Completing the Party Realignment

...The role of pretense in politics is not new...

...Our common interests are as broad as the continent...

...Viewed in the light of history, the Republican Party with its one-time liberal and progressive wing—drawn from the Eastern establishment with its Disraeli Toryism, from the farm states with their "Sons of the Wild Jackass," and from the populism of Wisconsin—has undergone a genuine realignment...

...That women would one day be "a special interest" politicians had to reckon with probably never occurred to Machiavelli, Madison or Marx...

...In sum, the play is the thing...

...Women are increasingly more inclined toward the Democrats than toward the Republicans...

...today, he must turn the heads and win the hearts of millions...

...Presidential candidates cannot do without TV...

...As this bifurcated behavior became increasingly illogical, the Southland began to evolve a real two-party system, with Republicans winning in House, Senate and gubernatorial races...

...In an ethos of "states' rights," what happened in Washington, was of less importance than what was happening in the state capitals...

...The choice of the Indiana Senator is an egregious example of TV turning politics topsy turvy...

...My italics...

...Its continued presence in the party after Roosevelt was an anomaly: a consistently conservative bloc within a liberal constellation...

...In 1972, all 11 states went solidly Republican...

...As consciousness of their proper state is heightened, they are naturally drawn to a party that favors change, that challenges the conventional cliches about males and females...

...They expected their listeners to follow them through several steps of a logical syllogism...

...FDR decided to do something about it in the midterm elections of 1938...

...In his New Orleans acceptance speech, Bush countered by saying that "Competence makes the trains run on time but doesn' t know where they are going...

...Women have been, and still are, an oppressed "class...

...the modern Machiavellis reach into the unconscious...

...In 1976, when Jimmy Carter ran, the born-again Christian, Southerner and former governor of Georgia carried all of the South, except Virginia...

...The pivotal change has occurred in the once "solid South...

...The vulgar is always taken in by appearances...

...Although political contests have always been marked by hype and hoopla, modern campaigns are the more so because they depend heavily on television, a medium that demands the theatrical...

...it revealed the make-up of the convention, a truly conservative affair without a Mac Mathias, a Wayne Morse, a Nelson Rockefeller, a Clifford Case, a Wendell Willkie, a William Borah, a Teddy Roosevelt, a Margaret Chase Smith, a Jacob Javits, a Robert La Follette...

...What that means for the future will be indicated bythesizeofthe Dukakis vote in the South—which will be a clue to how far the politics of Dixie has gone beyond black and white, if at all...

...In 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson (a Texan, no less) had to split the South with Goldwater by six to five...

...Even though America is too large and too varied to become a homogenized culture, current movements suggest that sectionalism—the one-party South for the Democrats and a one-party cluster in the North (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota) for the Republicans— will play less of a role in future years than nationwide interests and ideologies...

...the critics are the anchor people and their crews...

...four years later, after Carter stood by his party's civil rights stand, he carried only one state of the Old Confederacy—his own Georgia...

...Everybody sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are...

...The show is merely a passing performance, put on by players who have other things in mind...

...Thehistoryofall hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles...

...The politics of perception, described in our previous installment (NL, August 8-22) as the conduct of political campaigns to project carefully crafted images, is fostering a sense of politics as a movie...

...of the electorate...

...In a successful " Southern strategy" to become the "white man's party," the Republicans have lost the black vote...

...today, professionals employ subtle and subliminal instruments to penetrate and capture the social psyche...

...The former catches the eye, the latter the mind...

...What really drives politics over the long run...

...The betterment which we seek must be accomplished mainly through the national government...

...But the details of his proposal made the move a travesty...

...It has been further suggested that the liberal Republican Wendell L. Willkie was privy to this strategy...

...In 1912, TR ran for President on the Progressive Party (Bull Moose) ticket...

...As Bush left the hall, the women began to chant "E-R-A, E-R-A," the nearest thing to booing in a polite manner...

...Before the GOP convention, these young voters favored Dukakis over Bush by 54 to 32 per cent...

...Should the gender gap continue to grow, they will become one of the pillars of the Democratic Party, and should the number of women voters continue to rise as contrasted with men, they could become a decisive factor for the Democrats in the next century...

...one week after the GOP meeting, Bush led Dukakis by six points...

...Judged by polling results, the Republican show was a success...

...From the Civil War to 1948, it could be counted on to go Democratic...

...In the last decade this axiom has no longer been valid...

...With racial antagonisms lessening and with urbanization weakening value systems rooted in rural isolation, the politics of the South is coming to resemble that of the North...

...Nevertheless, Reagan's namecalling revealed more than the influence of some media man...

...In the past, a "prince" could rule if he could pay his soldiery or sway the chieftains of the deines...

...two weeks later, they favored Bush over Dukakis by 54 to 36 per cent...

...No doubt this Reaganism—like the rest of the Republican National Convention—was inspired by some pollster's finding that the number of people who think of themselves as "conservatives" outnumber those who see themselves as "liberals...

...In the present century, however, as we became more of a nation—tied more tightly together by transportation, communication and the networks of finance, commerce and production—both parties have been increasingly obliged to think nationally, although neither has had a comprehensive and consistent macro philosophy to do so...

...But the bent of the South toward the Republican Party does not signify a Rightward trend...

...So as speculation revolved around a number of men and women of proven intelligence, integrity, experience, and maturity, the standard bearer remained silent, finally to pick a running mate little known who would nonetheless be right for the vital medium...

...American campaigns have revolved around specific programs or glittering generalities, not ideologies...

...Appearing before the Federation of Business and Professional Women's Associations, Bush promised to enact "child care...

...The sudden swing suggests the volatility (shallowness...

...Over the last 100 years, Democrats and Republicans have reversed roles on the "black" question...

...Yet why not...

...It is the only form of mass communication, appealing to both eye and ear, able to penetrate the privacy of the home...

...At his height, FDR proclaimed: "I am that kind of liberal because I am that kind of conservative...

...In the United States, economic, racial, ethnic, religious, and regional diversity, combined with the concept of majority rule, has given rise to two great parties that are fundamentally coalitions of different, sometimes clashing, interests...

...What Madison did not foresee was that in a country devoted to majority rule, the multiple minorities would sooner or later have to devise an instrument to compose a governing majority...

...He outdid our expectations when he said: "I am that man...

...He threw himself personally into several primaries to cleanse his party of the enemies within the gates...

...The word was meant as a pejorative...

...Opposing the party's progressive elements on matters of economic policy, of race and of cultural norms, the South stayed with FDR out of nostalgic hatred for the Republicans...

...TV has replaced the pulpit, the stump, the lecture hall, the "monster rally...

...Central casting came up with J. Danforth Quayle III, a plasticized Robert Redford, an ersatz Elvis...

...The election, intoned Bush, is about "the principles we hold dear...

...We are all Americans...

...The GOP has drifted toward a monolithic conservatism...

...Many centuries ago, Machiavelli instructed "the Prince" on how to get and hold power by fooling the people...

...Those who are creditors and those who are debtors fall under a like discrimination...

...Should the GOP, however, in the remaining weeks of the 1988 campaign insist upon ideologic warfare—liberalism versus conservatism—it may well be that the rhetoric of the race will speed a party realignment along the lines allegedly envisioned by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Wendell L. Willkie a half century ago...

...It is simply a rearrangement of one sector of the electorate, historically conservative, in an ongoing realignment of parties...

...but you must have the mind so disposed that when it is needful to be otherwise you may be able to change to the opposite qualities...

...The black vote—once either nonexistent or Republican—is sizable and Democratic...

...After 1948, the South began to turn away from the Democrats at the Presidential level, while continuing to vote Democratic in elections for the House and Senate...

...Consequently, the South is now divided—along class and racial lines...

...For the GOP, this schism opens an opportunity to divide and rule in some Northern cities where in the past they were an impotent presence...

...They do not enjoy equal rights...

...The outspoken Senator Lowell P. Weicker of Connecticut and the soft-spoken Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania stood almost alone as token "liberals...

...The Great Depression had made it obvious the country faced a crucial challenge to its very existence that could not be handled state by state—or "block by block," as President Herbert Hoover put it—but demanded a national response...

...Someone young to appeal to the baby boom generation...

...Deceit and delusion were necessary and morally acceptable, because the "end justifies the means...

...Socio-economic policy was entrusted to the "police powers" of the "sovereign" states...

...and men are so simple and ready to obey present necessities that one who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived...

...Yet what great men with great plans may not accomplish often happens anyhow—unplanned, incrementally, unperceived...

...Just before the New Orleans conclave, Michael S. Dukakis led George Bush by 17 percentage points...

...In other words, one out of four Dukakis supporters defected to Bush...

...In 1968, Hubert Humphrey, chief proponent of the 1948 civil rights resolution, carried only one Southern state, while five went to Nixon and five to George C. Wallace...

...What Marx failed to foresee was that in America his "class struggle" would be a major factor in an upward mobility of the people, lifting many into the middle classes and beyond...

...A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views...

...They are—like the American colonists, working people and blacks—no longer willing to settle for a subservient state...

...The outstanding flops at the Democratic and Republican conventions were two intellectuals, Governors Bill Clinton of Arkansas and Tom Kean of New Jersey...

...Dukakis remains in the mainstream tradition...

...By implication, the tagging of Dukakis also tagged Bush as—necessarily—"a conservative, conservative, conservative...

...The audience is the electorate...

...King, the devout Mother, the Dukakis bashers (Kean and Senator Bob Dole) recruited from the moderate wing of the party, and the collective (almost compelled) recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, chanted as a piety that mocked its promise of " liberty and justice f or all...

...The Madisonian (Marxian) vision of politics as the clash of competing interests is as valid in 1988 as in 1788...

...For the moment, therefore, women are drawn to the Democrats in the continuing realignment of the parties...

...In his first term (1933-1937) FDR was able to move his New Deal programs through Congress...

...Finally, the kindness would end when the child is four years old...

...The South's electoral vote has not only been changing complexion...

...Roosevelt's plan to purge the party failed...

...Midwestern to appeal to "the heartland...

...In the fantasy world of film, the viewer seeks escape from reality...

...To him, the "L word" is not "liberalism" but "leadership...

...Half a century later, Karl Marx echoed James Madison...

...the former is histrionic, the latter historic...

...Here's the way Old Nick put his principles: "It is necessary...

...The record is shockingly clear...

...The subsequent naming of Quayle for his sex appeal was, of course, a downright insult...

...Let's consider the Presidential race this year from both perspectives— first, up close, and then, the long view...

...the former is episodic, the latter epic...

...it has also been growing as population shifts to the Sun Belt...

...If Marx were to survey the same scene, he might be pleased to see a nation neatly divided into two parties, indicating that the proletariat and the bourgeoisie were clearly lining up for "the final conflict," but he would be distressed when he subsequently discovered that our two parties lacked class character...

...Although Bush tried to spell out those principles in a series of statements about the differences between Dukakis and himself, it was Ronald Reagan who defined the ideologic divide in one word, thrice reiterated, when he charged that Dukakis is "a liberal, liberal, liberal...

...Following the fierce fight at the 1948 Democratic National Convention over civil rights, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond led the first revolt against his party when he ran for President as a "Dixiecrat...

...Nothing is more necessary than to seem to have this last quality, for men in general judge more by the eyes than by the hands...

...In the past, showmanship was limited to pageantry and pomp...

...In this major respect, party realignment has clearly taken place...

...Both parties paid homage to this fact by holding their conventions in Dixie...

...not too tall or too bright, lest he cast the Presidential candidate into the shadows from which he was trying to emerge...

...Finally, because American parties are coalitions of varied elements, statesmen and politicians have, over the years, consciously avoided labels...

...They insisted on expressing their thoughts in full paragraphs rather than snappy one-liners...

...What sort of a soul did the boob tube demand...

...It has overridden radio and gutted Gutenberg...

...He was defeated...

...In 1960, John F. Kennedy carried six, with three going to Richard M. Nixon and two to Harry F. Byrd...

...Since they aspire to the Presidency, they will have to take lessons from Henny Youngman or Jackie Mason —or go the way of Harold Stassen...

...the producers are pros from Hollywood...

...This overpowering child of the movie has to be even more entertaining than its parent...

...in 1956, only six...

...Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society...

...Through the 19th century, loosely bound parties proved adequate to meet the nation's needs...

...For more than half a century after women gained the right to vote, it was assumed that as the men voted, so did the women...

...To prove that he was his own man, Bush let it be known that he alone would pick the Vice Presidential candidate...

...Thus it is well to seem merciful, faithful, humane, sincere, religious, and also to be so...

...If Madison were to survey the political scene in America today, he would be delighted by the vastly diverse socioeconomic composition of the nation, the "pluralism" in our culture that he believed to be the guarantor of liberty, but he would be distressed to find that the "spirit of faction" has made America a two-party, rather than a multiparty or nonparty, nation...

...To many, vox telly, vox dei...

...An audience in a theater is, more or less, "captive" foracoupleof hours...

...In 1952, Democrat Adlai Stevenson carried only seven of the once "solid" 11 states of the Old Confederacy...

...It has been surmised that his intervention was part of a larger scheme to realign the two major parties along more ideologic lines, so that voters would have a clearer choice between the "liberal" and "conservative" philosophies...

...sexy to appeal to women...

...Instead of politics being the means toward an end called policy, policy (in this case, the choice of a potential President) became the means toward an end called politics (a contest to be won...

...And at no time has it had a greater role than it has now...

...As in the South, many Northern working-class families are torn between racial fear and economic hope...

...Parents would get a $1,000 tax credit—so the really poor, who don't pay taxes, would be ineligible...

...There was the macho stuff, as we predicted last time out when we wrote that Bush would have to play the Bar Mitzvah boy and proclaim: "Today I am a man...

...In a commitment to civil rights, the Democrats have lost the South...

...The unexpected factor in the reordering of the parties has been the woman voter...

...As early as 1910, Theodore Roosevelt, in a break from his own Republican Party and in Opposition to the states' rights attitude of the Democratic Party, trumpeted the need for a "New Nationalism.'· "I do not ask for overcentralization," said TR at Osawatomie, Kansas, "but I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism when we work for what concerns our people as a whole...

...He talks about his "competence...

...The two would be baffled that they had each misjudged the future: Marx because he misread the economic evolution of world capitalism, and Madison because he misread the political future of the American republic...

...For both parties, the black vote has been a problem...

...In the process, the noble politics that Aristotle extolled as the highest form of ethics has become a lowly, Grade-B, form of entertainment...

...As the political focus moved from domestic to international issues, he returned to politics as usual...

...They were a big bust...

...Two hundred years ago, James Madison said it simply in describing how "factions" arise in a society: "The most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property...

...So much for the up close view of this year's election...

...The television viewer is a free soul, able to flip and flit from channel to channel...

...conservative even while looking like a swinger...

...Then, echoing Madison and Marx, TR observed: "At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress...

...The Republican spectacular, not to be outdone by the Democratic one, crowded the scene with animated props...

...Even more startling was the shift in the vote of those under 30, a generation that knew not the Depression, nor Hitler, nor Vietnam, but was nourished on TV...

...Dukakis has chosen to travel the wellworn path...

...and the world consists only of the vulgar...

...Equally significant will be the size of the Democratic vote in Northern cities such as Philadelphia and Chicago, where the tension between blacks and "ethnics" threatens to unglue urban Democratic coalitions...

...One parent would have to be employed, putting the mother with a child but without a husband in a Catch-22 situation...

...Once the great fright was over, though, the old conservative coalition that had dominated the legislative process from the Great Compromise of 1876 down to modern times began to buck the President...

...The American people are right in demanding that New Nationalism, without which we cannot hope to deal with new problems...

...White working-class elements are internally torn between their populist attachment to the Democratic economic programs, on the one hand, and their lingering racial attitudes and fundamentalist faith, on the other...

...Making up 11-15 per cent of the population—and, as time passes, an even larger percentage— black voters are no longer a negligible factor...

...In fact, in the second half of this century party realignment has been taking place...

...A clever campaign caters to that yearning...

...Twenty years later, Franklin D. Roosevelt, picked up where TR left off...

...to be a great feigner and dissembler...

...Machiavelli limited himself to the conscious...

...That his break with tradition was not the fitful outburst of an individual but the expression of a widely held attitude became apparent in subsequent elections...

...He was allowed to play the pater in the panic...

...The efforts of the Republicans to compete for the female vote in the current election have been grossly inept...

...Gus Tyler, a frequent contributor, is Assistant President of the ilgwu...

...The second great change has been the active participation of blacks in politics, and their dramatic shift from the party of Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, to the party of Roosevelt, the Great Humanitarian...

...There were the brown-faced grandchildren, the Greek Orthodox priest in full regalia seated inexplicably alongside the noticeably non-Hellenic Barbara Bush, the ever smiling ubiquitous family, the widow of Dr...

...In 1984, the Democrats did not carry a single Southern state...

...the scriptwriters are ghosts...