Polity

. Volume 40, Number 1 . January 2008

r 2008 Northeastern Political Science Association 0032-3497/08 $30.00 www.palgrave-journals.com/polity

Insurgency Campaigns and the Quest for Popular Democracy: Theodore Roosevelt, Eugene McCarthy, and Party Monopolies* Daniel Tichenor Rutgers Univeristy Daniel Fuerstman Michigan State University American politics has featured numerous intra-party and third-party insurgency campaigns. Scholarship on minor party, independent, and dissident campaigns has focused on how they have influenced electoral and policy outcomes. In particular, the existing literature highlights the capacity of these campaigns to play spoilers in presidential voting or to place new issues on the public agenda, but says little about their efforts to transform the political process. Revisiting forgotten elements of V.O. Key’s work, we highlight the fundamental procedural ambitions of many intra-party and third-party insurgencies, campaigns driven as much (if not more in some cases) by visions of stronger popular democracy in national electoral politics as by final vote counts or specific policy innovations. Two significant dissident campaigns receive special emphasis: the insurgencies of Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 and Eugene McCarthy in 1968. Like many other major electoral insurgencies, both cases exemplify the centrality of procedural reform aspirations for these campaigns and, on occasion, their capacity to leave an indelible mark on the rules of electoral and partisan politics. Ultimately, their procedural triumphs compelled political leaders and other insiders to adapt but they did little to advance popular democracy or better serve the interests of ordinary citizens. Polity (2008) 40, 49–69. doi:10.1057/palgrave.polity.2300092

Keywords

third parties; elections; social movements; insurgent campaigns; electoral reform

*The authors thank Sidney Milkis, David Plotke, Andrew Polsky, and the anonymous reviewers of Polity for helpful comments on early drafts, and the Frank Kneller Fund that facilitated this faculty– undergraduate research collaboration.

50

INSURGENCY CAMPAIGNS AND POPULAR DEMOCRACY

Daniel J. Tichenor is an associate professor in the Political Science Department and a research professor at the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University. He is the author of Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America and Abiding Interests: American Democracy and the Washington Lobbying Community, 1830–1990. He can be reached at [email protected]. Daniel Fuerstman is a former honors undergraduate student at Rutgers University. He is currently teaching and completing PhD studies at Michigan State University. For as long as a strong two-party system has been an elemental feature of American political life, an impassioned debate has raged over its reputed merits and defects. For critics like Theodore Lowi, this pathological ‘‘duopoly’’ is nothing short of a ‘‘civic religion’’ that unifies an otherwise warring ‘‘political class’’ while inspiring little or no support among ordinary citizens. ‘‘The two-party system has at the moment become a menace to the Republic,’’ Lowi warns, ‘‘made worse by the overwhelming weakness of the parties’ presidential candidates and the impossibility of choosing between them when the only way to vote no for the candidate you hate is to vote yes for the one you can barely tolerate.’’1 Kay Lawson highlights the tendency of this ‘‘bi-hegemonic system’’ to reinforce patterns of nonvoting.2 In response, defenders of the two-party system argue that it has served as a highly beneficial force in American politics by building legitimacy for elected officials, nurturing national consensus and policy compromise, contributing some semblance of order and efficiency to the governing process, and fostering greater electoral accountability.3 Beyond dispute in this perennial debate, however, are the potent legal, institutional, and behavioral forces that enable the two major parties to monopolize U.S. political life.4 Given that American politics has almost always been dominated by two parties, it is hardly surprising that pundits and political scientists alike focus on

1. Theodore Lowi, ‘‘Deregulate the Duopoly,’’ The Nation (December 4, 2000). See also Theodore Lowi and Joseph Romance, A Republic of Parties? Debating the Two-Party System (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998). 2. Kay Lawson, ‘‘The Case for a Multiparty System,’’ in Multiparty Politics in America, ed. Paul Herrnson and John Green (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), 59–71. 3. See John F. Bibby, ‘‘In Defense of the Two-Party System,’’ in Multiparty Politics in America, ed. Paul Herrnson and John Green, 73–84; Lowi and Romance, A Republic of Parties?. 4. Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State (New York: Wiley, 1954); Paul Herrnson, ‘‘Two Party Dominance and Minor Party Forays in American Politics,’’ in Multiparty Politics in America, ed. Herrnson and Green, 21–41; Richard Winger, ‘‘How Ballot Access Laws Affect the U.S. Party System,’’ American Review of Politics 16 (1995): 321–50.

Daniel Tichenor and Daniel Fuerstman

51

how most independent or third-party campaigns may advantage one major-party candidate over another, or how they may occasionally succeed in promoting policy issues when elected representatives of the major parties co-opt their most resonant proposals. Less understandable is why significant insurgencies within the major parties have received limited scholarly attention, let alone careful study. Equally striking is the general neglect of how insurgent campaigns both within major parties and as third-party challenges have influenced not only electoral outcomes and the policy agenda, but also their efforts to transform the political processes that underpin U.S. parties and elections. Our central aim in the pages that follow is to redress these gaps by highlighting the aspirations and capacities of insurgent campaigns to transform U.S. partisan and electoral politics. V.O. Key, Jr. aptly described insurgencies both inside and outside major parties as kindred methods for those disenchanted with the party establishment to champion reform.5 Subsequent work has largely forgotten these insights. We set about here to illuminate the value of studying both forms of electoral insurgency and to specifically underscore their preoccupation with the political process. To this end, we place special emphasis on two challenges to the party establishment emboldened by popular democratic ideologies to reform major-party politics and the electoral process: the insurgent campaigns of Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 and Eugene McCarthy in 1968. We shall begin with a brief examination of the strengths and limitations of the existing literature on electoral challenges to the dominant parties, highlighting Key’s insights about contesting the major-party establishment. The next section focuses on Theodore Roosevelt’s transformative struggle with incumbent President William Howard Taft for the Republican presidential nomination and his formidable Progressive (or Bull Moose) party campaign of 1912; we focus on the ‘‘direct democracy’’ reforms his campaign championed and, in terms of presidential primaries, advanced. We then turn to Eugene McCarthy’s anti-war insurgency within the Democratic party in 1968, a campaign that ultimately fueled an unprecedented expansion of direct primary reforms in the presidential selection process that was begun by Roosevelt more than a halfcentury before. In our conclusion, we link the procedural reform agendas and transformative capacities of our two cases to those of other insurgency campaigns in American political development, and we underscore forces that ultimately frustrated their popular democratic visions of electoral and partisan political life. 5. V.O. Key, Jr., Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups (Binghamton, NY: Thomas Crowell Company, 1952), 241, 299–300.

52

INSURGENCY CAMPAIGNS AND POPULAR DEMOCRACY

Studying Intra-party and Third-party Insurgencies: V.O. Key and Beyond While V.O. Key, Jr. carefully elucidated the considerable strengths of the U.S. two-party system in his classic text, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, he also recognized that one of its pitfalls was the tendency of major-party leaders to evade significant national problems and public discontent rather than confront them openly and decisively. He found this to be gallingly true even during crises of the first order. ‘‘Often basic questions are ignored and discussion concentrated on spurious or trivial matters,’’ Key noted. ‘‘Thus, in 1932, when it would be supposed that the occasion existed for a thorough debate on the adequacy of our arrangements for managing our economic life, a visitor from Mars might have supposed from the campaign that the great issue before the American people was whether a citizen should be allowed to buy his liquor openly or be required to purchase it from a bootlegger.’’6 For those disaffected from the existing political order and faced with recalcitrant major-party leadership, Key thought that the alternatives were limited but not necessarily quixotic. Indeed, he perceived two main strategies available to reformers champing at the bit to unsettle the political status quo. First, reformers may form a pressure group or mobilize a large popular following to lobby the existing set of elected representatives of both major parties. Second, reformers may organize an insurgent electoral campaign that either promotes reform goals inside one of the dominant major parties (‘‘boring from within’’) or challenges the establishment by forming a third party.7 It is this second form of insurgent political activity that we seek to investigate. In particular, our chief purpose here is to consider both the aspirations and legacies of insurgent campaigns both within major parties and as third party challenges to transform the American electoral process. Political scientists have devoted scant attention to systematically studying intra-party insurgency campaigns and their effects. Scholars obviously have devoted far more attention to the impact of third-party challenges. Classic treatments of the subject have highlighted the importance of insurgent candidacies in reshaping the policy agenda, channeling citizen frustrations, and altering electoral outcomes. In one of the earliest studies of third parties, F.E. Haynes observed that the chief function of insurgency campaigns ‘‘has been to bring new issues before the people: they force new policies upon the old parties, and after accomplishing their work they pass away.’’8 James Sundquist drew much of the same conclusion in his study of partisan alignments and realignments six 6. Key, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, 241. 7. Key, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, 299–300. 8. F.E. Haynes, Third Party Movements Since the Civil War (Iowa City, IA: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1916), 3.

Daniel Tichenor and Daniel Fuerstman

53

decades later, underscoring the tendency of major parties to steal the policy reform fire of effective insurgent candidates and movements.9 V.O. Key aptly summarized this impact of anti-establishment campaigns as a question of how much, if at all, they have a ‘‘perceptible effect on the policy of government.’’10 In evaluating Ross Perot’s Reform Party campaign of 1992, for instance, Ted Jelen characterizes it as ultimately successful by placing new policy items on the public agenda.11 Political scientists most often have analyzed the electoral effects of insurgency campaigns. In particular, the discipline has focused on whether insurgent candidacies have influenced the outcome of a presidential election. The capacity of outsider challenges to play the role of spoiler is a familiar theme. As J.D. Hicks observed in 1933, ‘‘In possibly half a dozen instances the third party vote has snatched victory from one major party ticket and given it to another.’’12 Key questioned Hicks’s assumptions regarding specific electoral outcomes two decades later, but he had little doubt that the critical issue concerning strong insurgent candidacies was how they affected ‘‘the balance of power’’ between the major parties in presidential elections.13 More recently, Howard Gold’s study of the 1968 Wallace, 1980 Anderson, and 1992 Perot campaigns concentrated on factors that contributed to their relative electoral success.14 Similarly, Walter Stone and Ronald Rapoport developed important insights about the electoral legacy of the 1992 Perot movement for major-party electoral performance from 1994 to 2000.15 In short, when political scientists have examined insurgency campaigns, they regularly have focused on their effects upon voting. Stone and Rapoport recently published a valuable exception to this rule by exploring mechanisms by which third parties may have long-term effects on the major-party system.16 One of the most comprehensive and impressive empirical works on third parties, Steven Rosenstone, Roy Behr, and Edward Lazarus’s Third Parties in America, mirrors broader disciplinary trends in its general neglect of how insurgency campaigns may influence political processes. To be clear, this 9. James Sundquist, The Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1973). 10. Key, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, 300. 11. Ted G. Jelen, ‘‘The Perot Campaigns in Theoretical Perspective,’’ in Ross for Boss: The Perot Phenomenon and Beyond, ed. Ted G. Jelen (New York: State University Press of New York, 2001), 1–14. 12. J.D. Hicks, ‘‘The Third Party Tradition in American Politics,’’ Mississippi Valley Historical Review 20 (1933): 26. 13. Key, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, 301. 14. Howard Gold, ‘‘Third Party Voting in Presidential Elections: A Study of Perot, Anderson, and Wallace,’’ Political Research Quarterly 48 (December 1995): 751–73. 15. Walter Stone and Ronald Rapoport, ‘‘It’s Perot Stupid! The Legacy of the 1992 Perot Movement in the Major-Party System, 1994–2000,’’ P. S.: Political Science and Politics 34 (March 2001): 49–58. 16. Walter Stone and Ronald Rapoport, Three’s a Crowd: The Dynamic of Third Parties, Ross Perot, and Republican Resurgence (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).

54

INSURGENCY CAMPAIGNS AND POPULAR DEMOCRACY

important work is first and foremost concerned with building a theory of minorparty support and of office-holders’ decisions to launch minor-party candidacies. Of the eight questions that drive the book’s analysis, none focus on the effects of third parties.17 Nevertheless, when Rosenstone, Behr, and Lazarus direct their attention to the results of third-party campaigns, they sing a familiar refrain. Thirdparty campaigns are important inasmuch as they ‘‘alter the political agenda and the distribution of major party support.’’18 Third Parties in America puts considerable stock in third parties’ role in the policy process. While the two major parties continue fighting the last war, third parties serve as ‘‘policy innovators’’ by raising new issues that some portion of the electorate want to be addressed.19 If third parties attract enough support or media attention, Rosenstone, Behr, and Lazarus posit that the major parties will react by co-opting the now-popular issue. Thus ‘‘the importance of . . . third party candidates must be gauged . . . by the policies that the major parties felt compelled to adopt in the wake of the election.’’20 Third Parties in America also touches on the electoral effects of third parties. While the idea of the spoiler plays a more subdued role in their work, it turns up throughout. In their description of T.R.’s 1912 campaign, George Wallace’s 1968 campaign, and others, Rostenstone, Behr, and Lazarus detail how the third party in question changed the strategies of the other candidates, and, ultimately, changed the outcome of the election—a classic spoiler role. Intra-party insurgencies have simply not received the same scholarly attention as third-party campaigns. Those scholarly series that analyze each presidential election provide some of the best coverage of intra-party insurgencies, most notably the two sets of election volumes edited by Gerald Pomper and Michael Nelson, respectively.21 But they are an exception in a political science literature that has said little about these intra-party challenges, let alone analyzed their effects. This tour of earlier work underscores a major limitation in the discipline’s collective treatment of insurgency campaigns. Beyond the general neglect of intra-party challenges, existing scholarship on third party, independent, and dissident campaigns in the United States has been preoccupied by their effects on voting and policy outcomes. Our research suggests that the political– 17. Steven Rosenstone, Roy Behr, and Edward Lazarus, Third Parties in America: Citizen Response to Major Party Failure (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 4–5. 18. Rosenstone, Behr, and Lazarus, Third Parties in America, 9. 19. This is a view in many ways similar to Sundquist’s take on cross-cutting issues and realignments; Rosenstone, Behr, and Lazarus, Third Parties in America, 222. 20. Rosenstone, Behr, and Lazarus, Third Parties in America, 267. 21. For example, see Gerald M. Pomper, The Election of 1992 (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1993), and Michael Nelson, The Elections of 2000 (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2001).

Daniel Tichenor and Daniel Fuerstman

55

procedural aspirations and achievements of these insurgency campaigns are equally important, if not more so. To demonstrate this crucial dimension of dissident campaigns, we shall carefully examine the 1912 Roosevelt and 1968 McCarthy insurgencies. Both crusades highlight the power of ‘‘direct democracy’’ and procedural reform goals for dissident candidates and activists seeking to challenge the major-party establishment. But we also shall argue that the procedural legacies of these two campaigns in particular are especially significant, contributing to critical transformations of partisan and electoral politics in America. It is to these insurgencies that we now turn.

‘‘Direct Democracy’’ and Roosevelt’s Insurgency Campaign of 1912 When William Howard Taft became president in 1909, progressive Republicans had reason for optimism. They had worked with Theodore Roosevelt to develop a record of achievement in policy areas ranging from regulating corporations to labor welfare and conservation. Their power in the states was growing. Finally, Taft, who loyally served Roosevelt in foreign and military affairs, was hand-picked by Roosevelt to carry on his reform agenda. Yet, Progressives soon discovered that Taft was an ally of the party’s Old Guard and he unabashedly sided with conservatives in battles over tariff revision, the broad powers of House Speaker Joseph ‘‘Uncle Joe’’ Cannon, and conservation. Progressive animosity toward Taft and resurgent standpat conservatives led to pitched battles in 1910 and 1911 in the states over who would control the national Republican party. James Garfield, a Progressive Republican appointed federal commissioner of corporations by T.R., described the situation in this way: ‘‘By 1910 the split in the Republican party had reached such proportions, taken with the open hostility of President Taft toward the Progressives, that the Progressives had to fight—and fight effectively—or die; had to forge the Progressive sentiment into an enduring political weapon, or lose the advance of a decade.’’22 While many progressive Republicans focused their energies on fighting conservatives for control of the G.O.P. party machinery, others called for a new party to unify reformers of both major parties. Nearly all agreed on the value of having Roosevelt play a prominent role in the factional struggle; some prominent Progressives initiated a movement in 1911 aimed at reelecting the former president. ‘‘More than any single leader,’’ Herbert Croly explained, ‘‘Theodore Roosevelt contributed decisively to the combination of political and social 22. John A. Gable, The Bull Moose Years: Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1978), 8.

56

INSURGENCY CAMPAIGNS AND POPULAR DEMOCRACY

reform and to the building up a body of national public opinion behind the combination.’’23 Significantly, reforming electoral and partisan processes was the impetus for Roosevelt’s return to political life. Intimates of Roosevelt trace the origins of his 1912 insurgency campaign to the summer of 1910, when he championed a direct primary bill in New York at the behest of Governor Charles E. Hughes.24 These efforts ended in defeat when the state legislature defeated the measure, but it galvanized T.R. to launch a fourteen-state speaking tour to articulate progressive ideals and programs. His theme of New Nationalism linked his long-standing commitment to federal regulation of national corporations and natural resources to other progressive causes such as welfare legislation and direct democracy.25 These aspirations reflected a firm belief that progressive policy goals could only be secured through procedural reforms that closed the distance between the people and their government. Reforming electoral and party politics were central to this agenda.26 ‘‘We need to make our political representatives more quickly and sensitively responsive to the people whose servants they are,’’ Roosevelt explained in his famous New Nationalism speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, in August 1910. ‘‘More direct action by the people in their own affairs under proper safeguards is vitally necessary. The direct primary is a step in this direction.’’27 T.R.’s speaking tour energized Republican progressives and hastened their efforts to draft ‘‘the Colonel’’ into a fight for the 1912 presidential nomination. Prominent elected officials like Governor W.R. Stubbs of Kansas regularly urged him to join the battle.28 These developments were unsettling to Wisconsin reformer Robert LaFollette, elected to the Senate in 1906. LaFollette envisioned himself as the leading G.O.P. progressive candidate in 1912 and he formed the National Progressive Republican League with his supporters early in 1911 to promote just such an insurgency campaign. For his part, Roosevelt often told his closest friends and political allies in 1910 and 1911 that he absolutely had no interest in running.29 He was convinced that defeat was certain for any Republican. It therefore served Republican progressives well ‘‘to make Taft’s nomination inevitable,’’ he reasoned, because his overwhelming failure in the

23. Herbert Croly, Progressive Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1914), 11. 24. Philip James Roosevelt, ‘‘Politics of the Year 1912: An Intimate Progressive View,’’ unpublished manuscript, Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University, 2. 25. Gable, The Bull Moose Years, 9. 26. Sidney Milkis and Daniel Tichenor, ‘‘‘Direct Democracy’ and Social Justice: The Progressive Party Campaign of 1912,’’ Studies in American Political Development 8 (Fall 1994): 288–89. 27. Theodore Roosevelt, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Scribner’s, 1926), vol. 17, 20. 28. George Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1946), 186. 29. Theodore Roosevelt to James Garfield, December 1, 1911, Theodore Roosevelt Collection.

Daniel Tichenor and Daniel Fuerstman

57

general election would make it possible to transform the party and place it under ‘‘capable and sane progressive leadership.’’30 La Follette’s campaign stalled by the end of 1911, however, due in no small part to progressive hopes for a Roosevelt ticket. With the quiet consent of the former president, friends and political supporters organized a National Roosevelt Committee in December 1911. Soon thereafter, an innovative press bureau and a variety of subsidiary organizations targeting specific voting groups (e.g., the National Progressive Italian American League) were formed.31 Two months later, Roosevelt spoke to the Ohio Constitutional Convention in Columbus about the need for a new ‘‘Charter of Democracy’’ that would empower ordinary voters in the political process through direct primaries, initiatives, referenda, and the direct election of U.S. Senators.32 The same day he finally announced that ‘‘my hat is in the ring!’’ Yet Taft and Republican ‘‘stand-patters’’ controlled federal patronage and most G.O.P. machines, which all but ensured the incumbent’s dominance of state-party conventions that still dominated the presidential nomination process. Two weeks before T.R.’s formal entry into the nomination battle, William B. McKinley, Taft’s campaign chief, leveraged administration patronage powers to impose discipline and loyalty at state conventions throughout the South. He removed Roosevelt allies from party leadership positions and warned southern federal employees not to bolt Taft. Local postmasters were informed that their jobs depended on their ability to bring pro-Taft delegations to southern state conventions. ‘‘If you will bring a delegation to the state and district conventions instructed for Taft,’’ an Oklahoma Republican party boss bluntly wrote to one postmaster, ‘‘I will see that you are reappointed.’’33 McKinley also instructed southern state chairpersons to select delegates at conventions months before the usual time, so as to shore up southern delegations before Roosevelt activists could organize in the region. On February 6, as ordered by McKinley, Florida Republicans held the first state convention. With Taft loyalists in control of the state organization, the convention wasted little time in selecting delegates in favor of the president. During the proceedings, however, Roosevelt supporters challenged the process as corrupt, bolted in unison from the hall, held a second convention nearby, and proceeded to nominate a contesting state delegation pledged to Roosevelt.34 This scenario was replayed at state conventions

30. Theodore Roosevelt to Arthur Lee, September 16, 1910 and November 11, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt Collection. 31. Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement, 223. 32. ‘‘A Charter for Democracy,’’ Address before the Ohio Constitutional Convention at Columbus, Ohio, February 21, 1912, 4–12, original manuscript in the Theodore Roosevelt Collection. 33. Quoted in Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement, 226–27. 34. New York Times (February 7, 1912).

58

INSURGENCY CAMPAIGNS AND POPULAR DEMOCRACY

throughout the South in coming weeks, as almost every pro-Taft delegation was contested by Roosevelt bolters. Roosevelt and his campaign team in fact expended little effort to organize in the South where they believed ‘‘rotten boroughs’’ made it unlikely they could win delegates. They were far more optimistic about their chances in the North and West, given T.R.’s enormous popularity among rank-and-file Republicans in these regions. But Taft’s control of federal patronage and support from most Republican state machines meant that Roosevelt’s only chance of securing the nomination lay in challenging the existing convention system by calling on states to adopt the direct primary. At the time, the direct primary was the means of selecting delegates in only six states. ‘‘The great fundamental issue now before the Republican party and before our people can be stated briefly,’’ he proclaimed in a March speech before a packed audience at Carnegie Hall. ‘‘It is, Are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves? I believe they are. My opponents do not.’’35 Opposed for the first time by most Republican machines, Roosevelt’s only recourse was to launch a candidatecentered campaign that appealed directly to voters. T.R.’s campaign organization challenged Taft to let the people decide by contesting the nomination by means of a direct primary in every state. Not surprisingly, the Taft forces rejected the proposal as out of hand. ‘‘I do not favor changes in the rules of the game while the game is in progress,’’ McKinley openly responded to Roosevelt’s campaign manager. Another Taft ally, Representative Philip Campbell of Kansas, added that ‘‘the Republican Party does not believe in an appeal from the umpire to the bleachers.’’36 The Roosevelt campaign hoped that the challenge would pose what William Riker called a ‘‘heresthetic moment’’:37 If Taft forces accepted the proposal, which they were almost certain not to, Taft would surely lose. If they rejected the challenge, which they were certain to do, it would place Taft at odds with the ‘‘rule of the people.’’ The denials of McKinley and Campbell played right into Roosevelt’s hands. In a blistering open letter written by T.R. that was widely distributed by his campaign to promote the direct primary, he scored the Taft camp for confining the people to ‘‘the bleachers’’:

35. ‘‘The Right of the People to Rule,’’ Address at Carnegie Hall, New York City, March 20, 1912, from Roosevelt, Works, vol.17, 151. 36. McKinley and Campbell are cited in ‘‘Roosevelt to Joseph Dixon,’’ March 8, 1912, in The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Elting Morrison (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), vol.7, 521–24. 37. William Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986). Riker defined the ‘‘heresthetic’’ as ‘‘structuring the world so you can win’’ through the art of manipulation. One of Riker’s classic examples of a heresthetic moment is Abraham Lincoln’s allegedly devastating debate question of Stephen Douglas in 1858: ‘‘Can the people of a United States Territory . . . exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution?’’

Daniel Tichenor and Daniel Fuerstman

59

Our opponents take the view that this contest is merely a game, that the object of the contest is to win prizes for the contestants, and that public office is the reward that goes to the winners of the game and that, therefore, it is a piece of allowable (although rather tricky) smartness to refuse to make changes in the laws during the progress of the contest, if these changes would deprive the lead captains of the political world of advantages they now hold over the plain people. The issue may be stated as follows: Should election laws be framed with a view to the interests of politicians or should election laws be framed with a view of carrying out the popular will? . . . We regard the present contest not as a contest between individuals—for we are not concerned with the welfare of any particular individual, neither with mine nor with any other man—but as a contest between two radically different views of the function of politics in a great democracy.38 Roosevelt had succeeded in transforming his insurgent candidacy itself into an issue, one of wresting the nomination process free from the stranglehold of party bosses and their corrupt machines. As northern and western state politics became embattled over the issue of adopting direct primaries, Roosevelt hit the campaign trail to rally for electoral reform. ‘‘From the first of April until June he waged one of the most strenuous campaigns in American political history,’’ George Mowry records. ‘‘Invading every important state and speaking as often as ten times a day, he set a pace which even his indefatigable vigor could not sustain.’’39 In the end, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Maryland, Ohio, and South Dakota joined six earlier states in adopting the direct primary. The state-level struggles over the nomination process and, with them, the Republican presidential ticket aroused what one historian calls ‘‘near riot conditions’’ at district and state conventions.40 In Michigan, for instance, the presence of state troops did not prevent brawls from breaking out at the convention. Roosevelt dominated the primaries. In all, there were twelve northern, border, and western states with direct primaries. T.R.’s first victory came in Illinois on April 9, where he beat Taft by a margin of more than two to one and where the direct primary had been legally adopted only ten days before. The exclamation point to Roosevelt’s primary campaign came in Ohio, Taft’s home state. Both camps fought strenuously to win the state, but T.R. ultimately won handily and captured every one of the state’s district delegates. The press reported the results of the Ohio 38. Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation. 39. Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement, 229. 40. Gable, The Bull Moose Years, 14.

60

INSURGENCY CAMPAIGNS AND POPULAR DEMOCRACY

primary as an unequivocal repudiation of the incumbent president.41 When the dust settled on these contests, Roosevelt won a total of 278 delegates in the primaries, Taft 48, and La Follette 36. In terms of the final Republican rank-and-file vote tally, T.R. outpolled Taft from 1,157,397 to 761,716. At the national convention, 254 delegate seats were contested. The Republican National Committee, controlled by Taft supporters, resolved the disputes routinely in favor of the president. In the state of Washington where Roosevelt won county primaries by lopsided margins, for instance, the National Committee announced that it found irregularities and that it would be best to seat Taft delegates selected by the state committees. In Texas, the Republican organization was dominated by Roosevelt supporters who chose pro-Roosevelt delegates according to standard party rules. However, the National Committee determined that Taft contestants should be seated instead so as to discourage the rule of bosses and machines in the Texas party. When the Committee finished its deliberations, Taft was awarded 235 of the disputed 254 delegates to Roosevelt’s 19. The headline of the Chicago Tribune read: ‘‘THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.’’ Had Roosevelt received fifty more of the contested delegates, he would have controlled the convention and likely the nomination.42 Aware that the National Committee’s decision virtually sealed the nomination for Taft, Roosevelt broke precedent by traveling to Chicago and taking personal command of his supporters at the party convention. The night before the full convention met, ‘‘the Colonel’’ addressed his followers at the Chicago Auditorium and memorably summoned a new party to war by telling them ‘‘we stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.’’ As Taft and the Old Guard took control of the Republican convention, Roosevelt delegates bolted for a rump convention in another hall; T.R. declared his willingness to accept the nomination of progressives eager to form a third party. In coming months, Roosevelt and the National Progressive Party continued to champion significant electoral and constitutional reforms in the name of direct democracy. At the Progressive convention, Roosevelt spoke of the new party’s devotion to institutional changes that would make candidate-centered campaigns routine. He proposed a universal system of direct primaries that, in effect, would replace the convention as the method of nominating presidential candidates. This was the only way, he proclaimed, to overcome an ‘‘invisible government’’ that ignored the popular will. The theft of his nomination at the Republican convention and the machine politics that delayed Woodrow Wilson’s nomination

41. Milkis and Tichenor, ‘‘‘Direct Democracy’ and Social Justice,’’ 300. 42. Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement, 238–39; Gable, The Bull Moose Years, 15; Milkis and Tichenor, ‘‘‘Direct Democracy’ and Social Justice,’’ 300–01.

Daniel Tichenor and Daniel Fuerstman

61

for forty-six ballots at the Democratic convention highlighted the corruption of the old parties. As Roosevelt told his backers:

The first essential of the Progressive programs is the right of the people to rule . . . A few years ago . . . there was very little demand in this country for presidential primaries. There would have been no demand now if politicians had really endeavored to carry out the will of the people as regards nominations for President. But, largely under the influence of special privilege in the business world, there have arisen castes of politicians who not only do not represent the people, but who make bread and butter by thwarting the wishes of the people. . . The power of the people must be made supreme within several party organizations.43 In addition to mandatory direct primaries, the Progressive platform called for women’s suffrage, direct election of senators, easier methods for amending the Constitution, voter initiatives and referenda, and even popular means of overturning court rulings. The Bull Moose campaign’s devotion to direct democracy reforms in the general campaign was matched by a level of political professionalism that employed, in the words of historian John Gable, ‘‘all the organizational and publicity techniques of modern electioneering.’’44 Although Wilson ultimately won the election, Roosevelt and the National Progressive Party did remarkably well at the ballot box. Indeed, not since the emergence of the Republican party in the 1850s had a third party been so successful. T.R. and the Progressives garnered 27.4 percent of the popular vote and eighty-eight electoral college votes from six states in the election of 1912. Taft and the Republicans came in third in both the popular and electoral college vote, managing to capture only two states, Utah and Vermont. As the candidate of a party that had existed for only three months, Roosevelt came in second by carrying five states and most of California, but he came close to triumph in nine other states and was second in twenty-three states.45 Many of the social justice policy proposals advanced by the Bull Moose Party in its national platform and in T.R. speeches also had more than fleeting appeal, finding expression in the progressive programs of Wilson and the FDR years. Roosevelt’s insurgent campaign of 1912—first within the Republican party and then as the Progressive standard-bearer—also had a notable impact on the

43. Illinois, 44. 45.

‘‘A Confession of Faith,’’ Address before the national convention of the Progressive Party, Chicago, August 6, 1912, Works, vol.17, 258, 260. Gable, The Bull Moose Years, 121. Milkis and Tichenor, ‘‘‘Direct Democracy’ and Social Justice,’’ 330–31.

62

INSURGENCY CAMPAIGNS AND POPULAR DEMOCRACY

American electoral process. Against the backdrop of the 1912 election, Wilson endorsed direct primaries to select presidential and congressional candidates. Public outrage over the role that machine politics and party bosses played in denying T.R. the nomination at the 1912 Republican convention helped spur efforts by Progressive reformers across party lines to advance direct primaries. Wilson endorsed a national primary in his first annual message to Congress. Although the proposal failed to win congressional passage, Progressives successfully pursued reform at the state level. By 1920, twenty-one states enacted presidential primaries. The Progressive vision of a universal system of direct primaries lost steam in later years, as state-by-state efforts stalled. The diverse forces associated with the Progressive movement were the engine of both T.R.’s Bull Moose Party and primary reform, and all receded during the World War I and its aftermath. Yet, an important foundation stone for opening the nomination process had been laid. Equally important for our purposes, the procedural reform aspirations—and occasional success—of insurgency campaigns like Roosevelt’s of 1912 are unmistakable.

Movement Politics and the McCarthy Challenge of 1968 At its outset, the 1968 campaign had some superficial parallels to 1912. The sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, was unpopular, even among his own partisans. Many spoke of an impending intra-party nomination challenge from a strong candidate, Senator Robert Kennedy, despite Kennedy’s frequent denials of interest. The opposing party, long a national minority, looked primed to steal a presidential election. More profoundly, as we shall see, both the 1912 and 1968 party insurgencies drew their lifeblood from larger political unrest that expressed a popular democratic crusade against bossism in the Progressive Era and in favor of ‘‘participatory democracy’’ amidst the New Politics of the 1960s. Throughout 1967 the Left had soured on Johnson. They had once embraced his Great Society liberalism, but the vicissitudes of the Vietnam War had left liberals, particularly educated, white, middle-class liberals, disenchanted with the Democratic establishment. This disquiet expressed itself through various Dump Johnson movements that anti-war leaders fostered at the state level in 1967. By late 1967, Allard Lowenstein, a crucial anti-Vietnam organizer and former student movement leader, wanted to find a candidate to challenge President Johnson in the Democratic primaries. He turned first to 1968’s version of Teddy Roosevelt, but Robert Kennedy turned him down. In desperation, Lowenstein went down a list of candidates, from notable senators such as George McGovern and Frank Church to Congressman Don Edwards. He discovered that through a quirk of timing, many of the leading senatorial prospects faced their own uncertain re-election campaigns in the fall. And they had no desire to stir up

Daniel Tichenor and Daniel Fuerstman

63

the pot at such a crucial moment in their own careers.46 In late October, Lowenstein met with Eugene McCarthy, a little known senator from Minnesota.47 McCarthy had independently mulled a run for the presidency. Like other Senate doves, he had tired of the administration’s half-truths on the state of the war. But McCarthy did not want to run only as an electoral dissent. He hoped that by giving students and other disaffected activists a way to protest inside the system in an election year, he could prevent a generation from completely checking out of mainstream politics. In his announcement of his candidacy, McCarthy said, ‘‘I am hopeful that a challenge may alleviate the sense of political helplessness and restore to many people a belief in the process of American politics and of American government.’’ For these reasons and others, McCarthy agreed to run.48 The McCarthy campaign aimed and succeeded at leaving its mark on the electoral process. Its impact was first registered, fittingly, in New Hampshire.49 When the campaign opened in New Hampshire, McCarthy had little to bank on. Few in the state recognized the name, and some who thought they did confused him for a rather different Senator McCarthy. The growing unpopularity of the Vietnam War had not penetrated New Hampshire as much as other parts of the country, notably the west coast. Prospects did not look good. But the McCarthy campaign revolutionized campaigning in the state. Using thousands of student volunteers, he flooded the streets with canvassers in the month before the March 12 primary. It represented the first-ever statewide political canvass.50 McCarthy established himself as a serious candidate, even if his views on the war did not fully penetrate public consciousness. On Election Day McCarthy triumphed, far exceeding expectations. He captured 42 percent of the vote, and won 20 of the 24 delegate slots.51 He also gave New Hampshire its reputation for surprising results, and cemented its critical role in the presidential selection process. The campaign rolled through the spring, pulling headlines in its wake. First Robert Kennedy declared his candidacy. Then President Johnson withdrew his. Finally, Vice President Humphrey entered the race. While we can never know

46. Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson, and Bruce Page, An American Melodrama: The Presidential Campaign of 1968 (New York: The Viking Press, 1969). 47. Jeremey Larner, Nobody Knows: Reflections on the McCarthy Campaign of 1968 (New York: Macmillan, 1970). 48. Eugene McCarthy, The Year of the People (New York: Doubleday, 1969), 265–67. 49. For a good history of the New Hampshire primary, see Charles Brereton, First in the Nation (Portsmouth, NH: Peter E. Randall Publ., 1987). For a detailed look at the 1964 and 1968 New Hampshire contests, see David C. Hoeh,‘‘1968 - McCarthy - New Hampshire: I Hear America Singing’’ (Rochester, MN: Lone Oak Press, Ltd., 1994). 50. Hoeh, 1968-McCarthy-New Hampshire, 1994. 51. Manual for the Court of New Hampshire, Volume 41.

64

INSURGENCY CAMPAIGNS AND POPULAR DEMOCRACY

whether the McCarthy campaign was a sufficient cause of any of these acts, it certainly seemed to be a necessary one. McCarthy unearthed a large protest vote and seriously damaged the president’s image of invulnerability. He drew Johnson’s biggest political nemesis, Kennedy, into the race, and demonstrated the possibility that Johnson might lose to a pro-peace candidate. The McCarthy campaign would never again reach the heights of the early spring. Once Johnson withdrew Humphrey became the administration candidate. Hubert worked hard behind the scenes to secure the support of state-party leaders and other national convention delegates. Only McCarthy and Kennedy, both anti-war candidates, ran in the primaries. They viciously fought each other for the mantle of insurgent. Kennedy triumphed in the heartland states of Indiana and Nebraska. McCarthy then came back strong in Oregon, handing a Kennedy their first electoral defeat in nearly a decade. Both campaigns threw their all into California, hoping to ride the momentum from that state through to the Chicago convention. The slim hopes of the McCarthy campaign, as a compromise candidate between the bland and unpopular Humphrey and the off-putting Kennedy, died with RFK on the eve of his June triumph in California. Despite long odds from the start, McCarthy staffers worked hard in every state that had some form of primary system. In the process, they opened up the politics of those states to previously unheard voices and opinions. Connecticut provides the archetypical example. Connecticut, while not territorially large, had a very dense population. Most of the electorate lived in urban or suburban areas. Connecticut also had a heavily ethnic population, and remained thoroughly Democratic. John Bailey, ‘‘King John’’ to most, was one of the few bosses leading a political machine that resembled those of the Democrats’ past. He dominated state politics, from political patronage to the governorship, and also had served as the Democratic National Chairman. But McCarthy supporters challenged his power. Connecticut McCarthy forces, led by peace activist Reverend Joseph Duffey, first turned their attention to deciphering the state’s arcane primary law. Connecticut law divided the state into 169 ‘‘towns’’; smaller towns held caucuses at the end of February that any Democrat could participate in, while larger towns had committees (most supporting the Johnson/Humphrey ticket) that appointed delegates. The only way to prevent committees of larger towns from choosing delegates was to compile a rival slate. If the McCarthy campaign did this and got five percent of the registered Democrats to sign a petition supporting the slate, then these larger towns too would have caucuses.52 The campaign registered qualifying petitions in thirty-one towns, and elected one or two McCarthy delegates in most small towns. When the state convention met, McCarthy forces had 284 out of 958 (or roughly 30 percent) of the delegates. Bailey could not 52. The Connecticut story largely comes from Chester et al., An American Melodrama.

Daniel Tichenor and Daniel Fuerstman

65

ignore the insurgents, and ultimately conceded nine seats in the delegation to McCarthy supporters. The northeast’s most powerful machine had compromised. State politics, long closed, now stood open and waiting for penetration by ‘‘New Politics’’ Democratic liberals. Other attacks on closed state-party systems occurred in New Mexico, New Hampshire, and Ohio, on a smaller scale than in Connecticut. Despite the seemingly hopeless situation after Kennedy’s death, the campaign did not go quietly. McCarthy leaders, still dedicated to democratic–procedural reforms, put together a series of rules and delegate seating challenges to air at the national convention in Chicago. The convention is best remembered for the tragic confrontation between the Chicago police and student protesters in the streets outside the convention. But inside the convention a ‘‘quiet revolution’’ occurred.53 The key procedural challenge stemmed from the McCarthy challenge to the unit rule as the most important procedural innovation. The unit rule was an anachronistic tool of bossism that decreed that in any procedural vote (on county, state, or national level), the majority of the group won all the votes. Thus even if, say, eight of the fifty Texas delegates supported McCarthy, all fifty would go to Humphrey. A McCarthy strategist and former DNC member, George Mitchell, came up with the idea of challenging the unit rule as a way of unsettling the Humphrey forces. Humphrey and his supporters, seeing the danger in the issue, came out before the Convention in favor of a mild resolution abolishing the unit rule for future conventions. The Rules Committee took up the unit rule issue at the convention, where it became entangled with other McCarthy initiatives. If state-level McCarthy workers learned one lesson in 1968, it was that illogical and labyrinthine rules covered the party’s presidential selection. Some states had primaries. Others had caucuses. Most had neither, but instead vested delegate selection power in the hands of state-party leaders. In a substantial number of states, these leaders selected delegates up to two years before the national convention. Connecticut leaders, recently stung by the iniquities in their dealings with John Bailey, thought up the idea of convening a pre-convention commission to study party selection methods. Geoffrey Cowan, a leading McCarthy operative in Connecticut, was put in charge of the commission process. Cowan explained that the commission ‘‘grew out of my own frustration at delegate-hunting in Connecticut. We got only nine out of forty-four. We were denied a fair proportion on any basis of counting . . . we needed some way to document delegate selection. We needed some written document to back the challenge.’’54 53. Term compliments of political scientist Byron Shafer. Much of the subsequent information about the convention proceedings, as well as the Hughes and McGovern–Frasier commissions that came before and after the convention, come from Byron Shafer, Quiet Revolution (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1983), with an assist from Chester et al., An American Melodrama. 54. Shafer, Quiet Revolution, 15.

66

INSURGENCY CAMPAIGNS AND POPULAR DEMOCRACY

In a short order, Cowan, along with fellow McCarthy supporter Anne Wexler and all-purpose liberal Thomas Adler, put together a working legal staff to research the delegate selection process in the various states. Cowan also set about recruiting commission members, including the eventual chairman, Governor Harold E. Hughes of Iowa. While the commission itself only met once, the recommendations, drafted and fleshed out by a largely pro-McCarthy staff, became the foundation document for reformers’ claims for change. At the convention, Hughes Commission staffers soon realized that the party reform issue promised little political advantage for McCarthy. The staff, again headed by Cowan, Adler and Wexler, made their stand in the Rules Committee. The major issue before the Rules Committee, as previously stated, was the McCarthy-backed challenge to the unit rule. The committee took up the unit rule challenge first. The majority report would contain a carefully worded, fairly conservative abolition of the unit rule (conservative in that it occurred for future conventions, only at the state level, and only at the enforced discretion of the convention). Other Hughes Commission discussions of party reform went poorly for McCarthy forces. The committee voted down most of the recommendations, although they tabled several for future study. The reform group caucused in the wake of their Rules defeat, and composed a minority report that melded two issues. First, they took a much stronger stance against the unit rule, abolishing it for this and future conventions. They also abolished it at every level, down to precincts. Second, they pushed for the formation of a party reform commission to study the issue of delegate selection. The majority report also called for such a commission, but unlike the vague goals outlined in that report, the minority report demanded that every person have ‘‘a full and timely opportunity to participate’’ in delegate selection.55 In the only insurgent victory of an otherwise strong-armed convention, the proreform faction, led on the floor by McCarthy supporters (including Iowa’s Governor Hughes), passed the Rules minority report. Byron Shafer describes the floor roll call as ‘‘the most confused ballot of that confused and unhappy gathering.’’ Most delegates were unsure what they were voting for, as evidenced by the fifteen delegations that passed on their first time through the roll. To make matters worse, debate started on another resolution while the voting continued for the Rules minority report. In the end, the reformers had shrewdly tacked the call for a future commission onto the call to thoroughly abolish the unit rule. Many who might have questioned the reform commission on its own merits voted for the minority report because of its strong anti-unit language. The minority resolution passed 1350–1206.56 55. Shafer, Quiet Revolution, 30. 56. Shafer, Quiet Revolution, 34–35.

Daniel Tichenor and Daniel Fuerstman

67

The ensuing history of the reform commission, which subsequently became the McGovern–Fraser Commission, is complex. But throughout the commission’s deliberations, the pro-McCarthy, pro-reform ‘‘individuals became central to the politics of party reform in the months—indeed the years’’ that followed the 1968 convention.57 In the end, the 1972 Democratic National Convention met under very different rules than any that preceded it. The call for ‘‘timely opportunity’’ for citizens to participate in state delegate selection led many states to adopt a new primary or caucus. In 1968, seventeen states had Democratic primaries. By 1980, thirty-one states used primaries. On the Republican side the numbers climbed from sixteen to thirty-three. Greater participation, of a sort, was guaranteed.58 Viewing the campaign through a policy or electoral lens, the McCarthy insurgency did not fare well. While McCarthy’s success led Johnson to renew peace discussions with North Vietnam in 1968, the war itself did not end for another seven years. And although McCarthy arguably played a large role in Kennedy’s entry and Johnson’s withdrawal, McCarthy himself lost the nomination, and quickly became a marginalized figure in American politics. But if we instead view the McCarthy insurgency in light of procedural reform aims, its successes were greater than the 1912 insurgency. At a minimum, McCarthy supporters brought a breath of fresh air into stale Democratic politics. More profoundly, McCarthy supporters originated and saw through the single biggest change in the presidential selection system since the fall of King Caucus in 1824. The McCarthy campaign, a failure in so many ways, vividly captures the insurgent desire and occasional capacity to make lasting changes in American partisan and electoral politics.

Conclusion Intra-party and third-party insurgency campaigns have been recurring features of American electoral politics, sometimes adding drama and nonconformity to an often-staid polity. When taking measure of these insurgencies, pundits and scholars alike tend to be preoccupied with weighing their capacity to be spoilers in presidential voting or to place new issues on the policy agenda. This focus, however, obscures the extent to which these campaigns derive meaning and energy from process-oriented challenges to the power of the major-party establishment. In their determined pursuit of democratic–procedural reform, the 1912 Roosevelt and 1968 McCarthy crusades capture a defining and mobilizing desire of most electoral insurgencies over time to transform the way 57. Shafer, Quiet Revolution, 14. 58. Nelson Polsby, Consequences of Party Reform (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), table, at 64.

68

INSURGENCY CAMPAIGNS AND POPULAR DEMOCRACY

national elections are conducted. Ross Perot’s 1992 and 1996 Reform Party assault on establishment politicians and Ralph Nader’s 2000 and 2004 battles against ‘‘two-party duopoly’’ are only the most recent iterations of this agenda.59 Those who measure third party, independent, and dissident campaigns merely in terms of vote tallies and policy agendas overlook one of their most elemental qualities. Whereas the procedural reform ambitions of the 1912 Roosevelt and 1968 McCarthy campaigns are quite typical of insurgencies, their ability to significantly alter the rules of American electoral politics is decidedly exceptional. Their relative success in winning major procedural reforms owed much to the fact that both campaigns drew their lifeblood from broader political movements agitating for greater popular democracy—‘‘direct democracy’’ and anti-bossism of the Progressive movement in 1912, and ‘‘participatory democracy’’ and representation of excluded groups championed by New Politics groups in 1968. Little wonder that social movement activists were pivotal players in the leadership and rank-and-file of both the Roosevelt and McCarthy campaigns. Tellingly, for these movement actors, the presidential candidate at the top of their ticket was an aegis for causes that predated and endured long after the 1912 and 1968 contests. In short, the capacity of these two electoral insurgencies to win major procedural reforms that eluded their counterparts in other periods was fueled by prominent, broader political movements dedicated to popular democratic ideologies and equipped with their own army of elite and grassroots devotees. Another factor in both cases helped insurgents in their push for electoral rules change: the selection of major-party presidential candidates whose nomination helped reformers illustrate the insulated power of an undemocratic party establishment. Taft failed miserably in Republican primaries of 1912, and Humphrey eschewed Democratic primaries altogether in 1968. The nominations of Taft and Humphrey hinged upon closed processes in states where party leaders largely controlled their delegations, thereby providing insurgents a ready means of highlighting an illegitimate system that provided ordinary citizens too little voice and party bosses too much. In 1952, V.O. Key observed that the expansion of direct primary elections would give new social movements and issue-oriented independents increasing power over the two major parties. ‘‘The leaders of protest movements of all shades and hues may, if their following is strong enough, capture the nominations of either major party . . . ,’’ he noted.60 Indeed, Key suggested that direct primaries would make it ‘‘less necessary for the leaders of movements of dissent to form new parties.’’61 There is little question that the 1912 Roosevelt and 1968 McCarthy

59. Ralph Nader, Campaign Speech, Sante Fe, New Mexico, March 11, 2000. 60. Key, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, 303. 61. Key, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, 303.

Daniel Tichenor and Daniel Fuerstman

69

insurgencies contributed mightily to the contemporary system of direct primaries. Even after the tumultuous struggle for the 1912 Republican nomination that led to new primaries, Roosevelt’s Progressive Party campaign gave social movements and issue-oriented activists an unprecedented role within party politics and breathed life into a candidate-centered approach that foreshadowed more plebiscitary forms of governance.62 More than a half-century later, the McCarthy campaign of 1968, the Hughes commission, and the McGovern–Fraser reforms represented a triumph and legitimization of both social movements and candidate-centered campaigns in national partisan and electoral politics. In the final analysis, then, the 1912 insurgency emerges as a foundation stone for the primary system and the 1968 insurgency as a consolidation of this reform agenda attacking traditional party organization and governance. We would be wrong to conclude, however, that the procedural reforms advanced by our two insurgency campaigns enhanced the participation or power of ordinary citizens in electoral and partisan politics or that their interests were better served. Consider that no insurgents fared well in either major party’s presidential selection process for decades after the rousing 1912 contest, as the major-party establishment first came to terms with procedural reform and then reestablished its control over outcomes. When Progressives sought to revive their cause in later years, such as the Robert La Follette effort of 1924, they had little choice but to wage a third-party campaign. The procedural legacy of the 1968 insurgency was far more decisive in its long-term challenge to traditional party leaders, but it was campaign professionals and movement elites rather than ordinary citizens who now joined party insiders in mastering the new electoral processes. The elevation of candidate-centered campaigns and the expanded role of issue advocates and movements in electoral and partisan politics— developments originally thought to open the process to or at least better represent mass publics—have vexed popular democracy in important ways.63 Most specifically, these innovations profoundly weakened political parties as instruments of collective mobilization and ironically contributed to the distance between an immobilized citizenry at the grassroots and a warring political elite at the core.64 As is so often the case in American political development, the rules changes won by insurgents ultimately compelled political leaders and other insiders to adapt, but fell far short of their popular democratic aspirations.65 62. Milkis and Tichenor, ‘‘‘Direct Democracy’ and Social Justice’’; See also the forthcoming book by Sidney Milkis, The 1912 Election and the Birth of Modern American Politics. 63. Milkis, The President and the Parties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 214. 64. For one of our most penetrating reflections on the troubling gap between political elites at the core of American government and alienated citizens at the periphery, see Wilson Carey McWilliams, The Politics of Disappointment (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1995). 65. This pattern of popular democratic yearnings being frustrated once they are institutionalized is captured brilliantly in James Morone, The Democratic Wish (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).