The Great Mistake: Election
‘84*
By W. B. Allen
Carl T. Rowan,
long-time defender of the Democratic Party, concluded his 1984 election
post-mortem with the caveat that, apart from the presidential race, “the Democratic
Party did damn well.” He is correct in that assessment, if he means by it that
the Democrats scored impressive wins, despite appearing to deserve repudiation.
We will see this clearly if we forget for a moment the mesmerism of incumbency
and consider as we ought every eligible seat in a democratic election an open
seat, for the burden of democracy is that lovers of the public good must seek
to bring home to public opinion the true foundations of liberty and public
happiness in every election and with respect to every seat. Only the “realism”
of political science and the presumed magic of incumbency incline us to forget
that the real work of elections is rather more the formation of public opinion
than the mere attainment of office. To put Rowan’s caveat in the context of national
offices alone, then, we must inquire what it means, that of 469 seats Democrats
acquired 268 (57 percent), while Republicans acquired 201 seats (only 43
percent). Thus, Democrats overall did just about as well as Reagan did in his
private race against Mondale!
If, however,
Rowan meant to establish that the Democrats’ doing well amounted to serving the
nation well, he was wrong. Their victory must be attributed less to their
serving the cause of the public good and articulating the true grounds of liberty
and public happiness than to Republican failure. The Democrats won by default,
precisely because Republicans conceded to them without contest the struggle to
form public opinion. Republicans never entered the contest. That was the great
mistake of election ‘84, and the story of how it came about is nothing less
than a snapshot of the current crisis in American politics.
Let us begin by
recognizing that we are obliged to accept the institutional expression of
public opinion as the only legitimate expression of the public voice in
American life. It will not do to hide behind sophisticated polling techniques
and other arcane devices, to argue that there exists an independent public
opinion apart from that embodied in the constellation of elected representatives.
It is tempting to rub the magic lamp of independent public opinion in order to
pretend that we have majority support for our own conception of the public
good. The public opinion which is definitive and legitimate, however, is that
which takes shape in the constellation of representatives produced by a
deliberative appeal to the mind of the public. Given that fact, what is the
condition of the Republicans in the aftermath of election ‘84?
Poor indeed!
Mere numbers alone would argue that we cease all talk of a realignment in
American politics. Yet, every credible index of public sentiment suggests that
just such an opportunity did await the Republicans. One need only note the
growing numbers of younger voters registering as Republicans. That the people
chose to stand pat, therefore, must be explainable on the grounds that what the
people were ready for, they were never offered.
The Theory
of Realignments
The model for
all realigning elections remains the first, the election of Thomas Jefferson in
1800. Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party in that year initiated the
process which culminated at length in the demise of the Federalist Party, the
party which designed, initiated, and administered the government of the United
States for the first twelve years under the Constitution. Jefferson’s party
achieved this end by means of a forthright challenge to the Federalist
leadership in, a coordinated, national political effort. They emphasized their
differences to the point of labeling Federalists “monocrats” and
“aristocrats.” Jefferson’s
Democratic-Republicans challenged the existing governing pattern and won, in
the House of Representatives, by one vote!
The model for
all realigning elections, far from being a landslide, was one of the closest
elections in our history. Subsequent realigning elections have not departed
much from that standard. This ought not to surprise us. Rather, the attention
concentrated on the landslide victory as the key to a realignment should
surprise us, for landslides generally reflect overwhelming consensus, far more
easily marshaled for the status quo, and noncontroversial alternatives in
general, than for a sharp departure. Realignment elections flow from starkly,
posed, fundamental alternatives, calling upon the people to decide something
more than the mere question of who shall be in office. In such a case, where
people must consciously choose to alter their habits and inclinations, it would
be natural to expect a narrow electoral victory, not a grand one.
The
Republican Appeal
The Republicans,
from the top of the ticket down, generally failed to pose such alternatives to
the American people, despite evidence that the people are disposed to make just
such a judgment. Although the Republican Party has become more conservative in
recent years, the Republican syndrome remains what it has been for decades, a
preference for campaigns which minimize differences, inspired largely by a fear
of offending significant blocs of voters. No more vivid example of this can be
found than the velvet glove treatment of Jesse Jackson. Jackson is a radical
leftist whose notions are greatly incompatible with preserving the conditions
of American liberty. But the American people could not perceive that to be the
understanding of the Republican Party. The Republicans never said so, nor did
they ever appeal to Americans, blacks above all, to repudiate the leftist
ideology of Jackson.
The significance
of the Republican treatment of Jackson lies in the fact that, among the
activists who control the Democratic Party, Jackson is not the pariah he appears.
He is completely at one with the radical leftists who, using the cover of the
nuclear freeze, have sought to co-opt the party and use it to advance the cause
of social democracy in America. His “rainbow coalition” is nothing but their
focus on “peoples of color,” artfully named. Here, too, the velvet-glove
approach obscured the true issue at stake; namely, preservation of a
constitutional way of life dedicated to eliminating class warfare. The
consequence: a bitter campaign, exploiting and inventing class antagonisms
which bear the seeds of future crises in American politics.
One notes the
same tendency in Republican responses (or non-responses) to AFL-CIO
misrepresentations. Though the provocation on this score was certainly milder,
the implications were no less severe. The unions’ platform proposals for both
party conventions this year were an undisguised characterization of the Reagan
Administration as the enemy of the people. Their arguments, however, exceeded the
usual, and perhaps excusable, labor movement rhetoric. They extended to a
repudiation of the founding “first century of America,” which they attacked in
the very first sentence of their document as systematic “favoritism of the few
at the expense of the many.” If America has any claim to human respect, and the
Republican Party any title to expound that claim, it surely arises from the
principles enshrined in the Founding and consummated in the first hundred
years! Yet, the Republican campaign was silent on this direct challenge.
Even the
question of national security policy and defense, a Republican basis of
strength, did not receive its due development in this campaign. After all, the
problem is not that Democrats are soft on defense. The problem is that they are
wrong on defense. It may be true that the case for American concern in Central
America could not have been made more forcefully in Congress. Since the wrong
congressmen are there, the case needed to be made most forcefully before the
electorate. And while it may be true that the people find it frightening to
contemplate living in a world without on-going arms control talks, the point is
that it may endanger the people far more to perpetuate an illusion of security.
America’s
Needs: A Party’s Mission
Even this
sampling of election issues goes to show the character of Republican failure.
Analysts erred in blaming Jesse Jackson for the perilous racial polarization in
this election, especially in the South. True enough, Jackson’s racist appeals
served to antagonize Americans who felt excluded from his appeal or who were
still attached to the goal of a color-blind United States. Nonetheless, who can
remember any appeal made to black Americans to eschew Jackson’s divisive claims
and to cast their votes in affirmation of the goal to eliminate once and for
all the question of race in American politics?
Much of the
class, race, and interest-group-based rhetoric of our times is the legacy of
nineteenth century socialist radicalism. This is alien to the mission and mechanisms
of American life. What America requires is a statesmanship that aims at
recovering the proper terms of American political rhetoric. The goal of the
United States Constitution is to eliminate class warfare – not, à la
Marxism, to eliminate differences sown in human nature, but to eliminate the
exploitation of these differences for the sordid purposes of inordinate
ambition. It is therefore legitimate, and necessary, to formulate policy goals
which reaffirm the constitutional tendency to augment the middle class, for
that is the means to render obsolete the appeal to class antagonism.
It is even
possible that the AFL-CIO can be brought to see its future in the preservation
of the American past. At least, they can be brought to see the contradiction in
their assault on the system that offers the chance to achieve their express
hope: “A top priority must be ending the erosion of our nation’s middle
class.” The key to this mission is to
respond to citizens’ justified fears of a cloying, overweening government
presence in their lives. One doesn’t need to start writing prayers in order to
perceive excessive state intrusion in the active inhibition of the least
display of piety in our schools. Nor need one fear a resurgence of slavery from
the desire to encourage the individual initiative and inventiveness, upon which
Lincoln relied to provide resources sufficient to spare the treasure ultimately
expended in the crisis over slavery. People are better off when we appeal to
their sense of opportunity rather than their sense of deprivation, and only
such a people can respond to the challenge of self-government we aim to defend.
We owe them, then, a free and stable economy, dedicated to growth. They make
best use of it when we can also assure them their liberty and personal
security, and in that respect nothing is more necessary than to free citizens
from the fear of government intemperance.
The party that
can accept this mission might indeed inspire a realignment in American
politics. It will offer to reconcile diverse constituencies which have been
left to imagine that their welfare can come only at the cost of their
competitors. It will also take seriously the task to carry the nation into a
future beyond nuclear terror, rather than to rely upon perpetual negotiations
and the false idea that humanity henceforth must live under the eternal threat
of annihilation. It would never bargain to keep what we have, but only to gain
something more, to bring about peace and stability in the world. This should be
the aim of every negotiation, for this would tend to enhance the security and
common good of the United States. And not even the best bargaining would
replace our reliance upon the capacity of the United States to vindicate the
cause of humanity. The way to fulfill American hopes is to rekindle in America
a spirit of progress, trust in ourselves, and faith in our mission.
The mission of
the United States is to preserve, against all odds, a hospitable sanctuary for
the idea of humanity. The people of the United States require real assurance
that the mission still lives as the basis for exercising any fundamental
choice. Men from around the world assemble together in these United States to
vindicate, in the one place where men can, what the Founders originally claimed
– that men everywhere and always could enjoy no greater good than that of
self-government. The earth is a hill in the cosmos, astride which America sits
as a beacon of hope lighting a path to the glorious fulfillment of mankind’s
destiny. The people’s voice in election ‘84 proclaimed that they had no reason
to consider one party more than the other as fit to captain this mission. Safe
to say, then, that only new occasions and new reasons for the people to speak
differently will determine whether this country’s near-term political future
will be Republican.