WASHINGTON REPORT: Two's A Party?
Sisyphus
mite quixotic. Except, they are anything of the kind. SALT-II negotiations are crucial for their larger objectives, notably the limiting of multiple independently targeted nuclear warheads, and,...
...The bully boys of left and right have been seen in the streets...
...And it becomes the purest preoccupation...
...Three factors have generated third parties...
...One goes in there like entering an iceberg to trap seals when one has no need of sealskins or furs, when there is no iceberg and are no seals, when one cannot even imagine these existing not even as metaphysicals...
...A responsive party system demonstrates an ability, through its elected agents, to translate attainable programs into law...
...Harrington has noted, what Congress traditionally receives by way of background to decisionmaking is "the sanitized, pre-packaged version of the military side of weapons programs that the Pentagon wants it to hear...
...Agrarian discontent in the late 19th century generated parties that created a deep impactmthe Greenback (National Independent party) being one...
...A new national party with constructive aims to speak fiercely to the issues of income-redistribution, sanity in foreign policy and decent minimum shelters of healthcare...
...WASHINGTON REPORT TWO'S A PARTY...
...The Democrats have been more responsive in trying to drain off dissatisfaction...
...It was unfathomable to him that people want not only a piece of the pie--"serving docility with the doughnuts"--but also a piece of the action...
...One example is the "Cheekers" speech of Richard Nixon in 1952, the response to which helped keep him as General Eisenhower's Vice Presidential nominee...
...349 many to discern increasing political "independence" on the part of blacks, which, may mean a slide to indifference or a movement to more aggressive single-issue politics outside the major parties, although Charles Evers discounts this...
...Inevitably, talk also is being heard in Washington about a "third party"--that is, one whose ties don't lead to Governor Wallace...
...It's not clear whether politicallyminded Americans, as a consequence, will shut up shop or work harder...
...Status-quo political brokers, set in their ways, can't accommodate...
...Heeding their instructions, one would skate only between the blue-lines and play ball only between 1st and 3d bases...
...Caught in an economic ambush, the middle-class, Mr...
...Historically, new parties--so-called "third parties"~ have been born because existing parties were, so to speak, continuing to contest in close quarters amid cries for change...
...In addition, nearly half their elders have told pollsters that they have become "independents," although that is not a sufficiently precise term upon which to suggest their potential political conduct and attitudes...
...Without the former, the arms race graduates to a scary and perhaps inescapable plateau...
...Congressional seniors draw contentment from the computer analyses of Scammon & Wattenberg, which may tell us how matters are, but not how they should be...
...One might be legitimately concerned that President Nixon will overbargain in Moscow in order to achieve effects in Washington...
...Are we due for more drift...
...As a result, the Congress and its committees often resemble commodity exchanges at their speculative worst...
...The appeal of the major parties is now low enough, so the polls report, that there may exist insufficent institutional energy for each to redress itself so as to send strong, appealing signals to voters, whatever their political tendencies...
...And, third, as Howard Penniman has pointed out: The parties, elaborate organizations, spreading over a vast Continent and serving a vast population, are unable, or unwilling to grapple with new primary issues without fear of coming apart...
...but not more than it softens and brings the eyes to a pin-fine focus and fills them with the mist of thought...
...No wonder new channels are being cut by those working to make the government work for the many...
...There have been several hundred of them, at national, state and local levels--mostly since 1840...
...Forthcoming issues will be dated July 12, July 26, August 9, August 23, September 6 and September 20...
...Scammon & Wattenberg to the contrary, there is no need to play only between the 35-yard lines the goal posts are not there...
...There's no law against competition for political Tweedledum and Tweedledee...
...The nation asks to be spoken to, not simply by isolated individuals but by those with organizations capable of delivering on the fine words...
...Hence, Congress constantly risks voting seemingly one-dimensional programs---e.g., multiple re-entry warheads--that turn out to have severe destabilizing effects internationally...
...Actually, the play has been between the 45-yard lines...
...It has traded on its New Deal reputation for far too long...
...Of course, few third parties were serious electoral threats---only seven have won as much as 9 percent of the popular vote in a Presidential election and only 9 have won electoral votes, the latest in both categories being the American party with its candidate, George Wallace, in 1968...
...This is an advantage not to be cast aside...
...From then on we will resume our normal weekly publishing schedule...
...One new party, called the "Barn Burners" by opponents, in coalition with other dissident elements generated 10 percent of the Presidential vote for VanBuren in 1848...
...In the Sixties, Stephen Bailey observed that the closer one gets to national political parties the harder it is to see them...
...Social security benefits are increased, but there's no capacity to provide a decent program of health care...
...And only one, the Republican party, became a major party, its gestation being those bitter years prior to the Civil War...
...The problem of an ineffective political-party system persists, while an urgency for change grows...
...Jackson's ambitions whelped the National Republican party, which, in time, became part of a Whig coalition...
...However, stalemated politics reasserted itself--masquerading itself as "consensus politics...
...The Democratic party is specially accountable...
...The longest-lived is the existing Prohibition party, aged 105 years...
...SALT-II negotiations are crucial for their larger objectives, notably the limiting of multiple independently targeted nuclear warheads, and, no less importantly, for their potential psychological impact...
...Michael Harrington of Massachusetts, and emerged in April as an amendment to a funding bill for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency...
...Even Parson Weems couldn't restore romanticism to the Presidency, as matters now stand...
...But along the way, some are dropping out and some, judging by a sampling of Congressional mail, may be waiting for a Cromwell to instruct the Congress to go...
...Another example is that of television reporters' being able to freely walk around convention halls interviewing delegates to Presidential nominating conventions...
...If India feels the need and has the capacity for manufacturing an atomic bomb, why not also Japan, West Germany, Israel, Brazil and now Egypt...
...But often, third parties moved majors off-the-dime...
...Another factor has altered, if not loosened, party affiliation: television...
...Lyndon Johnson found many Democrats unappreciative of his accomplishments in the field of domestic legislation...
...In 1892, the Populist party's Presidential candidate polled 1-million popular votes and 22 electoral votes...
...Republican and Democratic parties have shown some effort to bring to their conventions other than professional pols and their acolytes...
...A new party appears and eagerly assumes the rejected responsibility...
...It's not so much that within the 35-yard lines lies the muddled middle as that the middle is muddied...
...The insufficiency of parties has launched new political relief missions to rescue the suffering public...
...in the absence of the latter, the impulse of smaller powers to develop nuclear capacities of their own is certain to quicken...
...At least, it was the first such party to hold a national Presidential nominating convention...
...The proposal is the brainchild of Rep...
...This condition doesn't preclude any change...
...This may account, too, for the durability of the least appetizing individual in politics today~Richard Nixon, who has stalked us for a quarter of a century...
...If this appeal is made and responded to, the Democratic and Republican parties have themselves to blame...
...Ralph Nader appeared from nowhere and shamed giant industrial corporations--and the Congress--into efforts to stop producing harmful commodities, be they automobiles or drugs...
...It has strummed the voters' aspirations and hopes for far too long, without delivering sufficiently...
...Meanwhile, despite the influx of newcomers into elective office, cadres of the major parties continue in their Whiggish ways...
...The two major political parties, in Congress assembled, do not now meet this test...
...Students took to the streets to protest the lethal results of a hitherto sacrosanct "bipartisan" foreign policy guarded for two decades by the Foreign Affairs Council crowd of Lovett, McCoy, etc., in New York City...
...The amendment was strenuously opposed by the Nixon Administration and the Pentagon, and went down to defeat by a House vote of 239-152...
...Kansas City in December is its opportunity to redress itself--and, failing this, to suffer at the polls two years hence...
...John Gardner walked out of the Secretaryship of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and founded "Common Cause," whose 325,000 members are forcing federal and state politicians to cleanse the dirt from the political-financing system...
...For a score of years in the early 19th century, the Democratic-Republican party was the only party, although there were contentious factions within...
...A Cromwell who puts forth the false but appealing suggestion that a strong leader somehow can get them to safety in a long leap forward, ignoring means and, thereby, distorting ends...
...Johnson freed blockaded legislation, in the fields of civil rights and education...
...it has sat far too long...
...A re-alignment of parties...
...As Mr...
...This benighted condition has been sporadically disguised--such as by the heroic intervention of Lyndon "Johnson when he unexpectedly became President...
...For, although parties lack Constitutional sanction, they should, and have been, vehicles of responsible change, large and small~ change that modifies inflammatory sectional appeals and unbridled personal ambitions...
...Political parties themselves have been a permanent feature, although they were unwanted by Washington and other founders...
...and Mrs...
...The needs are there for such a responsive new party...
...Its grey-flannel, middle-class perspective does not appear to include within its ambit tough issues such as maldistribution of wealth, substantial tax reform and other bread-and-butter issues...
...The Social Democratic party, with Eugene Debs as its Presidential candidate, polled nearly 900,000 votes that same year, and, simultaneously, elected more than 300 candidates to state and local office...
...Endemic racism has led Commonweal...
...Common Cause, perhaps the major new non-partisan grouping of citizens, appears not completely adequate...
...It has at times by-passed and at times overwhelmed conventional political communication between leaders and voters...
...Nevertheless, political parties find themselves without much traction on a slippery slope...
...One, existing major parties, while sectionally strong, have been unable to elect a sufficient number of their candidates to achieve control of the Presidency and/or the Congress...
...The first "third party" is usually, identified as the Anti-Mason party...
...They've more thoroughly reformed their delegate-selection process and their convention procedures---although Bourbon Democrats, through their cover group, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM), are persistently seeking to roll-back those accomplishments...
...The minimum-wage is raised, but there's no response to social aggravations generated by an inequitable distribution of wealth...
...Manufacture them they may without convincing demonstration at last on the part of the superpowers that a commitment exists to restraint, control, and eventual disarmament...
...Nevertheless, it would be the narrow person indeed who begrudged him any solid agreements that would lessen nuclear peril in the world: In related context, it is good to learn that the proposal is to be revived whereby impact reports would be provided Congress on all new strategic arms systems...
...The Progressive ("Bull Moose") party, challenging the Republican party, enabled Wilson to be elected in 1912...
...In one writing of his, he commented: "So long as we lack strong national parties operating as catalysts in the Congress, the Executive Branch and the national government as a whole, and between the national government and state and local governments, power will continue to be dangerously diffused---or, perhaps what is worse, will whip-saw between diffusion and Presidential dictatorship...
...In 1972, the AFL-CIO's gouty hierarchy, like the Bourbon Democrats they are, worked to stage George McGovern's Waterloo...
...Second, a major party has broken down under the load of keeping its diverse and quarrelsome interests together...
...Can it be tolerant if it hears no tolerance...
...The condition is further aggravated by "Watergate," which has done for politics what Spiro Agnew has done for Hellenic culture...
...Third parties are not heresy...
...After tracking America, Bill Moyers asked: "Can the country be wise if it hears no wisdom...
...A bitter clash over party policy and attitudes will be fought this December when a "mid-term" convention will be held at Kansas City, Mo...
...As an increasing number of Republicansare elect~mand, importantly, re-elected--to Congress, this will alter the Southern-nurtured seniority system to one favoring national, not sectional, members in leadership positions...
...Apathy toward the current crop of potential Presidential nominees of both parties reflects this...
...Can the people I met escape their isolation, if no one listens...
...The analogy is false...
...Such concentration moves through confusions of its own undoing head first like a polar icebreaker...
...28 June 1974:350...
...SISYPHUS 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 000 JAMES NEYLON DEEP THINKER Whether the head fills the tooth with an ache, or the tooth fills the head, the thought of pain throbs and waters the mouth until speech is slurred and pain is thought to be wet and is not felt to be thought, but is a mental jaw breaker the tongue works in the cave of the mind...
...Also footloose, in terms of political alignment, are many of the 25-million young people who beeame eligible to vote as of two years ago...
...Time is running out in this regard...
...And the hired guns of the President have tarnished the Presidency for awhile...
...It is reason, in sum, to hope for the most successful of summits...
...In-Between, are now splitting their tickets on election days in an effort to elect candidates not tonedeaf to their beseechments...
...Nor have they for some time...
...Summer Schedule In keeping with the usual practice, Commonweal will again appear on alternate weeks during the summer months...
...The Harrington amendment remains, however, a worthwhile measure, basically for the insurance it would provide that arms-control considerations are brought to bear on weapons decisions, something totally lacking at the moment...
...The Harrington amendment would not be an absolute failsafe against destabilizing authorizations, but it could help signal awareness to the implications of some ----or even one...
...Given these muddled times, there are, again, factors encouraging at least a re-alignment of the major parties, One factor is that the Republican party is taking root in the South, not simply giving, as it did in the 1950s, its Presidential vote to the Republican nominee...
...The wilder the delegate the more spectacular the interview...
...As this bi28 June 1974:348 partisan policy buckled, so did the patronage on the airshuttle service between there and Washington diminish and has now been abandoned...
Vol. 100 • June 1974 • No. 15
