A Diplomat Looks at American Politics

The following excerpts are from the advance texts for the first two Godkin lectures, delivered on Tuesday and Wednesday nights by Chester Bowles. Excerpts from the third lecture will appear tomorrow. Reprinted by permission of the publishers from Chester Bowles, American Politics in a Revolutionary World, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Copyright, 1956, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

I

A Theory of Political Development

In this election year the attention of most Americans will be focused on the prospects of our two political parties. A study of long-term political cycles may seem, therefore, academic and beside the point.

Yet I believe that a consideration of these cycles will give us greater insight into the nature of our present alignment, help us to judge. more accurately the validity of current arguments, and even suggest, after a fashion, the course of our political development in the years ahead....

My purpose is to consider whether and how our system can mobilize the creative political resources to deal effectively with the demands of the explosive new time in which we live. I believe that to do so may require rather fundamental shifting and rearrangement in the present political alignment, not only of our two parties but in the deeper strata of public attitude which support and maintain them. I shall concentrate, therefore, on the times and manner of such creative political responses in our past, to the neglect, perhaps, of other features of our political processes less relevant for the present purpose.

From this point of view American political history may be usefully considered in terms of three great cycles or periods, each of which began with a burst of creative activity permeating a sizable majority of our people. Each of these cycles began its response to the emergence of dynamic new economic and social problems for which the previous movement held no adequate answer.

Each called forth not only new concepts of governmental responsibility but new political orientation on the part of a great many citizens. Each accepted the economic and social changes which the earlier movement had produced in its period of creative energy, and moved on to develop new answers to the new challenge. Each was identified in its earlier dynamic stage with a leader of great stature, with Jefferson, with Lincoln, and with Franklin Roosevelt.

Each was launched in an atmosphere charged with surging enthusiasm and bitter partisanship, followed by a mellowing as the new concepts brought forth by the new conditions because more generally accepted and, ultimately, were adopted as basic objectives by both major political parties.

I believe that we are now in the late stages of the third of these political cycles, and that a new one, calling for new alignments and a fresh burst of political imagination and creative leadership, may now be in the early phases of its development.

Only a very brave or very foolish man would attempt, as this is written, to prophesy the outcome of the 1956 election. But if I am correct in assuming that we are drawing towards the end of a political cycle, there are certain aspects of the approaching campaign which can be forecast with some confidence.

For instance, those questions which later historians will certainly judge to be the most crucial of our time will not be the principal subjects of debate. The campaign is likely to be fought for the most part on older and more familiar ground.

The Democrats will be denounced as radical New Dealers who favor an overbearing federal government and creeping socialism. Their proposals for a $1.10 minimum wage, increases in social security, and expanded slum clearance will be described as starry-eyed Utopianisms, derived from Marx or worse. Their candidates will be labeled "soft on communism."

The Republicans will not get off much easier. It will be said that they are reactionary successors to Herbert Hoover and may lead us into another Great Depression. Proposals for a $.90 minimum wage, more moderate increases in social security, and more limited public housing will be characterized as timid, reactionary, and dictated by big-business interests.

The Democrats, to defend themselves against the reproach of softness on communism, will be tempted to take a "tough" line on foreign policy issues; and the Republicans, in an effort to pour substance into the "peace" half of their "Peace and Prosperity" slogan, will call piously for a patient bipartisanship.

Despite the political mayhem to which we can look forward in the coming months, there will be leaders in both parties, members of the press, and many citizens among the public at large who will sense in their hearts that these are clashes on the level of sloganeering, which do not reflect deeply felt rifts in national opinion. Yet of those who sense the far more significant questions which are taking shape offstage, few will be able to articulate them. And those who do will be warned by the experts that these questions are not profitable for election year debate.

These prophecies are neither reckless nor novel. Most of us are aware that the heat generated by our recent national election campaigns arises largely from conflicts only remotely related to the great issues around which the history of the second half of the twentieth century will ultimately be written. We have become accustomed to this state of affairs, and only rarely do we bother to ask ourselves what can be done about it.

We may even remind ourselves that this is not a new thing. In 1928 the possibility of a world-wide depression of catastrophic proportions was not discussed. In 1932, at the depth of the depression, Franklin Roosevelt preached economy and promised a balanced budget as the surest path to economic recovery....

American political life, as I have suggested, can be seen in terms of a few relatively long periods, each dominated by a fairly stable coalition of the interests and factions Madison described--a semipermanent majority with a rough consensus on immediate public questions. Each new coalition finds its instrument in one of the two major political parties. Which one is determined by a complex interaction of traditions and loyalties, leadership and inspiration, strategy and accident. Because that party is identified with a widely accepted view on current issues, it develops a commanding position in the national government.

In the early phases of the cycle, when the new forces which created the new alignment are most dynamic and the public response most clear-cut, the electoral majorities of the dominant party may be overwhelming. Although long voting habits may keep many who share the new majority viewpoint within the fold of the opposition party, in the beginning that party is commonly the haven for those who reject the new consensus. The leaders of this group secure control of the party machinery and position it vigorously against the views widely accepted by the majority of citizens, thus consigning it to the role of semipermanent opposition.

Repeated defeat at the polls, however, leads to an intraparty struggle in an effort to bring the minority party position into closer harmony with what is by now clearly identified as the broad majority view. Meanwhile, as the majority party gains the policy objectives of the consensus it loses its momentum and the two parties grow closer together, each ultimately reflecting, though with important differences of attitude and emphasis, the general position of the underlying consensus among the public at large.

In each of these long periods the minority party has been able of course to interrupt the rule of the majority party for short intervals. Indeed, as the problems raised by new developments began to shoulder aside those earlier ones which gave form and shape to the movement itself, the interruptions tended to become more frequent. As the maturing movement loses its fervor, new personalities may give the minority party temporary advantages; long years in office may lead to a lethargy and lowering of standards in the party which was first to identify itself with the general consensus.

Yet a fundamental change in the direction of our government has always awaited the emergence of urgent and compelling new problems powerful enough to shatter the old majority-minority alignment. Around these new questions has emerged a new consensus, a brilliant new leadership, and a new semipermanent division of the voters into majority and minority groups. This new alignment is substantially altered from the one which preceded it, not only in its ideological reaction to the new challenge but also in its geographic and economic characteristics. The new devision is invariably reflected in a shift in the nature, composition, or role of the two political parties.

Now let us see whether we can really describe our political history in terms of this general pattern.

This history, as I have suggested, may be divided into three periods of the type which I have described. The ideological nature of the consensus that dominated each of these cycles cannot easily be summed up in a paragraph, much less in a phrase. Each was complex, interwoven, and subject to constant changes in emphasis to meet current political pressures.

Yet at the risk of oversimplification it may be said that the first, which extended from Jefferson's victory in 1800 to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, was characterized by a general acceptance, for the first time in history, of an effective federal government closely responsive to the majority will,

The second, which started in 1861 with Lincoln and ran until Franklin D. Roosevelt's election in 1932, imposed on this primary foundation a dynamic and uniquely American response to the Industrial Revolution, the broadening of civil rights, and the acceptance of corporations as a dominant factor in our economy.

The third, which encompasses the period from 1932 to the present day, reflects a general acceptance of governmental responsibility for minimum standards of living and opportunity and for the full use of our human and capital resources within a system of private ownership.

In the background normally accepted by all but a fringe of extremists, has been a still broader area of agreement on the ground rules under which the political struggle is conducted. These ground rules indicate acceptance of the validity of the democratic process and the denial of the right of the majority unreasonably to impose its will on the minority. On the one occasion when the minority opposing the general consensus in both parties attempted to change these ground rules, the result was civil war....

II

The New Deal Becomes Respectable

By the outbreak of World War II, a large majority of the American people had reached far closer agreement on questions deeply affecting the public interest than their leaders realized. Moreover, this consensus, or agreement, was not a result of the accompanying political debate, which indeed tended to conceal it. Nor could it be viewed as a painfully worked out compromise between two relatively equal antagonists holding opposing views.

The consensus, which in general supported the welfare state, had spread across the membership of both political parties. In each party it was opposed by minorities which clung to older concepts of government and economics. In the Democratic party, which had maintained itself in power after winning in 1932 by providing vigorous leadership for the new consensus and asserting the policy positions essential to its objectives, the minority was largely confined to certain sections of the South. Here it was vocal and strong, but beyond the area of civil rights, in which seniority gave it a position of strength in the Senate, it was ineffective nationally.

The anticonsensus minority in the Republican party, however, was able to play a more effective national role. Although Republican candidates for President, recognizing the general popular support for New Deal measures, vigorously denied any intent to turn back the clock, the old guard was strong enough heavily to color the positions and pronouncements of their party. As a result, the presence of a general agreement on the essentials of public policy in the prewar years was not apparent in the official party positions. On the contrary, in the late 1930's and the early 1940's, just before our entry into World War II, the political arena bristled with sharply contested divisions between the leadership of the two parties along the entire range of policies, domestic and foreign.

So close was the congressional division on foreign affairs that a whole series of critical measures leading up to our entry into World War II prevailed by a majority of twenty votes or less in the lower house. In the case of the extension of the "peacetime" draft, three months before Pearl Harbor, the majority margin in the House of Representatives was a single vote. Even today, the cries of indignation and alarm which may be heard constantly on both sides of the political fence seem to the casual observer to contradict any assumption of popular agreement.

Yet these boilings and eruptions on the surface of our political life should not mislead us about the views of the rank and file of both parties and of the general electorate on what should be done and how we should go about it. Although the feuding and the fighting have both their function and their useful consequences, they obscure, as often as they illuminate, the real character of the political alignment in the country at large. For insight into this political development, we must look to what the parties actually do -- the means and measures they support when vested with the responsibility of office--not merely to the words which they use to chastise each other on the hustings.

If, as I have maintained, a broad underlying public agreement on major issues started to develop in the early 1930's, under pressure of new forces, and was full-blown a decade later, why is it that this agreement has not been more clearly reflected in the behavior of the political parties?

To begin to answer this question, it may be useful to examine in more detail the wide scope of disagreement which exists not only between the majority in each party which reflects the consensus and the minority in each party that opposes it but within the ranks of those who make up these divisions. These differences are further intensified and distorted by election year conflicts, which often call forth the fierce expression of party loyalty and prejudice.

There is, for instance, ample room for wide differences within the consensus in intensity of support for particular programs. There is also room for differences about the measures best suited to carry out the broad purposes on which the majority has agreed. A consensus which encompasses the objective of full employment can legitimately include those who would place primary emphasis on the encouragement of capital formation, as well as those who would favor measures designed to increase consumer purchasing power as means to the same end. The Democrats may vigorously reflect one view; the Republicans, the other.

A national consensus, then, as I see it, is no more nor no less than a rough working agreement on major propositions of policy. Its bounds define, in effect, the area within which a compromise reached according to regularized procedures will be acceptable. This means, generally, that the details of the compromise are left to be worked out on the formal political level, or even below it, by the institutions, groups, and individuals most intimately affected by the particular method chosen....

Now let us examine these features at work since Pearl Harbor in our political system, particularly as they effect our present consensus and the position of our political parties in relation to it.

....As we have seen, it is central to the thesis that each new majority alignment does not represent a rejection of the doctrine and values of the previous majority but rather envelops them and goes on to something else. The Civil War was fought in the name of the Jeffersonian concepts expressed in the Declaration, and the welfare state was a modern reflection of Lincoln's concept of economic opportunity and growth as a prerequisite of freedom.

For purposes of more closely defining our area of agreement today, as well as examining some of the divergencies within it, I propose to consider domestic policy and foreign separately....

I have suggested that the domestic political consensus which has dominated the past two decades has been in essence an agreement on the "welfare state." Our conception of the welfare state has insisted, of course, that the government assure certain minimum standards of individual economic security. In addition, we have come to broaden the consensus, after some false starts, to include the conviction that the government has a positive responsibility to adopt measures which will promote, insofar as possible, the full employment of the human and physical resources of the country.

Finally, as a corollary to these two points, we have come to recognize that the federal government must largely provide the initiative in discharging these newly defined governmental responsibilities, and that this in turn implies a "big" federal government operating on a scale which was undreamed of twenty-five years ago....

As this is written, we have had a three and one-half year period of Republican control of the executive branch of our government, and most of my illustrations therefore will be drawn from relatively current events. I will not, however, neglect the period of Republican Congressional control, in 1946-1948, for there, too, we should find supporting evidence if my thesis is sound.

Surely if the consensus which I have described did not actually exist, the newly elected Republicans in one of these two occasions would have put forward and executed programs and policies in fundamental conflict with those of their Democratic predecessors.

Yet the two periods of Republican control have produced no such phenomenon. To take this qeustion at its simplest level: no New Deal legislation has thus far been replaced. Indeed, in the 1952 campaign Republican candidates devoted a major share of their speeches trying to convince the voters that any such counterrevolution was the furthest thing from their minds....

The same general conclusion results from a more particular examination of Republican actions in 1946-1947 and 1952-1956. Measuring the actions of the present administration against the three broad propositions stated above, I think it is beyond dispute that the large body of its proposals, and certainly those which have been successful, lie well within the area of compromise staked out by the present consensus.

Many Democrats may continue to suspect that acceptance of New Deal concepts by Republican leaders amount to no more than lip service. They may assert that agencies such as the Labor Board or the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are administered by Republican appointees who do not believe in them, are in unsafe hands, and they will certainly point to the favoring of special interests.

Yet, in the broad view, Democrats can take pride in the extent to which the ideas have now been generally accepted. Instead of an effort to reverse the direction of New Deal legislation in such fields as social security, minimum wages, and the like, the Republicans have agreed to modest extensions in several areas. Social security coverage and benefits have been expanded. The minimum wage rate has been increased. Support for public housing as well as mortgage insurance has continued....

The present administration's farm policies are under heavy attack. I feel that the attack is justified. Yet on objective consideration, not even here can it be said that the Republican party has challenged the premise of federal responsibility for maintaining farm income at reasonable levels....

In this election year most of us will exercise our right to criticize or applaud the efforts of the administration in the domestic field. Some may think that it has not gone far or fast enough; others may think it has gone too far. But its stated policies and objectives clearly accept the first of the underlying premises of the New Deal: that the federal government is responsible for certain minimum economic standards for all.

The specific proposals advanced by the Eisenhower Republican administration offer us, however, an excellent case study of divergent views at work within the generally accepted consensus. The Democrats, in the first two years as the minority in Congress, and in the second two years as the majority party, advanced counterproposals or criticisms of each administration bill. These counterproposals ordinarily called for significantly higher levels of effort or assistance than the administration was willing to advocate. The result was a bargaining situation. But as is characteristic of most bargains, the give-and-take was on matters of degree, not principle.

A typical example was the President's proposal for an increase in the minimum wage to $.90 an hour. The Democrats put forward a figure of $1.10 an hour. The political processes then became engaged both within and outside the Congress in the operations of bargaining and negotiation, and a compromise of $1.00 an hour was finally adopted.

Though the Eisenhower administration presents an instructive case study in the operations of the consensus, we did not need to await the arrival of a Republican in the White House to confirm the fact that the postulates of the New Deal on economic security had become permanent features of our landscape. It was clear, I think, as early as 1947, when the Republicans secured a majority in both houses of Congress for the first time since 1928.

No piece of New Deal legislation, for instance, had been damned with more vehemence or ardor by the minority in the country and in Congress than the Wagner Act. By the tenets of the Republican diehards, it was the work of the devil. But far worse than devilish, some insisted it was "unconstitutional" and must be extirpated root and branch.

Proposals which would have gone far towards this end were introduced, of course, in the Eightieth Congress, yet none of them succeeeded, in spite of Republican majorities in both houses. The Taft-Hartley Act, which emerged as the compromise, cast formidable new obstacles in the way of union organization and conferred advantages upon management vis-a-vis labor which had not been therefore a part of the law.

One may argue, as I have, that these features are ill-advised; that strictures in the act make it unduly difficult to organize unions, particularly in parts of the South; that some of the "rights" conferred on management do more harm than good if our objective is a healthy, peaceful relationship between these two great participants in our productive process; and that these weaknesses would seriously threaten our economic welfare in a period of depression.

Yet it is significant that in the final analysis even those responsible for drafting this new law did not challenge the fundamental premise of the Wagner Act, namely, that labor should be protected in its right to organize, and that it should approach the bargaining table upon terms of substantial equality with management.

The second of our three subheadings of the welfare state was the proposition that the federal government is responsible for affirmative measures for the promotion of full employment of our human and natural resources....

On this second proposition, it may be that the quality and strength of our political agreement has not yet been convincingly tested. We still hear talk in some Republican circles about the inflationary effect of full employment, and the corresponding advantages of four or five million unemployed to cushion upward pressures on the price level.

Yet the administration did not hesitate to act in opposition to these voices during the economic recession of 1953-54. The timing and tempo of its use of fiscal controls in general support of the economy may provide questions for legitimate political disagreement and debate. But it cannot be charged with denying the need for government action.

I find it personally inconceivable that a Republican administration would again permit an economic cataclysm even approaching the intensity of 1929....

Of course, full employment is only part of the broad objective which calls