The American scene
George McGovern and the Democratic Party's new (Mite
Henry Fairlie
Washington, D.C; In the event, George McGovern came to Miami, saw and.conquered. It was all over, bar the shouting, befort it had even really begun. The Democratic Party has found a new leader. Whether it has picked a winner remains to be seen.
But quite enough politics happened in Washington during the two weeks before the party's convention to make one realise that, within the Democratic Party, we are witnessing a political event of unusual significance: a rare attempt, in this century, to redefine the nature of representation, to find in the mechanism of representative democracy an answer to the discontents with it which are felt today.
It is always astonishing to discover that the great constitutional issues are still open in the United States; but no one who attended any of the meetings of the Credentials Committee of the Democratic Party during the past fortnight can doubt that they are. It was only slowly, as one watched the new delegates and listened to the proceedings, that it became clear that, in the demand for fair quotas of blacks and the young and women on the state delegations, something more than fairness was being demanded. Day by day, under one's nose, it was being suggested that the Democratic Party should adopt an entirely new principle of representation. One may suspect it, as I personally do, but I do not see how anyone can deny that its possibilities are dynamic, and that its influence may spread far and wide.
The demands for fair quotas at first seemed only irksome. No sooner had the Credentials Committee unanimously chosen a woman, Patricia Roberts Harris, to be its chairman, than one of its women members jumped up to protest that her small staff of lawyers did not seem to include any women. Patricia Harris explained that the lawyers were all volunteers, giving their time free, and that they did include one woman lawyer who had offered her services. What steps had she taken to find worben lawyers? Patricia Harris patiently explained that, when you are looking for volunteers for thankless jobs, you ask around, and you take those who come forward.
But, as the days passed, and the business became more serious, the demand for fair quotas grew in importance, until it was impossible to ignore the fact that those who were making it were not only interested in redressing past wrongs, real or imagined, but were standing on a principle in which they passionately believed. Away from the committee meetings, when one tried to phrase the principle for oneself, its meaning was at once apparent. Something remarkable was being proposed.
The new guidelines — A-I and A-2 — under which the demand for fair quotas has been made are in themselves modest. A-1 says that State Democratic Parties should try to overcome the effects of past discrimination by taking affirmative steps to encourage the participation of minority groups, women, and young people; A-2 says that these groups should be represented on national convention delegations in reasonable relationship to their presence in the population. Not only do these words not propose a quota system, but those who drafted them insist that they do not.
But, as the meetings of the Credentials Committee progressed, it became clear that the spirit which was being breathed into the words was that of a quota system, and the implications were at once irresistible. It was being held that (1) the interests of a group can only be represented by a member of that group; and that (2) the function of a representative is only the representation of those interests. Both of these propositions — passionately believed in, firmly insisted on — undermine the principle that, beyond the particular interests of any group from which he may derive his authority, the representative is intended , also to serve a general public interest. One wished to return to the meeting of the Credentials Committee the following day with copies of Burke's letter to his constituents at Bristol, and pass them around.
I do not believe that I am exaggerating the importance of what we are witnessing. I have hitherto taken the slogan of participatory democracy' with considerable scepticism. It has seemed to me only a disguise for an otherwise conventional attempt on the part of new elites to challenge old elites. I could find no constitutional principle at work which would persist after the new elites had succeeded. Now, after listening to the debates of the past two weeks, I am persuaded that a constitutional principle is there, gathering its own strength.
What is more, George McGovern is discovering this. Again and again, as the convention approached, he would find himself in the position of the sorcerer whose apprentices have passed beyond his control. This is partly explained by the consistently neglected local nature of American politics. The ' reform ' delegates from Cook County in Chicago are more interested in destroying Richard Daley than in defeating Richard Nixon, and from their point of view they are probably right. It is Richard Daley, and not Richard Nixon, who denies them power and influence over their own lives. It must have been galling to McGoven, when he goes on making his conciliatory telephone calls to Richard Daley, to have no answer if and when the mayor said to him: "George, how can I try to reach a compromise with you if you cannot promise me that your delegates will support it?" But, if my reading is correct, far more is at work than the impatience of a few hundred ' reform ' delegates who, under the personal banner of George McGovern, captured the nominating process of the Democratic Party in their own local interests. Out of the cry of "participatory democracy" has come a constitutional principle which is not going to lie down when it is no longer useful to a national leader. The idea of two parties which are responsive to a general public interest which they define (often in terms, so the complaint goes, that are barely distinguishable) is being challenged by the idea of at least one party which is responsive to particular interests to which it has deliberately opened its procedures.
There was nothing illogical, according to this second principle, when the Poor People's Campaign, which is not formally attached to the Democratic Party, nevertheless demanded on the eve of the convention that it should be allotted 750 seats on the convention floor: the quota to which the poor are entitled in proportion to their presence in the population. Ludicrous maybe, but logical. These are the kinds of knots in which the Democratic Party has tied itself this year: the most embarrassing of which has been the appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States to decide, in effect, whom the Party should nominate, a burden which the court has predictably refused.
Perhaps the Party will be unable to untie or to sever these knots in the convention; and there will certainly have been many occagions, before these words are read, when one will have buried one's head in one's hands at its efforts. But something of significance for the idea of representative democracy is happening, and for a clue one may go back more than ten years.
As early as July 2, 1960, the poet. Kenneth Rexroth wrote an article in the Nation with the prescient title, "The Students Take Over." He suggested in the course of it that "a society which advances by means of an elite in permanent revolt and alienation is something new," and he went on to outline the hope to which, he thought, the students were looking: "Just because the machine is so vast, so complex, it is far more sensitive than ever before. Individual action does tell. Give a tiny poke at one of the insignificant gears down in its bowels and slowly it begins to shudder all over and suddenly belches out hot rivets." What I am suggesting is that this is what is happening at this moment in the Democratic Party: the tiny poke, the shudder of the machine, the hot rivets. However much one may suspect it -= and distrust in particular the constitutional principle which seems to have been erected — I do not see how anyone can deny that there is something of value in the demonstration that the machine, so vast and so complex, is in fact sensitive to individual action amongst its insignificant gears. It at least gives more hope than confronting the machine on the streets.
There is a deep irony, but also a grudging respect, in the wry comment of one of the Democratic Party's established leaders: "To think that four years ago we were imploring them to stay within the system."
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