The Politics of Fence Riding

When Barry Goldwater ran for President, we heard a great deal from liberal circles about the need for "moderation" in politics. Liberal Republicans who fought Goldwater's nomination spoke of the need to appeal to the "mainstream" of American thinking. In the meantime, Lyndon Johnson got support from the left by default, played consensus politics and won in a landslide.

Johnson's victory was due in part to the fact that most Americans place themselves in the center or left segments of the political spectrum. The landslide proportions of his win could almost have been the result of apparent collusion between Goldwater speechwriters and Democratic public relations men.

At present, the centrist spectre is with us once again. This time it is taking shape among Democrats who are trying to keep their party from going left. If the party nominates someones from its left, they tell us. Democrats will face the same fate in November, 1972 that the Republicans faced eight years ago.

The attack from the center has taken many forms. Toward the end of the 1970 Congressional elections. Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg, two former Johnson-Humphrey advisors, produced a book entitled The Real Majority. The political center is where it's at, they said, since most Americans are "unyoung, unpoor and unblack." Street crime and the fear of young protestors are the most pressing issues on the minds of American voters in the 1970's, and politicians who fail to realize this will certainly be defeated. LBJ moderate columnists like John Roche and Evans-Novak beat their centrist drums on behalf of the book, and The Real Majority enjoyed the peculiar American honor of becoming more than a book. Like Portnoy's Complaint, it became an event unto itself.

The choice which the Democratic Party faces in the year ahead is essentially that of holding to the traditional centrist position which seeks to make friends with everyone while alienating no one, or of staking out a new position on the Left. It is, in a certain sense, a choice between two poles set up by James Q. Wilson in The Amateur Democrat. Democrats can seek to be "professionals" who see their main purpose as winning elections for the sake of winning and who use "issues" as means to election. Or they can become "amateurs" for whom democratic politics is (at least in their own minds) a matter of public choice between candidates who really do disagree on matters of substance. In such a politics, issues are not means but ends in themselves. What is primarily at stake between candidates involved in an amateur politics is not the question of who can run the government most efficiently, but rather what the government should be doing in the first place.

Wilson's Amateur Democrat was a study of amateurs in three American cities. In 1968 America experienced the nationalization of amateur politics on the left. Faced with a war they opposed, various elements on the left challenged the President. They ignored the advice of the columnist and went to work for Eugene McCarthy. The Minnesota Senator and former Benedictine novice did far better than anyone thought he would, and soon Robert Kennedy joined the race. Both McCarthy and Kennedy built their campaigns on opposition to "things as they are" and asked for voter support for guaranteed job programs, guaranteed annual incomes and withdrawal from Vietnam. More importantly, they challenged the existing American political structure by proposing that voters should be able to make substantive policy decisions through use of the ballot box. To a large degree, they were saying that public policy is too important to be left up to the politicians and the men George Wallace labelled "so-called experts."

After the death of Kennedy and King, the defeat of McCarthy and the nomination of Humphrey. American politics turned sour. Americans were again faced with a more or less "choiceless choice." To be sure, Humphrey and Nixon weren't exactly alike--Humphrey could have been expected to make better supreme court nominations--but their differences were less important than their similarities. George Wallace's support in the polls rose to 20 per cent while blacks stood by understandably indifferent. In the end, Wallace's support shrunk to 13.5 per cent as the American workingman perceived (probably correctly) that Humphrey offered him more bread-and-butter than did Nixon.

Many post-election analyses pointed to the large Wallace vote and the Nixon victory as a sign that America was turning right, that the embourgeotsement of the American workingman was making him more concerned about the destruction of his property and street crime than about maldistribution of power and wealth. In fact, crime is a real concern for the workingman, white and black, and the fear of walking the street at night is generally more real in poorer neighborhoods than in rich ones.

This said, it is wrong to look upon the 1968 elections as simply a swing to the right. The race issue was not the sole source of Wallace support. There was a strong component of class protest, of general dissatisfaction, among the Wallaceites. While only 44 per cent of Nixon voters and 55 per cent of Humphrey voters considered themselves "working class," 64 per cent of the people who voted for Wallace did so. Moreover, 40 per cent of Wallace's supporters held "manual occupation" jobs as opposed to 36 per cent for Humphrey and 28 per cent for Nixon. Finally, among the grade school educated, a good test for how the disinherited are voting, the swing away from the Democrats between 1960 and 1968 was only three per cent; the swing away from the GOP, 12 per cent. This clearly does not represent a swing to the Nixon right.

In fact, many Wallace voters were former supporters of Robert Kennedy. They favor a candidate with "guts" and are unlikely to be enthusiastic about a centrist Democrat. Certainly many of the Southerners who supported Wallace (and who accounted for about 50 per cent of his vote), are not likely to support a candidate on the Left this time around. But the dissatisfaction of the more than four million Northerners who supported Wallace in 1968 goes much deeper than race, and this dissatisfaction could manifest itself differently this time around.

Where, then, does this leave the Democrats? The candidates break down into three groups. The candidates on the right--Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, Senator Henry Jackson and George Wallace--appear to have little chance of winning in the Democratic Party. In the middle are Edmund Muskie and (ever so slightly to his right) Hubert Humphrey. To their left are John Lindsay, Gene McCarthy, George McGovern and Shirley Chisholm.

Muskie has been under a great deal of pressure since the beginning of his campaign from the centrist faction, which includes the Scammons and columnists like Evans and Novak. They insist that Muskie must avoid the "lemming left" in order to win in November. Consequently, when Muskie endorsed the National Peace Action Coalition's April 24 March on Washington. Evans and Novak criticized him for supporting a demonstration sponsored by "a Trotskyite front." They even criticized him for speaking at a liberal rally in Providence. R.I. organized by Allard Lowenstein.

For a while, it appeared that Muskie would resist the temptation of the center and side with the more liberal faction of his staff. Recent events indicate that Muskie has succumbed. His "New Beginning" speech in which he announced his candidacy echoed the early 1960's rhetoric of John Kennedy and offered little of substance beyond a laundry list of the wrongs committed by the Nixon Administration. The fault here may not be Muskie's, but one common to all announcements of candidacy. Even if one grants this, however, the Maine Senator's recent pronouncements on amnesty for draft resistors and continuing aid to the Saigon government are even more disturbing. Muskie told a television audience two weekends ago that he could not in good conscience begin to discuss amnesty while Americans were still fighting in Vietnam. Moreover, he refused to state whether or not he would advocate continued aid to the Thieu-Ky regime after the withdrawal of American troops. It would depend, he said, on whether our withdrawal was negotiated or unilateral.

Where does this leave the Left of the Democratic Party? McGovern has an excellent organization, solid grass-roots fund raising efforts, and forthright positions on the issues. Lindsay's assets are personal appeal (which could cut both ways), money, and a campaign based on the theme of the average citizen's powerlessness vis-a-vis Washington. McCarthy also has good funding, high public recognition, and an expressed willingness to challenge the Democratic Party in November if it again presents the American people with a choiceless choice.

Rep. Shirley Chisholm is also making an effort to build a coalition of blacks, the Spanish-speaking, women, and the poor. While her chances of winning the nomination (let alone the election) are very dim, her campaign is important as an effort to mobilize and organize an otherwise slighted constituency. Her efforts in the black community could prove particularly important. If blacks are to gain a real share of influence in the political process, they must set up political organizations which are capable of mobilizing black voters at election time. Turnouts of all ethnic varieties in poor areas have been so low as to permit conservative machines to carry them election after election--a situation that must be changed.

As for the three leading left-of-center candidates, their responsibility in this election is to raise the issues of the unfair distribution of power and wealth in American and to relate them to the specific problems in foreign and domestic policy which plague Americans today. Their appeal must be aimed squarely to the 60 per cent of the American people who control but 30 per cent of its wealth--and to those in the upper economic reaches who are willing to recognize and correct this disparity. For it is this 60 per cent which most feels the effects of an irresponsible foreign policy, an unfair tax structure, in adequate allocation of our resources for public services like schools, health care and public transportation, and the irresponsibility of private corporations which, when presented with a choice between higher profits and a cleaner environment or better products, have all too often chosen the former.

By raising these issues most straightforwardly (and by demonstrating a greater ability to separate issues from personalities), McGovern would appear preferable. On the war and military spending, his actions speak for themselves. And his recent proposal coupling wide-ranging tax reform with a direct redistribution of income to the people at the lower income levels speak very clearly to the question of distribution of wealth. This is not to say that Lindsay and McCarthy have not attacked similar problems. Lindsay, for example, has criticized "Washington" for "killing a day care program for 30 million working mothers" while "giving away four billion dollars a year to big corporations." And McCarthy has directed attacks against the centrist political structure for eliminating many questions from consideration in the political arena.

Working and voting for left-of-center candidates within the Democratic Party is certainly not sufficient to bring about change. But it is necessary. For McGovern, McCarthy and Lindsay have all shown a willingness to challenge the centrist thesis at the polls, which is precisely where it has to be disproven. The nomination and election of any one of them would represent only one step. Independent organizations built around specific issues will still be necessary. But a victory by one of these candidates could substantially alter the shape of American politics and bring us a lot closer to the achievement of a number of specific and important goals.

There are those who argue that Muskie is "the leftward-most electable candidate," and that "the name of the game is to beat Nixon." In fact, however, Muskie has yet to be tested in an election situation, and the place where leftward candidates can prove or disprove that thesis is in the primaries. Moreover, "the name of the game" must be more than to beat Nixon. We can hopefully do better than replace a moderate conservative with a moderate liberal, even though the latter may be preferable.

Richard Hamilton has written of centrist politics:

Ironically, the "end of radical politics" in many countries may well be the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The intellectuals supporting this view succeed in convincing political leaders. These leaders, in turn, believing that people will no longer respond to traditional liberal and leftist issues, now stress other concerns. The newly moderate leaders lose elections (because many voters no longer see them as standing for the issues that interest them). The election results are taken as additional proof of the rejection of radical politics on the part of the newly affluent masses. The response of the leadership is to call for still more moderation.

This process will only stop when non-centrists win elections. And non-centrist candidates will win only when their supporters are willing to exert the effort necessary to elect them.