, see Crotty, Decision for the Democrats, 226–30; for its main themes, see Scammon, Richard M. and Wattenberg, Ben J., The Real Majority (New York: Coward, McCann & Geohegan, Inc., 1970)Google Scholar.

110. For an overview of debates about representation, see Pitkin, Hannah Fennichel, “Representation,” in Ball, Terence, Farr, James, and Hanson, Russell L., eds., Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 136–50Google Scholar. Pitkin's analysis ends in an unrewarding contrast between representative and direct democracy, a view that was tempting for some party reform advocates in 1968–72. Because all forms of political democracy are abstract and representative, it is not fruitful to imagine a direct democracy as a standpoint from which to criticize defective modes of representation. For an argument in support of this claim, see David Plotke, “Representation is Democracy,” Constellations (forthcoming).

111. This dynamic influenced post-1968 battles about Democratic practices in southern states, when the official parties were out of compliance with national policies regarding representation and had been notably disloyal to the national Democratic ticket in 1968. Folder-Credentials, January 13, 1969, Box 30, DNC Subcommittees, and Folder- Credentials, September 17, 1989; Credentials, September 18, 1969 in Box 31, DNC Subcommittees, both in Papers of the Democratic National Committee, Office of the Secretary (1944–1973), National Archives.

112. Shafer, Quiet Revolution, 460–91.

113. Memorandum, Commission Staff to Commission Members, Commission on Party Selection and Delegate Selection, May 27, 1969, Box 3, General Subject File, McGovern-Fraser Commission, National Archives.

114. The commission's guidelines incorporated the Democratic National Committee's policy statement of January 1968 on procedural openness and racial discrimination, urging that “State Parties overcome the effects of past discrimination by affirmative steps to encourage minority group participation.” See Mandate for Reform, 34, 39–40.

115. Letter, Donald M. Fraser to Lawrence F. O'Brien, November 29, 1971, Folder Guidelines A-l, A-2, General Subject File, Box 3, Papers of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, National Archives.

116. Ranney describes how strong affirmative action guidelines were passed by the Commission in Curing the Mischiefs of Faction, 113–14, 188–91.

117. This statement was cited by Richard J. Hughes, Governor of New Jersey and Chairman of the Special Equal Rights Committee, in a letter to the DNC outlining his committee's charge and summarizing its conclusions about the requisite elements of a pro-gram to improve voter participation: “The Democratic Party, on all levels, should support the broadest possible registration without discrimination on grounds of race, color, creed or national origin.” The hesitant response to this program led some critics of racial exclusion to propose that outcomes be mandated, to ensure serious efforts to dismantle discrimination. Letter, Richard J. Hughes to Democratic National Committee, July 26, 1967, along with “Some Basic Elements in Enabling Voter Participation in Party Affairs,” both in Folder-Correspondence and Reports, 1966–68, Box 34, DNC Subcommittees, Papers of the Democratic National Committee, Office of the Secretary (1944–1973), National Archives.

118. In late 1966, Marvin Watson was warned by Berl Bernhard that the reforms proposed in constituting a Special Equal Rights Committee in 1965 had made little headway, and that Democratic leaders needed to take immediate steps to reduce the likelihood of public conflict in 1968. The extent of Democratic problems about racial equality is signaled in the knotted title of the committee (what is special about equal rights?) and illustrated in the murky and halting quality of deliberations at its meetings. In a 1967 memo about that committee and its shortcomings, James Rowe suggested that Southern Democrats could avoid intra- Democratic challenges based on racial exclusion by holding open primaries to select convention delegates! Memorandum, Berl Bernhard to Watson, December 5, 1966, Folder-Campaign Committee – Senate, Watson Papers, memorandum, James Rowe to Watson, December 22, 1966, Folder-DNC –Rowe, O'Brien, etc., Watson Papers, Johnson Library. Further materials are in Folder-Special Equal Rights April 19, 1967, Box 33, DNC Subcommittees, and Folders-Special Equal Rights Committee July 12, 1967, and October 9, 1967, both in Box 34, DNC Subcommittees, Papers of the Democratic National Committee, Office of the Secretary (1944–1973), National Archives.

119. The linkage of nomination and party reform politics is indicated by voting in the delegations from California and Pennsylvania. The California delegation, with 174 votes, gave 14 to Humphrey, 91 to McCarthy, and 51 to McGovern. The Pennsylvania delegation, with 130 votes, gave 103.75 to Humphrey, 21.5 to McCarthy, and 2.5 to McGovern. On the roll call votes on credentials challenges to the delegations from Georgia and Alabama, in both cases the California delegation voted 173–1 in favor of the challenges, while the Pennsylvania delegation was opposed to each, 31.5–90.25 with Georgia and 22.25–100.5 with Alabama. The Presidential Nominating Conventions – 1968, 84, 140, 146.

120. Beer's statement was made at the reform commission meeting of November 18, 1969. It is cited in White, Theodore H., The Making of the President 1972 (New York: Atheneum, 1973), 30Google Scholar.

121. Ranney, Curing the Mischiefs of Faction, 196.

122. On the changing demographic composition of Democratic delegates in 1968 and 1972, see Crotty, Decision for the Democrats, 72–79, 128–29, 133.

123. The 1972 convention debate that affirmed the Majority Report of the Credentials Committee on Illinois (in effect excluding the Democratic organization in Chicago) contains many expressions of hopes for renewal, along with a procedural critique of Democratic practices. A vigorous response emphasized party loyalty and the thin credentials of opponents of the regular organization. The Official Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention 1972, 196–228.

124. Pro-Nixon activities and abstentions by anti- McGovern Democrats were a factor in Nixon's landslide victory in 1972. See Ambrose, Stephen E., Nixon – The Triumph of a Politician, 1962–1972, volume two (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 584–85Google Scholar.

125. Candidates other than Nixon, Wallace, and Humphrey received a total of less than.5 percent of the popular vote in 1968. Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1985), 362.

126. This claim could be disputed by Sullivan and his coauthors, who find that McGovern supporters remained “purist” through the convention. However, McGovern and his advisers sought to make overtures to those whom they were defeating in the nomination battle, and such efforts continued at many levels of the campaign in the later summer and fall, though without much success. See Sullivan, Denis G., Pressman, Jeffrey L, Page, Benjamin I., and Lyons, John J., The Politics of Representation: The Democratic Convention 1972 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1974), 119–32Google Scholar.

127. On the symbolic role of Franklin Roosevelt in this regard, see Leuchtenburg, William, In the Shadow of FDR (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989, rev. ed.), 151–58Google Scholar.

128. Wallace's 1968 campaign receives no significant discussion by Ranney in Curing the Mischiefs of Faction or Polsby in Consequences of Party Reform. He is mentioned only twice in Shafer's Quiet Revolution.

129. George Meany and other AFL-CIO leaders rejected the positions of the McGovern campaign (on Vietnam and “social issues”) and the party reforms that in their view made McGovern's victory possible. In labor's attacks on McGovern and party reform there was no reflection on why their preferred candidates in 1972 did so poorly. See Crotty, Decision for the Democrats, 109–12, and Robinson, George Meany, 321–25.

130. Those who resisted calls for loyalty often appealed to norms of fairness. In 1968, the main charges of unfairness were lodged against the Democratic center. Democratic centrists in turn argued that their critics were opportunistic about rules, favoring whatever procedures seemed apt to provide the greatest immediate payoff. DNC files in 1968 contain many such complaints, such as memorandum, Alvin Spivak (n.d. 1968), Folder-Political Summaries, Box 8–1, DNC Main File, National Archives.

131. Julian Bond was a key figure in the challenge to the regular Democratic delegation from Georgia at the 1968 convention. A large number of black political figures active in the civil rights movement led or aided local and state Democratic insurgencies and battled with regular Democratic organizations. John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, and numerous others were regarded with much suspicion by centrist Democrats. On the Democratic right in the North, Louise Day Hicks in Boston and Frank Rizzo in Philadelphia exemplified the stance of urban Democrats who mainly supported conventional Democratic economic policies but were critical of Democratic social policies and strong proponents of conservative positions in racial politics.

132. Frank J. Sorauf to George McGovern, May 8, 1969; Samuel Beer to Bob Nelson and Eli Segal, May 25, 1969; in Folder-Responses: Intellectuals, Box 2, Chronological File, Papers of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, National Archives.

133. Rieder, Jonathan, “The Rise of the ‘Silent Majority,’” Fraser, Steve and Gerstle, Gary, editors, The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 262Google Scholar.

134. Party reformers with procedural interests played a pivotal role in seeking the compliance of state parties with the guidelines of the McGovern-Fraser Commission. Shafer emphasizes their alliance with left- Democratic interest groups in Quiet Revolution, 410–27.

135. Relevant materials are in Boxes 5 and 6, Correspondence, and VIP Correspondence, Box 8, Papers of Jean M. Westwood, Chairman DNC 1972 campaign, National Archives.

136. Letter, George McGovern to Jean M. Westwood, December 22, 1972, in Folder-VIP Correspondence, Box 8, Westwood Papers, National Archive.

137. Letter, Penn Kemble to Jean M. Westwood, January 6, 1973, in Folder-VIP Correspondence, Box 8, Westwood Papers, National Archives.

138. On debates about Democratic party rules from McGovern's defeat through 1974, see Crotty, Decision for the Democrats, 222–54.

139. Mandate for Reform, 33.

140. This is a major theme of the works by Kirkpatrick, Ranney, and Shafer cited above, and it is probably the dominant interpretation of the expansion of party primaries. There are other views of the significance of primaries. Bartels suggests that the primary process, in which individual voters often change their preferences, is problematic for liberal theories of politics that take preferences as given and focus on interest aggregation. Bartels, Larry M., Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 307–11Google Scholar.

141. As one example of a dynamic that turns out to be more complicated and less negative than was originally thought, consider the role of “special interests” in primaries. It was widely argued that one defect of an expanded primary system was the strong temptation that candidates would face to pander to narrow groups whose votes and resources loomed larger in a party primary in a small state than in the national electorate. Yet candidates are now assessed in primaries partly in terms of whether they have sufficient strength and independence of judgment to resist interest group pressures. This dynamic is driven partly by the nationalization of the primary system; the idea is that someone unable to resist the demands of an agricultural group in Iowa is unlikely to be able to resist pressure from the American Medical Association or the AFL-CIO or the automobile industry if he or she were president.