Hate Congress? Blame the well-intentioned reformers

The 1968 Democratic presidential primary is rightly remembered as a famous mess culminating in bloodshed.

It seemed likely that the unpopular President Lyndon Johnson would suffer a great embarrassment or even a primary loss after Robert Kennedy entered the race, prompting him to declare that he would neither seek nor accept his party’s nomination for another term. The Kennedy surge was cut short when he was shot and killed in a California hotel. The stage appeared set for a victory by the anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy until George McGovern entered the race in late spring. The two fought a bitter race all the way until the party’s nominating convention where, despite the fact that he hadn’t even campaigned for the White House, Vice President Hubert Humphry emerged with his party’s nomination. Democratic powerbrokers believed that Humphry’s pro-war position was more in line with the rest of the nation, but the shock of the move sparked riots in the streets.

The spectacle served as the impetus for the reformation of the primary process and the elimination of the “smoky rooms” that handed the nomination to Humphrey nomination. Those reforms resulted in the system that we have today in which Iowa and New Hampshire wield unparalleled influence over the nominating process. Democratic primary reforms were soon endorsed by the Republican Party, and the “smoky rooms” were gone for good.

I disagree with Mr. Rauch's argument that so called reforms have led to polarization for several reasons:

1: One of the reasons for let us say there was an ideological muddle was the South was a Democratic stronghold due to history. It would take 100 years and several generations until the Civil War was a distant memory enabling voters to pull the ballot for the party of Lincoln. One can same thing to a lesser extent of the GOP in New England and the Midwest. 2: Another element of the ideological muddle was how the Progressive Party penetrated both parties. Key figures in the GOP like Theodore Roosevelt, Earl Warren, and Rockefeller, and La Follette were just as progressive as Woodrow Wilson. 3: Until say 1968 there was a strong consensus on social issues that would in the future fracture the electorate. I believe Democratic stalwarts like Humphrey and Muskie had views that would easily place them in the Pro-Life camp. The idea of homosexual marriage would be laughed at. Once this social consensus has fractured it is natural for each side to drift to one party providing another ideological split. Also, in GB just like in the US there was a Post-WWII consensus until events in the 1970s caused a major split with a clear differentiation between Thatcher's Tories and Labour.

The first thing we need to do, argues Rauch is to acknowledge that not all reform is good reform. The primary process, for example, was supposed to bring the candidate selection process out of shadows and into light. Smoke-filled rooms of power brokers would be replaced by engaged citizens who picked the candidate best representative of their views. It hasn’t really worked out that way, has it?

The first thing we need to do is repeal teh 17th Amendment.

The first thing we need to do is repeal the 17th Amendment.

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