The Partisan Rhythm of History
The emergence of a new partisan majority would not only give greater coherence to American government, it would fit the patterns of the past two centuries. For our two-party system has been marked by rhythmic swings from one party to another. Every three decades or so has brought a political watershed.
The first great dynasty began in 1800 with the dominance of the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican party. A major realignment took place in 1828 with the rise of Jacksonian Democrats battling the Whigs, the new opposition. Another major shift occurred in 1860 with the demise of the Whig party and the birth of the unionist Republican party of Abraham Lincoln. Then in 1896, after a muddy two decades of often-divided government, the Democrats swung to the western, silver-standard populism of William Jennings Bryan, while the gold-standard, probusiness Republicans gained national hegemony with the election of William McKinley in 1896. Republican dominance lasted, allowing for the interlude of Woodrow Wilson, until Franklin Delano Roosevelt forged the New Deal Democratic coalition in 1932. Then, for two uninterrupted decades, the Democrats held the White House.
This historic rhythm, with swings every twenty-eight to thirty-six years, should have produced a new watershed between 1960 and 1968 with a Republican majority replacing the New Deal coalition.
The first trumpeting of the Republican coming sounded in 1952 when Dwight Eisenhower cracked Democratic control of the West and the Solid South. Republicans, winning House and Senate as well as the White House, sensed the hinge of history opening to a new era of GOP dominance. But the Republican surge proved ephemeral. Two years later, the Democrats regained control of Congress, and despite Eisenhower’s second triumph in 1956, congressional Republicans fell back. No realignment took place.
Again with Nixon, Republicans saw their dream rekindled, especially in 1972, when they made a net gain of two Senate seats and five House seats in the South. Republican strategists saw these modest but steady gains as a harbinger of a changing balance. But the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation in 1974 threw the Republicans off track. Kevin Phillips, a Nixon strategist who wrote The Emerging Republican Majority, told me years later that he believed that Watergate had blocked the normal swing of the pendulum and prevented full Republican realignment.3 In 1974, the Democrats won the Senate for six more years, firmed up an unbeatable majority in the House, and set the stage for Jimmy Carter’s unexpected victory in 1976.
But Watergate created an illusion of Democratic strength. For despite its hold on Congress, the Democratic party was losing its grip on the country and its long hegemony over national government. During the past two decades, the Democrats have suffered painful hemorrhages among traditional constituencies in both North and South.
At its core, Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition was an uneasy alliance of its northern and southern wings: white southerners, mainly Protestant, conservative, largely rural and mostly native-stock Americans; and white northerners, mainly Catholic, liberal, urban, and largely ethnic immigrants. If either faction pressed its agenda too hard, the other was sure to be disaffected.
Issues of race, war, and the economy finally tore apart FDR’s coalition. In two great waves, millions of voters abandoned the Democratic party. The first major defection came among white southerners from the mid-1960s onward, mainly because of their anger at the civil rights policies of the northern liberal wing but also because of disenchantment with liberal Democratic opposition to Vietnam War. The defection was especially stunning among evangelical Christians. Overall, Democrats lost more than half their strength among southern whites. Republican strength doubled among this group and independent voters tripled. In 1952, for example, seventy-eight percent of white southerners called themselves Democrats; but after Reagan’s 1984 reelection, only thirty-seven percent were still self-proclaimed Democrats. In that interval Republicans shot up from eleven to twenty-four percent and independents from twelve to thirty-nine percent.4
The second great Democratic defection came in the North during the early 1980s among urban ethnic blue-collar voters. These were mainly the rank and file of organized labor who had long regarded the Democratic party as their bulwark against economic adversity. In the 1960s, many of these working class voters were upset with the Democratic party’s stand on racial issues and foreign policy. Some flirted with George Wallace in 1968. But the Democratic record of protecting them from inflation and unemployment held their allegiance—until Jimmy Carter soured Democratic credibility with blue-collar voters.
Ironically, Carter fashioned the political litmus test that sealed his own fate and wounded his party. To highlight Republican economic failures, Carter invented the “misery index,” which added the rates of inflation and unemployment. In 1976, Carter browbeat Gerald Ford mercilessly for a misery index of 15.3. But in October 1980, Carter’s own misery index shot up to 21.3. Reagan used that miserable record, and his later success in beating down inflation, to lure away big labor’s rank and file. Reagan got fifty-four percent of the blue-collar vote against organized labor’s candidate, Walter Mondale, in 1984.5
Weakened by these two large defections, the Democrats have competed poorly for the White House in the past two decades, except for Carter’s paper-thin, post-Watergate victory over Ford in 1976. The weakness of Democratic presidential candidates underscores the erosion of Democratic strength nationwide. Three times—in 1968, 1972, and 1984—the Democrats fielded variations of the same ticket: a northern liberal Protestant running for president with a northern liberal Catholic as a running mate (Humphrey and Muskie in 1968; McGovern and Shriver in 1972; Mondale and Ferraro in 1984). All three times, the Democratic ticket got only about forty percent of the popular vote, a weak race for the presidency. In 1980, Carter, as incumbent president and a southerner, got only 41.7% of the vote.
That poor Democratic record highlights one hallmark of a major realignment: the Republican “lock” on the presidency. Lock is the graphic term of Horace Busby, a political commentator who rose to prominence as a Texas lieutenant of Lyndon Johnson. In the last five presidential elections, Busby points out, Republican nominees have won a staggering seventy-seven percent of the nation’s electoral college votes while Democrats have won just twenty-one percent. (Third parties won two percent.) Busby calls Republicans America’s “presidential party,” arguing that the Republican party appeals to that basic conservatism of Americans.6
In support his lock idea, Busby notes that in the nine presidential elections from 1952 through 1984, twenty-nine states voted Republican at least seven times—and those states cast 289 electoral votes, more than an Electoral College majority (270 votes). Twenty-three states have gone Republican the last five times in a row, while only the District of Columbia went Democratic five times. The strong pro-Republican group covers every state from the Great Plains to the Pacific Coast except Texas, Oklahoma, and Washington. In short, Republican ascendancy rides on people moving to the Sunbelt, both West and South.
Again, this fits historical patterns. Virtually every political realignment in American history has been a revolt of what then constituted the South and West against established power in the North and East—originally the Virginia dynasty against the New England and New York federalists, then the border states and Middle West against the Eastern seaboard, and so on. Nowadays, California and the Rocky Mountain West have anchored the new Republican power base, usually joined by Florida, symbol of the new Sunbelt, against established power centers in the industrial Rustbelt heartland and the old South.7
Reagan Tugs the Grass Roots
What the Republican drive for hegemony lacked was sufficient voter strength at the grass roots and growing echelons of Republican officeholders, from city hall and state legislatures up to Congress. No one worked harder at patient party building than former Republican National Chairman Bill Brock, a former senator from Tennessee and later Labor secretary under Reagan. Starting in 1977, Brock developed Republican fund-raising muscle and high-tech p
olitics. With computers, well-culled donor lists, and sophisticated direct mail, the Republican party shifted financially from the party of fat-cat donors to the party of small contributors. By 1980, Republican House and Senate campaign committees were raising from five to nine times as much money as their Democratic counterparts were—and the money gave a great boost to the 1980 crop of Republican congressional candidates.
The Reagan tide of 1980 quickened Republican expectations of a full-fledged political realignment, picking up where Nixon had been blunted by Watergate. With their 1980 gain of twelve seats in the Senate and thirty-three in the House, Republicans thought they had found legs to win in Congress as well as take the White House. Exuberantly, Republican leaders such as Congressman Guy Vander Jagt of Michigan boasted they would take over the House in 1982. They ballyhooed conversions of congressional Democrats, celebrating in the White House Rose Garden when Pennsylvania’s Eugene Atkinson joined Republican ranks, and jubilant at later crossovers by Phil Gramm of Texas, Andy Ireland of Florida, Bob Stump of Arizona.
Subterranean changes were also taking place at the grass roots. In opinion polls, more voters were calling themselves Republicans than previously. In the heyday of Harry Truman, and even under Dwight Eisenhower, the Democratic party had been a clear majority, with fifteen to twenty percent greater support among voters than Republicans had. After Reagan’s 1980 victory, the Democratic advantage fell below ten percent in some polls. A temporary postelection surge is normal for the party that wins the presidency, but the Republican bulge persisted into mid-1981, suggesting that the long-predicted sea change among voters might be taking place. But with the deep recession of 1982–83, voter allegiances shifted back and the Democrats regained their traditional advantage.
Reagan’s 1984 landslide revived the Republican dream. “We’re on the threshold of a golden era in Republican politics,” Senator Paul Laxalt, the party’s general chairman, boasted. “We’ve got Ronald Reagan and the economy, plus a solid Sunbelt base, while the traditional coalitions in the Northeast are crumbling.”8
Even more than in 1980, the statistics behind Reagan’s 1984 victory showed a partisan shift among voters. The most striking evidence came in a mid-November 1984 poll for the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, conducted by Robert Teeter of Market Opinion Research. Teeter, a highly respected pollster, found that for the first time in half a century, Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters actually outnumbered Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents by forty-seven to forty-one percent. Teeter cautioned that the Republican numbers would undoubtedly soften in the coming months. But he asserted that “there is no question that we are undergoing party realignment.”9
Other polls (Gallup, The New York Times/CBS News) showed the Democrats still ahead, but by only three or four percentage points—almost dead even. Democratic strength among blue-collar voters had fallen dramatically since 1980.10 Republican leaders were ecstatic about their strength among young voters, contending that allegiance won early in life could help cement a long-term realignment.
In short, even if the Republicans were not yet a majority party, there was ample evidence of dealignment—the loss of majority status by the Democrats. The two parties had become competitive, neck and neck. That in itself was a watershed.
But the Republicans could not turn this opportunity into victories up and down the ticket. A few exuberant Republican strategists called Reagan’s 1984 victory a “consolidating election” on a par with Democratic gains in 1934 and 1936, which nailed down Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition. But the analogy was false. Down the ballot, Republicans were still not doing well. Even with Reagan’s 1984 landslide, the party was slightly weaker at the state and local levels than it had been with Eisenhower and Nixon. It still controlled the Senate, but elsewhere it lacked a springboard to convert Reagan’s victory into majority control of government. His reelection brought only 182 Republican seats in the House (compared to 201 under Eisenhower in 1956 and 192 under Nixon in 1972). Similarly, in 1984, Republicans held only sixteen governorships, compared to nineteen in the Eisenhower and Nixon reelection years, and only about forty percent of the state legislative seats across the nation.
“These are not the numbers of a party achieving grass-roots realignment,” Republican analyst Kevin Phillips candidly observed.11
The Democratic rebound in the 1986 Senate elections bore out Phillips’s analysis and dealt a hard blow to Republican dreams of realignment. In 1986, Republicans scored a net gain of eight governorships, heartened especially to win in Texas, Florida, Alabama, and South Carolina. But they also lost a net of eight Senate seats—and control of the Senate.
What made the Republican setbacks in 1986 so terribly painful was that President Reagan—the party’s great vote getter—had gone all out. Reagan traveled 24,800 miles to twenty-two states and raised $33 million for Republican candidates.12 In the homestretch, the “Gipper” pleaded for voters to help him by keeping the Senate in Republican hands. He did personal appearances for sixteen Republican Senate candidates, but only four of them won. Polls showed that jitters about feeble economic growth, the skyrocketing trade deficit, and Japanese competition hurt Republicans. Bread-and-butter issues pushed the Republican dream of realignment further away, like a receding mirage.
“This year will go down in history as the year of the lost cause, when the Republicans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,” complained L. Brent Bozell, president of the National Conservative Political Action Committee. “The Republicans lost a golden opportunity in the sense that they could have solidified the Reagan Revolution.”13
The Republican setback in 1986 may signal that their drive for realignment has crested. Obviously, pocketbook appeal to voters is crucial to long-term Republican strategy. In many opinion polls in the 1980s, Republicans have won better marks than the Democrats had for managing most aspects of the economy. Low inflation and five years of growth under Reagan have given the Republican party a good name. But the economic slowdown of the past two years, and the stock market plunge of October 1987 blurred the lustre of those GOP advantages.
To become the majority party, the Republicans must put down the image that they are the protectors of class and privilege. Reagan’s tax-reform proposal, dropping six million poor off the rolls and offering everyone lower rates, was geared for populist impact. But Democrat Dan Rostenkowski shrewdly neutralized the Republican appeal by helping pass tax reform. Reagan’s record leaves Republicans vulnerable to the charge that Reagan built his electoral victories on support from the economic “haves” over opposition from the “have-nots.” Compared with Eisenhower, for example, pro-Reagan voting was notably more class based. Ike had majority support from all economic groups, but Reagan lost at the low end of the economic scale.14 The economic fate of the middle class is pivotal to Republicans.
Second, Republicans now carry the onus of the “in party,” which undercuts the popular appeal that Reagan and the conservative movement built by playing heavily on anti-Washington populism. Reagan vilified the Democrats as the political establishment, and alienation from establishment politics gained partisans for the Republican cause. But in the 1980s, the Reaganites became the political establishment. Investigations of influence peddling targeted such Reagan intimates as Michael Deaver and Lyn Nofziger. Also, the fresh political shock troops who mounted the 1980 Reagan campaign (Ed Rollins, Roger Stone, Lee Atwater, and Charlie Black) became $450,ooo-a-year political campaign consultants—the kind of affluence that robs realignment of recruits and dynamism.
There have been other signs that the original Reaganite thrust has lost élan. In 1981–82, for example, the Republican party arm that focuses on House races raised nearly $58 million. Donors were pouring money into the dream of realignment and taking over Congress. But by the 1985–86 election cycle, after twice failing to generate a majority, this same Republican committee raised just $39.8 million. Obviously some donors had lost heart. In mid-July
1987, the Republican National Committee had to fire forty of its 275 staff members, because of alienation among small donors over the Iran scandal.
Third, even if Republicans win the White House again in 1988, they have no real chance of getting control of Congress, especially without Reagan as a charismatic leader to head their ticket. Many Democrats discounted Reagan’s 1984 landslide; they saw it as a personal victory, not a party victory, arguing that the pro-Reagan surge of Republicanism was bound to fade after his departure. Indeed, the bad publicity of the Iran-contra affair in 1987 caused a drift away from the Republican party and enabled Democrats to regain a popular advantage of several percentage points over Republicans. Looking ahead, the youth vote, a source of special Republican pride in 1984, is far from settled in its loyalties. Young voters are typically changeable. In the 1986 elections, polls showed, congressional Democrats broke even with the Republicans among under-thirty voters.
Finally, to lead the Republican party to majority status, the new standard bearer must manage the centrifugal elements in the Republican coalition: southern rednecks and country-club Republicans; supply-side tax cutters (Jack Kemp) and deficit-minded budget balancers (Bob Dole); the born-again fundamentalist followers of television evangelist Pat Robertson and high-tech suburban yuppies; corporate executives and farmers from small-town mid-America. Protectionist issues have already sown rifts in the business community. Reagan’s new accommodation with Moscow and his agreement with Gorbachev to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear forces sharply split Republicans loyal to Vice President Bush and the ideological anti-Communist wing led by Senator Jesse Helms. Reagan juggled all these constituencies with personal chemistry, for example, placating the New Right with fiery rhetoric (though little action) on its social agenda. But the battle to succeed Reagan inevitably set Republican factions at odds; over the long run, the Reagan coalition is already splintering.
Power Game Page 91