Module 2 - Chapter Seven

Political Parties: Organizing Politics

• In the Online Lecture section, explore the instructor's discussion of the points raised in the first chapter.
• Ask yourself: how do these points compare to those found in the text?
• Make a note of the major concepts as listed in the text and as highlighted below.
• You may want to follow some of the current events hyperlinks to find examples of issues mention at the end of the online lecture."
• Go to the Dye textbook publisher site to look at the chapter overview and to test yourself as required (see below).

 

Dye Textbook: Overview

• Look at the Dye overview to assure yourself that you have absorbed the main points.  Only look at the overview after you have read the chapter!

We have already discussed in previous chapters the problems with using public opinion as a gauge of how to govern democratically, if by that we mean in accordance with the "will of the people." There were lots of obstacles to even knowing exactly what the people want, to say nothing of finding the best means for implementing the people’s will.

Ideally, political parties are meant to be a means of converting the disorganized mass of public opinion into something coherent and programmatic. While interest groups are meant to speak to specific causes – gun control, abortion, health insurance reform, etc., political parties are supposed to group together various positions and issues into a package which has a sufficiently broad base of support that it can carry the party into power. Once in power, the party will feel that it has a mandate to pass legislation representing positions it defended during the elections.

You may have already concluded that these conditions are rarely if ever met. Let’s look at each of them in sequence:

In the US, the political parties exist in a way which mimics US government overall: decentralization. The parties have a related but distinct existence at the national, state and even local levels. The national party is largely preoccupied with the election of the President, and to a lesser extent members of Congress. State parties are concerned with the election of governors, and to a much lesser extent members of the state legislature. Local parties are primarily concerned with the election of the County Executive or Mayor, and to a much lesser extent members of the local legislature. Thus, to say that the "party" could define a clearly articulated program implies that a single entity has produced a "manifesto" that is recited by candidates running for office everywhere in the same way.

However, we know that candidates typically run their own races, only occasionally pointing to a larger "party" entity to justify their own positions. Do Democratic governors all have the same position on e.g., abortion? Gun control? Aid to big cities? Welfare reform? It may be that they will tend to have a common point of convergence, but this is by no means assured.

Think about Presidential primary elections. Do all candidates running within a party for President have the same positions? For example, Republican John McCain had a very strong stance regarding campaign finance reform; George W. Bush had much less zeal for this topic.  Is one more of a "Republican" as a result?

Naturally, it might be said that the winning candidate for President for each party might represent the party’s position. Even here, this is by no means obvious. In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected President, along with Democratic control of both the Senate and House of Representatives. Was Clinton thus the spokesperson for his party – had he been prior to the elections?

The answer is murky. One of his biggest initiatives soon after getting elected was a major health care reform program. No vote was ever cast on this legislation – it passed from view as it had no chance of passing the two Democratic houses!

George W. Bush was elected promising a $1.6 tax cut over ten years.  Not many other Republican candidates embraced it, and legislative leaders such as Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert publicly advised against pursuing it.

The point here is who is in a powerful enough position to force all members of the party to adhere to a party line?

At the national level, the President seems in a strong position to exert her/her will on at least those who are members of the same party. But remember, as some candidates are elected in completely "safe" seats, they have little to fear from the President. The President cannot do much to affect their chances for reelection next time, especially if the President is a "lame-duck" and not running for reelection him/herself. What can the President really do to threaten them? It would certainly be wrong to say "Nothing!" as a popular President can set an agenda that is difficult to resist. Budget items favorable to a particular Congressperson can be added or deleted. Problems can be solved quickly or not at all. However, there will always be those who resist based on ideology or local interests.

This was true on an important foreign policy vote: that on NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). Clinton favored the treaty, but his party colleagues in Congress often did not due especially to their ties to organized labor. Its passage required a large Republican vote, to countervail Democratic defections from the President’s position.

In a parliamentary system, the prime minister has much more power to control the fates of party members; in the US system, elected party members mostly determine their own fates.

There is another important point to be made about ensuring party discipline: candidates receive relatively limited financial, technical or personnel support from the party. In fact, during primaries, parties are (usually) prevented by their own internal rules of operation from supporting any candidate who has a primary opponent. What this means is that a candidate who has successfully won a primary election has done it (most likely) without the support of the organized party.

This was illustrated locally: in 1998 Janet Owens campaigned for County Executive of Anne Arundel County without the declared support of any major Democratic party leader! Nevertheless, during the Democratic party primary she defeated the apparent party (leader) favorite, Diane Evans, and then went on to win the general election against John Gary. What did she owe the party for her troubles? Precious little!

Thus, the party can hardly be said to have much of a "hold" on her; members of the public surely can’t know what to expect from her administration based on the fact that she is a "Democrat." 

For example, she campaigned against John Gary saying that he once thought about raising taxes! She was painting him as the "tax and spend" liberal, and herself as the fiscal conservative. At the same time, she was making a big issue of Gary’s relationship with the school board, implying that he was being stingy about education. Surely the voters must have been confused – was she saying that she would take funds away from other County departments to fund education, and if so, which; or was she a closet liberal more likely to raise taxes than was Gary???.

This being said, it is hard to argue that the American public can expect members of the same party to necessarily adhere to a given party line.

Along the same lines, what happens if the President is of one party, and Congress is controlled by the other party, as was the case for most of Clinton's two terms? (This is called "divided government.")

Clearly, voters can have very few coherent expectations about what to expect from such a situation. The election results were contradictory – it said both do more and do less of what the President wants! 

This means that US democracy is even more hard pressed to respond to the "will of the people" since that "will" appears confused to the people themselves.

Again, decentralization means that it is hard to find someone who can truly speak for the party. Presidents, congressional leaders, governors, mayors, and a multitude of others might claim to speak for the party – or, more likely, NONE will claim to speak for the party but rather only for their personal views. This means that in many cases, there is no one really espousing the party line.

By contrast, in a parliamentary system, the prime minister is unequivocally the party leader. All members of his/her Cabinet are obliged to toe the party line or resign (the concept of "collective responsibility."). The same is generally true of lower level party elected officials. Clearly in that system, the party is more likely to speak with one voice.

Did the party do as it promised? Did the Democrats "deliver" on health insurance reform? Did Republicans implement a "real" tax cut? Will the Democrats "save" Social Security; will the Republicans prevent Democrats from "raising taxes" to do so?

Democracy assumes that the public can answer questions like these to hold parties and candidates accountable for their actions. But the American system is very confusing: often divided government at the national level makes it hard to know who to blame or reward for whatever happens. Thus, for example, who should really be rewarded for ending our federal budget deficit?  President Clinton will surely claim credit, but shouldn’t the credit be given also to the Republican Congress? Whose policies did most of the good? Can the voter really distinguish between the relative roles of each of the parties?

Thus, in a perfect democracy, voters are highly informed actors, steadily following the evolution of national, state and local politics to make careful, rational decisions about their voting choices. Unfortunately, real voters in our democracy often disdain politics; they try to think of it as little as possible; many scholars view significant percentages of voters as "alienated" from politics.

Think for yourself: how many minutes have you spent the last couple of days following politics?  (Okay, so you are taking a course on politics, which has forced your attention to politics to grow - so how much did you think about politics before this course...).

How about your friends or family – have they spent any time watching the news, reading the papers, discussing politics with you or even their families?

Remember, politics often divides people who otherwise get along. If I am "pro-life" and you are "pro-choice" we will probably avoid political discussions because it threatens our friendship, or our working relationship. 

Perhaps we have grown so cynical of politics that all we do is search for the negative in what is happening – corruption, scandal, hypocrisy. Thus, what real good does it do most people to be highly informed about political events, parties, institutions, and all the rest.

Well, it is clear that government and politics do have major impacts on all our lives. Whether it is going to war, making housing affordable, paving our roads, or creating standards for certifying teachers as fit for the classroom, government and politics is a decisive realm. However, if the public is too busy earning a living and fears disrupting relationships, and cannot spend the considerable time it takes to follow public events, it is hard to see how voters will hold parties and candidates accountable.

Before saying NO to all these questions, I might offer the following: the mass media will tend to report on individuals who prove to be true embarrassments in office (do you remember Sheriff Peppersack?), although you would still have to be attentive to catch any criticisms of those in lesser offices. The "average" voter has absolutely no idea what to think of many, many elected officials and their performance in office.  (Most could not even say what qualifications are best for Orphans' court - did you know that you can NOT be a lawyer and run for Orphans' Court, but MUST be a lawyer to become a judge of the state Circuit Court?). 

That is why political scientists often use the state of the economy as a barometer of public attitudes towards incumbents: if it is going well, then the incumbent candidates and party will probably be returned to office. Many studies of Presidential elections have shown that this is a good predictor of whether the incumbent (or incumbent party, if term-limits apply) will get another four years in office.

However, social science is a science made up of very weak generalizations. For example, if a good economy should return incumbents to power, why did John Gary lose, along with several other incumbent Republicans, as the economy in Anne Arundel County in 1998 was certainly not in a tailspin?  More recently, how did Al Gore manage to lose the 2000 Presidential race with the economy doing rather well (or otherwise put, why didn't he blow George W. Bush out of the water, rather than have it come down to recounting Florida ballots and Supreme Court decisions).  Conversely, in 2004, only one-third of the public polled by the Gallup Organization offered that the economy was "excellent" or even "good."  Why then did George W. Bush beat John Kerry?  As with many social science generalizations, they only point to 'tendencies' rather than certainties.

Obviously, in politics the picture is more complex and involves the quality of campaigns, the credibility of opponents in specific races, whether any recent controversies have drawn unfavorable attention to incumbents, etc. It would seem unfair to call voters simply crude automatons voting with their wallets and little else. But the question still remains as to whether the current system of candidates, parties, and elections really does a reasonable job of representing the "will of the people."

Try going to the http://cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/ site for some national events.  There are many sites whose major preoccupation is party politics, elections, campaigns, and the like.  Try to find some - do they help you become a more rational voter.  Local events are covered in several newspapers such as the Annapolis Capital, the Baltimore Sun or the Washington Post. 

If you can go to a public library (including the one on the main AACC campus) you can retrieve articles off of the Capital for several years.  Check out some of the coverage of the 1998 elections (you can even check out my own observations as I was frequently quoted).  Was the coverage fair; did it extent to all the offices or just the major ones.