A "Return" to Politics in America?
Spinrad, William
At first the 1964 election seemed to promise a new politicized atmosphere, but these expectations were hardly fulfilled. The results were less a mandate for a program than an overwhelming...
...Perhaps these hopes are misplaced...
...Only one set of issues now seems available for direct translation into easily grasped and relevant programs, the presumably "settled" problems associated with the Welfare State...
...Johnson was presented as a half-baked Kennedy instead of a man who finally got some of their domestic proposals enacted into law...
...The liberals found their first major idol in Adlai Stevenson, whose air of humane and somewhat weary cultivation fitted very neatly the post-war mood of disenchantment...
...The campaign propaganda emphasized continued prosperity, tax cuts, fear of international adventurism, instead of unmet social needs and the fragmentariness of the measures thus far passed...
...A failure in communications is also apparent...
...The 87th Congress, elected in 1958 with an overwhelming Democratic majority, did enact an extensive public works program over Eisenhower's veto...
...The inanities of the Goldwaterites permitted a very easy answer without invoking much of an advance in liberal thought...
...Few of them ever accepted radical answers...
...But victories bring only more headaches...
...When, for example, in 1958 fear of economic crisis became intense, the Democrats won as decisive a victory as in the 'thirties, even though it was cast largely in defensive terms...
...but, especially for liberals, it must include some comprehensible ideas about policy, some notions of what governments ought to do...
...Some programs were further elaborated, while others, like public housing, were actually curtailed...
...Yet in its ramifications the campaign signified a return to some genuine political controversy...
...Public discussions including election campaigns, were rarely of a kind that would encourage political ideas or passions...
...The peace movement concerns itself with ultimate questions...
...The overwhelming Democratic election victory should bring more...
...Matters of foreign policy can, at best, play a usefully negative role in American political life: as in the sen sible fear millions of Americans had before the prospect of Goldwater making decisions about atom bombs...
...The Johnson Administration, led by an opportunistic politician who plays the game successfully, has produced several legislative victories...
...But, by itself, this issue is not enough for re-creating a vigorous liberal movement...
...Attempts at reforming the major political organizations, exemplified by the Democratic Clubs in California and the Reform Democrats in New York City, were the other substitute for programmatic politics...
...Very little has been added until recently...
...The idea of a comprehensive government medical insurance plan for all, pro posed by Truman in 1949, is waiting for revival...
...Whatever recent "political movements" have appeared are all limited in impact because they have had other emphases...
...But he was neither an exponent of genuine programmatic politics nor a successful politician who could get what he wanted in government...
...That in recent times they have failed to arouse more people is not, as some imply, because they are neither pertinent nor pressing...
...Party reform and realignment may be part of the method, but not the principal direction...
...A public medical program for the aged has been a fighting issue for several years...
...The general apathy had something to do with it...
...Above all, liberals can again feel that their efforts are worthwhile, and radicals may again have a political public of which they can become a sensible "left wing...
...Only welfare issues, and the related question of government regulation of the economy, represent the kind of problems which can stimulate a large public around policy proposals...
...It may again be possible to engage in political arguments which have real substance...
...Nevertheless, the American electorate has retained an essential loyalty to the tradition of New Deal liberalism, however vaguely understood...
...At most, it can help prevent world destruction so that there may be an opportunity for politics...
...The New Frontier administration promised much more and achieved a few aims, such as Federal aid for construction of educational and mental health institutions, and area redevelopment...
...The reformers can elevate the parties above the patronage level only by "capturing" them on all levels, a task for which there are hardly sufficient resources, even if there were the ambition...
...The 1964 election was the most political election since 1948, but the presentation of a liberal program was not its dominant feature...
...Civil rights have, of course, provided the most dramatic political issue of the day...
...First, there is the sad fact that so much of the wider public to whom liberals must appeal is, at least for the moment, on the wrong side of the fence...
...Despite the cries of the Goldwaters, government welfare policy has ground to a standstill during the last decade...
...At first the 1964 election seemed to promise a new politicized atmosphere, but these expectations were hardly fulfilled...
...All of these unquestionably flattened the political psyches of many Americans, including the liberals, with the result that political debate became trivialized...
...A change may come next year...
...and these can be met only by expanding the public sector of the economy and the government's role in checking the private corporation...
...It may have started with the New Frontier administration, but the important achievements are more recent...
...There may now be a revival of the political public to which radicals have directed their messages in the past thirty years—the New Deal-type liberals...
...To phrase it very crudely: something may finally have begun to happen that could produce meaningful politics for a large public...
...His speeches during the 1960 primaries were politically vacuous, despite their literate tone...
...Although the radical's "internal" strength, their confidence in what they had to offer, was badly weakened in the postwar period, it could still be maintained as long as there was something valuable to say to a possible audience...
...But what has been the general result...
...Caught up in organizational disputes, the reformers find little time for programmatic politics...
...Explanations are plentiful—the Cold War impasse, the ravages of McCarthyism, the political passivity of the organization man, the power of Madison Avenue mass manipulation, the generally continuing prosperity, the emphasis on private rather than public concerns...
...Thus far an active political public has not, with rare exceptions, been mobilized around such issues...
...John Kennedy's tragic martyrdom should not interfere with a sober appraisal of his political role...
...He was admired primarily for his style, his academic entourage, his White House salon...
...The results were less a mandate for a program than an overwhelming rejection of Goldwater madness...
...radicals are involved and have made efforts to politicize it, as through the ideas of Seymour Melman...
...The "war on poverty" is the most publicized recent example...
...The approach should be towards a form of pressure group politics, which can include electoral participation...
...Meaningful politics need not be "ideological...
...The list can be extended with ease: urban decay and suburban sprawl, mass transportation, physical and mental health—these and others are political questions that should bother many people directly and that can be answered programmatically...
...Too many liberals were still thinking of synthetic heroes instead of program...
...But even this possibility was dissipated as the liberals them I2 selves lost their political elan and their own larger audience in the early 1950s...
...And in recent America these have been generally absent...
...All this has been a portrayal of the difficulties of the past...
...Though scarcely an adequate answer to the country's needs, what has been done represents a renewal of welfarism—the Civil Rights Act, antipoverty, aid to mass transportation, near passage of Medicare...
...The continued prosperity, albeit with frequent recessions, only accentuates the unmet needs, daily discovered and rediscovered...
...Some of their spokesmen, like Congressman Ryan of New York, are among the most "political" figures in contemporary American politics...
...Still, they represented a fairly large group to whom one could talk in a more or less common language...
...Secondly, the Negro struggle will flounder unless tied in with other programs of a welfare type, especially answers to the dilemma of poverty and unemployment in the midst of prosperity...
...Thwarted by the apolitical mood, the liberals tended to concentrate their energies on contriving public heroes and, in some cases, attempts at organizational reform...
...But it seems unlikely, at the moment, that any large American public will be politicized by the inherently complex and often ambiguous problems of foreign policy...
...This will insure programmatic politics rather than absorption in the complexities of organizational maneuvering...
...Democratic campaign propaganda either appealed to fears of the opponent or asserted folksy generalities, of which Johnson's speeches were the worst specimens...
...With so few successes to proclaim, there was little incentive to push new welfare measures...
...Our current tentative hope appears as an epilogue...
...One reason for this communications blockage is that it is difficult to put across a program without evidence of concrete achievements...
...After his election, he began very moderately to substantiate his promise of a New Frontier with concrete proposals...
...And radicals had better be prepared to offer their own guidance to the newly invigorated po litical movement that may now arise...
...When the liberals did become excited about welfare issues, it was usually "defensive" —worrying about diminution of longestablished programs rather than fighting for innovations...
...The reformers have rediscovered what many have surmised for a long time: the "machine's" supposed hold over the electorate is exaggerated, a De Sapio or a Buckley can be beaten in his own district, and in some places the very existence of a "machine" is pure mythology...
...As a Senator, though his voting record was up to liberal standards, he was rather passive, neither the author of any significant legislation nor an active leader in any legislative battle...
...The voting alignment first created in the 'thirties has largely persisted into our own day...
...The last comprehensive welfare legislation was the Housing Act of 1949...
...but it seems inherently a nonpolitical phenomenon...
...The decisive electoral victory and the reality of the new programs could rally liberals into pushing for much more...
Vol. 12 • January 1965 • No. 1
