Saving the Party
TYLER, GUS
Countdown '72 SAVING THE PARTY BY GUS TYLER Aspen The heart of the Colorado Rockies seems an appropriate place to reflect on the distressing dilemma facing the Democratic party this year....
...And in the Presidential campaign this year they will gain the allegiance of others who wish to oust Nixon, end the war, achieve greater economic justice, or advance minority rights...
...In this mood, then, let us consider the relevance of Sophocles' greatest tragedies to the plight of the party that comprises roughly two-thirds of the American electorate: Oedipus, of course, presents the fated and ever-frightening clash of the generations, the unconscious compulsion of sons to war against fathers that Freud later diagnosed as an eternal complex...
...In other words, for Democrats to write off '72 in the interests of a greater future might amount to writing off the future as well...
...The Southern strategy is far more than an appeal to Dixie dislike of integration...
...Politically, however, there is a logic for party elders to do what parents have been doing for millenia: to avoid the tragic fate of other noble houses that have been wiped out in the ravages of intra-familial conflict...
...Suicidal as these strategies seem, there is logic behind them, inasmuch as each group feels that history is on its side...
...2. Win the middle class by playing on its fear of the underclass...
...For if the Democrats go down in '72, it could be decades before they rise again...
...In contemporary American terms, it could be something like this: 1. Tax the middle class to feed the poor so they will not riot...
...In addition, they count on the President, if reelected, to emerge the real Nixon in his second term and serve as the great polarizer who will drive all people of good will and of unhappy circumstance to the Democratic standard...
...Yet with such power comes responsibility, the burdens that breed maturity...
...Then the grown-ups could nominate a man like Edward Kennedy in '76 and resume the long march forward that began with FDR...
...The only force capable of taking on the "new bosses" is the labor movement-as was obvious in several state primaries...
...by stopping McGovern, the old pols hope to prepare themselves for a comeback in 1976...
...Third, the newly enfranchised (now under 18) will not have suffered through Vietnam, the great unifier of the peace generation...
...The "old-ins" regard the "new-ins" as the real machine that took over the convention by connivances, writing their own rules and seating a Chicago delegation elected by nobody...
...Yet, whatever they think of each other, in their respective opinions of themselves they are moral people committed to high purpose...
...Finally, Democrats who feel it imperative to keep Congress in their party's hands-and that includes just about all of them-will probably find it easier to do so if they oppose Nixon himself...
...It is important to remember, too, that the mixed legions of the New Politics are not monolithic: They also have their over-30s and practical politicians...
...Whoever prevails, the party can not afford to slight the millions of plain people who have been the Democrats' loyal electorate since the New Deal...
...An alternative for the Democrats is the following scenario: First, elect Mc-Govern...
...To do that, they must not only defeat McGovern but see to it that he is beaten badly...
...second, roll up a maximum vote for him...
...In sum, the political economy would be manipulated to tame the loudest of the lowliest, calm the most fearful of the middle, and enrich the greediest of the most affluent...
...on the other hand...
...He is lost in a forest of fears: fear of unemployment, fear for his neighborhood, fear for the future of his kids...
...The New Politics assumes that by 1976 more young people will carry themselves off to the voting places while more old people will be carried off to the burial places...
...Hence they tended to slip back into an earlier pattern of politics that limited the role of government in economic matters and the role of the U.S...
...The reformers look upon the regulars as "the machine" that has grown crotchety and corrupt in the soft seat of power...
...The AFL-CIO would have to set itself up as a continuing faction within the Democratic party...
...third, use the campaign to work out a modus operandi within the party that could become a modus vivendi later...
...Should this game plan succeed, the "emerging Republican majority" would arrive, making the Democrats the minority party of our times...
...see the New Politics as an aberration, united around the transient issue of Vietnam and inspired by a libertarian lifestyle that appeals only to smart-ass academia and bo-hemia...
...Here, at the home of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, where men of affairs gather to seek insights into their times by contemplating the classics, one can find the necessary distance and detachment to ponder the destiny of the world's oldest political party...
...On a personal level, there may be no reason to pardon those snot-noses who say to the old man: We don't need you...
...As in Antigone, the combatants see themselves as the embodiment of eternal verities...
...a narrow margin would warn the President and his party to proceed more cautiously...
...Left alone to cope with their extremists, these moderates will be devoured by their children, driving the party to further extremes...
...The historic solution to this Oedipal confrontation-excluding patricide or infanticide-is maturation by the son and forgiveness by the father...
...Among Democrats, the inevitable generational struggle took on ideological form, as it does whenever moral men articulate their passions...
...in world affairs...
...This does not mean, however, that the forces presently identified with McGovern will be of no consequence in the Democratic convention of '76...
...Similarly, the Catholic strategy is more than support for parochial schools and opposition to easy abortion...
...This trend toward "doing your own thing"-as person, tribe, neighborhood or nation-was quickened by the semianarchic youth assault upon those traditional issues and institutions that had already been shaken by World War II...
...There is some evidence that postwar youth is maturing according to ancient expectations: from the apathy of infancy (the 1950s) to the anarchy of adolescence (the mid-'60s) to the arrogance of young manhood (the early '70s) to-hopefully-the accommodation of adulthood...
...6. Take the country on a dizzying ride over the Philips' Curve by alternating unemployment with inflation and synchronizing the ups and downs to the political timetable...
...And because neither side is basically opportunistic, both are thinking far beyond '72...
...Unless the regulars overcome their lack of structure and stamina, they may discover that a phoenix does not necessarily arise from every pile of ashes...
...Having lost their former economic hold and social pull, the once highly touted city machines are a thing of the past...
...The old pols...
...Should McGovern be defeated decisively, they are confident his children's crusade would dissipate...
...Despite the elements of logic in both scripts, neither takes sufficient account of the events likely to unfold after '72...
...Antigone dramatizes the struggle to the death between the establishment and its antagonists, with both sides committed to moral imperatives for which they are ready to sacrifice everything they hold dear...
...It is precisely this moral quality that makes the present confrontation a classic tragedy...
...The son may find his father an insensitive, antediluvian tyrant, but the boy still needs the old man, without whom he can't quite make it today...
...He is internally torn over matters of economics (his job), ethnics (his turf), and ethos (his lifestyle...
...we have no seat for you...
...Their priorities run: (1) capture the party...
...4. Meet the economic demands of the middle-level special interest groups part way, provided they have political clout...
...This year, heeding the older generations' appeals to turn from bombs to ballots, the young have moved to posts of power with the heady arrogance of the newly enthroned...
...In my last column I sketched the entrance of new generations into the Democratic party: the reformers Adlai Stevenson attracted in 1952 and 1956...
...Consequently, the new pols expect their constituency to be stronger four years from now...
...The unions would also have to organize permanent precinct clubs to wage effective primary and caucus battles...
...A big GOP victory would be read as a mandate for more of the same...
...This requires the kind of accommodation that fathers and sons must make from time to time...
...All the GOP will then need to establish a long Republican Era is an economic policy that, like Disraeli's Tory Socialism, uses politics not to restructure an exploitive machinery but to grease squeaky wheels...
...3) win a maximum vote for the ticket...
...In turn, the parent is called upon to forgive-even if he can't forget...
...3. Allow money wages to rise while holding real wages constant...
...Clearly, the once celebrated "forgotten man" feels forgotten again...
...The biggest pluses for the new, though, are the minuses of the old...
...Today, some of the strands in this tie to the party are frayed...
...we want you to get the hell out of the house...
...We know, for instance, that the youth factor will decline in the years ahead...
...But to do the job right, the unions must change their nonpartisan stance and restructure their political apparatus...
...On these "social questions," many lifelong Democrats now suspect that their party is less responsive-especially under the McGovernites-than the Republicans...
...They also believe that a well-placed defeat can hasten victory: By defeating Hubert Humphrey in 1968, the new pols positioned themselves for a win in 1972...
...And it should be borne in mind that this November Nixon will be looking for a vote of confidence for what he has done...
...Their great assets of energy, enthusiasm and true belief will still be with them...
...Finally, the newest wave among passionate youth is a revivalist fundamentalism, a counter-counterculture with a potential for militant conservatism...
...The top priority of the Democratic electorate that will not go for the South Dakota senator is to wrest the party from the "kids and kooks...
...Sensing this inner anguish of the common man, the GOP has devised two basic approaches to make itself the party of the people...
...Although these activists flocked to their preferred candidates for a variety of reasons, most of them shared two nonexperiences: They had not gone through the Great Depression of the '30s or the aggressive dictatorships (Hitler-Stalin) of the '40s...
...the added legions of youngish people who followed John Kennedy in 1960, Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy in 1968, and George McGovern in 1972...
...The more recently developed Jewish strategy adds a third ingredient: arms to Israel...
...For the hardcore McGovern cadres, the primary objective this year is not the election of their candidate but the promotion of "the movement...
...it is directed to all white ethnics who live in combat zones, fretting and fuming over crime and riot, busing and quotas...
...Second, many of them will be over 30 in '76, with resultant changes in their glands and politics...
...A few years ago he instinctively turned to the Democratic party to be his champion in all of these arenas: It represented him as a worker in the battle for employment and better pay, as an ethnic-white or black-against the entrenched wasp overlords, as a common man in his distaste for the style of the effete elite...
...The two camps agree on a pivotal proposition: The Democratic party is an instrument to shape the future and thus is not to be entrusted to the other side...
...As the Greeks would have it, the decision lies in the laps of the gods who, the poets say, make mad those they would destroy...
...it is an appeal to a culture of traditionalism that rejects professors on pot, kids in command, women in pants, and men in drag...
...Although "the people" still look to the Democrats on bread-and-butter issues, they do not have a like faith that the party of Andrew Jackson, Al Smith and Harry Truman quite understands the territorial imperatives and cultural fundamentalism of the man in the street...
...First, the under-30s will lose numerical influence because from now until 1984 they will form a shrinking portion of the population...
...While such a radical departure from past labor policy is possible, it remains unlikely, especially in view of the present estrangement between the Democratic party and the AFL-CIO...
...The father may find his son an unmitigated pain, a source of endless irritation, an inane ingrate, and a disgrace to the family name, but he is still his child...
...2) elect McGovern...
...The man who most competently expresses Republican attitudes toward these social questions is, of course, Spiro Agnew-whose re-nomination for the Vice Presidency was seen by some as the prelude to his Presidential candidacy in '76...
...5. Meet the economic demands of top-level special interest groups all the way, provided they contribute...
...To be sure, the warring factions do not view each other as moral...
Vol. 55 • September 1972 • No. 17
