Where's the party?
Carlin, David R. Jr.
OF SEVERAL MINDS David R. Carlin, Jr. WHERE'S THE PARTY? POLITICIANS WITHOUT POLITICS 6: 14 February 1992 Commonweal as our luck held. In other words, it worked until slavery became a burning...
...But the facts don't support the myth...
...But TV time and production costs are high...
...senator or representative, governor, mayor of a large city had to depend on the party organization to get the message to the voters...
...On average it is the party loyalist who is more attentive and better informed...
...You might think the creation of this powerful national government during the last century constitutes sufficient proof that we have overcome our love affair with anarchy...
...With the decline of political parties, our electorate becomes increasingly unstable, uninformed, and apathetic...
...At the national level this decline in party loyalty has produced the phenomenon of split government—the White House in the hands of one party, Congress in the hands of the other: a recipe for ineffectiveness, even gridlock...
...Time was when candidates for major office—U.S...
...Over a long period of years the party loyalty of voters has declined, while independents have grown increasingly numerous...
...As a result, state and local parties are fading away...
...And, of course, it is the party loyalist who is more likely to vote on election day...
...It manifests itself in political campaigns in which candidates denounce, rather fantastically, the existence of big government...
...The affair may have grown tenuous at times, but it lingers on...
...Now television delivers the message...
...the decline in American voter participation correlates with the rise of the "independent" voter...
...They are dying of inanition...
...in the amazing capacity of the National Rifle Association to block most meaningful gun control legislation...
...and, of course, in the term-limitation movement...
...As the state was supposed to do under communism but never did, American political parties are simply withering away...
...It is a very dangerous experiment we are embarked on...
...Small wonder political campaigning has become more and more negative...
...Commonweal 14 February 1992: 7...
...In other words, it worked until slavery became a burning issue...
...So now the candidate for major office pays scant attention to his or her party and much attention to contributors, especially big contributors...
...witness George Bush, who was almost universally approved of twelve months ago but has less than a 50 percent approval rating now...
...Contemporary Americans have inherited that suspicion, and we seem determined to conduct an experiment in party-less democracy...
...instead, they are forced to make an endless series of midcourse corrections, trying to maintain or regain the public support they need to avoid complete disaster...
...But no...
...To date, we should remind ourselves, there is no evidence that democracy can survive in the absence of a strong two-party or multi-party system...
...But the most striking—and most ominous— symptom of our abiding semi-anarchism is the gradual but inexorable movement toward the abolition of political parties in America...
...Presidents whose support is so unstable have a severely reduced ability to plan and carry out long-term policies...
...It has also produced violent swings in the popularity of presidents...
...But suppose it doesn't work...
...At the level of the states the importance of parties has, if anything, declined even more...
...No more...
...There is a widespread myth that the independent voter is better informed and more attentive to public affairs than the party loyalist, who merely votes blindly at the instructions of party leaders...
...After all, how is the candidate to catch the voter's attention without resorting to sensationalism...
...America's Founding Fathers were suspicious of political parties, which they called "factions...
...Then the country fell apart, a long and bloody civil war was fought, and we discovered too late that the anarchy quotient in our form of government had been too high...
...Attending meetings of local political committees (something I do from time to time), one sometimes has the feeling the anthropologist must have who came across a dying tribe of aborigines...
...Since that time, with a few backward slidings from time to time, we have created a strong central government—strong enough to preside over the development of a modern industrial society and welfare state, and strong enough to fight and win two world wars plus the cold war...
...just as the fan of a particular baseball team is more attentive and better informed about baseball than the "independent" baseball fan who doesn't like any team in particular...
Vol. 119 • February 1992 • No. 3
