The Trouble With Reform

When Democratic Party activists succeeded in enacting a vast array of party and election reforms in the early 1970s, they thought their troubles were over.

Gone was the influence of Daleyesque bosses replaced by a system of nearly three dozen binding presidential primaries. Gone was the clout of conservative monied interests, crippled by new campaign finance legislation promising matching funds to candidates who spurned huge private donations. And gone was the unpredictability and inequity of a system featuring the twin evils of winner-take-all-primaries and a brokered convention--a system that had produced tainted nominations in both parties in 1968.

But a decade can make a big difference in people's attitudes. This year, the election-watchers witnessed Jimmy Carter run to renomination despite a mediocre Oval Office performance, and Ronald Reagan stampeded to his coronation in Detroit. The well-intended "reforms" of the 1970s, many political experts here now agree, have backfired horribly. More than any other factors, the analysts say, these reforms are responsible for the millions of Americans who will go to the polls tomorrow to make a "choice between two evils" instead of picking from among the more qualified candidates of a generation ago.

"The political process has been very much overreformed," Ernest R. May, professor of History, argues. "The effort to get rid of corrupt influence was carried so far that it has prevented people who really care about politics from having any voice. People used to be able to have a greater voice by their contributions of time, effort, money and ideas." For better or for worse, the parties and the professionals have lost their grip: the choice, says Harvey C. Mansfield '53, professor of Government, "has gotten out of the hands of responsible characters.

The design of the system--where candidates engage in a nationwide relay race for primary votes--has skewed states' influence, Samuel P. Huntington, professor of Government, says that primary overkill "makes the nomination of a president unduly influenced by the timing of primaries and by a lot of fortuitous circumstances--like what goes on in a lot of small states that choose delegates early, like Iowa and New Hampshire."

The superabundance of primaries has also led to the "decline of the traditional party function" of informing voters and of choosing experienced. strong standard-bearers," James Q. Wilson, Shattuck Professor of Government, contends. "The old-fashioned convention performs better than 35 or 40 primaries. They drive out viable candidates early if the media judges them to be lagging."

In fact, says H. Douglas Price, Professor of Government, the "very lengthy process" discriminates against experienced politicians. "You've got to start moving to Iowa and New Hampshire several years in advance to campaign. It undercuts the possibility of anyone in significant office running and winning."

Price cites the 1980 effort of California Governor Jerry Brown as an example. "An exgovernor like Reagan could get away for that length of time, but Jerry Brown found it very difficult. The process takes people away from experience in governing." Arthur Maas, professor of Government, uses the example of Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, who "had many qualities that just didn't come out, while the strengths of Reagan did." Like Wilson, Maas notes, "a convention method might give more attention to those qualities"--which he identifies as integrity, leadership and the capacity to organize a good staff.

Returning power to political leaders would mitigate the influence of early primaries and the emphasis upon unelected "media candidates," most of the experts agree. But they differ over how to inject this power into party officials, and especially over the likelihood of doing so after a decade of "democratic" reforms.

Calling recent conventions "rubber stamps of decisions made in primaries," Huntington suggests advisory primaries as a possible solution. "I don't think it's undesirable to have some expression of popular opinion, but the people who are elected delegates aren't of much stature. We could have a system of primaries in the sense of having candidates competing for popular votes and testing their appeals, but the primaries would be only advisory to a convention of party leaders." The Democratic Convention, where the now-famous rule supported by Carter binds delegates to support certain candidates on the first ballot, has effectively nullified a convention's choice. Mansfield believes the convention "should be restored to its central place--delegates should have some power of deliberation."

Sidney Verba '53, professor of Government, says he's unsure how to re-reform the system, but recommends strengthening the parties, perhaps by channeling federal matching funds through the party, not to individual candidates, to dole out. Like many of his colleagues, Verba calls the suggestion of "regional primaries" a promising possibility. Under most models for such a system, primaries would be held in four or five regions, with a limited placed on the time and money any candidate could spend on each clash. A one-day national primary, however, draws no support from political experts here. "That's not a good idea," Maas says. "It would further reduce the influence of individual states."

The importance of regional variation also leads most professors to oppose the idea of discarding the Electoral College, which aids smaller states by giving them influence more than proportional to their populations. But Huntington notes that "there is a clear possibility of a disjunction between the electoral college and the popular vote. If the election were being held today, it might materialize."

Though most professors agree political leaders should wield far more influence than they do, few feel any change in that direction--by reducing the number or importance of primaries, but guaranteeing incumbent leaders seats at the conventions, or by any alternative--is likely.

"I doubt you could do it," Wilson says. "Once you extend the right of democratic rule, you can't take it back. You could try to persuade people, but I'm not optimistic." Price adds that since "the whole trend of the nation for 200 years has been toward direct democracy, it'd be very hard to rationalize going back to what people would call 'smoke-filled rooms.'" But Mansfield says, "It needs to be explained to people that there's a correlation between the mediocre choices we have now, and the primary process."

For Mansfield, the year in which the nominating process worked most effectively was 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson were "two high-caliber candidates chosen by high-level party officials, not primaries." Wilson agrees, adding that it and the 1948 Truman-Dewey contest "were elections in which both parties picked their strongest candidates," thanks to the influence of party officials.

May harkens back to 1940, when dark horse Wendell Wilkie's Republican nomination "took a lot of hard work from people trying to stop [Sen. Robert] Taft" and when President Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 fought off opponents of his quest for an unprecedented third term. The election "represented a real debate in both parties," May says. And for Verba, the 1936 Roosevelt-Landon campaign is memorable "not simply because I like who won the election, but because the two parties had substantive differences. The public elected one side and gave it a strong mandate for social change."

The lack of substantive differences between today's candidates reflects the media's role in presidential campaigns, several professors said. The media "helps create a very unreal view of what is required of a president," Mass says. "The idea that a debate between two candidates on TV should determine which is better qualified is extraordinary. If one knows more facts than the other, that's not the only thing--the president, after all, has lots of people to get facts for him." Huntington agrees: "Who can govern the country best shouldn't be the one who can appeal most on TV.

Mansfield recommends requiring the media to give each candidate 60 to 90 seconds on the nightly news to elaborate on his ideas. "Reagan's one-liners are no accident," Mansfield notes. "The media requires a candidate to get across his message in one quotable line."

Few others, however, believe one could alter the media's behavior. Price feels the networks emphasize only what people want to hear. "It's a celebrity-oriented society. It's hard to see how anyone could turn that around." Edward C. Banfield, Markham Professor of Government, sees little need to change either the media or the political system drastically. "Given the realities of American life, I don't know if there's anything wrong with the system. One can imagine what would happen if Abraham Lincoln appeared and tried to give a Cooper Union address to the American people. There wouldn't be anyone there to listen." Others, like Verba, note that "it's traditional to lament the fact that we don't elect good people."

Still, most professors seem to agree with Mansfield that the present method of selecting presidents is inadequate. "All we've seen in recent years is change," he says. "One would hope we'd see change for the better--for a change."SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON