Books

Whitewashing the Presidents

Louis Heren

America in search of itself Theodore H. White (Cape 10.95) Theodore White's Making-of-the-Presi- dent books have made him rich and famous beyond the dreams of British political journalists, and for good reason. He knows his job better than most, is prepared to spend months on the campaign trail and is a talented if occasionally pom- pous writer.

The son of Jewish immigrants who made it by winning scholarships to Boston Latin and Harvard, he loves the idea of America. He knows that American politics are always earthy and often corrupt, but has vested them with a grandeur which his countrymen must have found reassuring.

His vision — I cannot think of a better word — of the Presidency borders on the mystical, and oddly enough was shared by John Bright more than 120 years ago. The Victorian radical thought that the whole world offered no finer spectacle than an American presidential election, and added: 'You may point, if you will, to hereditary rulers, to crowns coming down through successive generations of the same family, to thrones based on prescription or on con- quest, to sceptres wielded over veteran legions and subject realms — but to my mind there is nothing more worthy of reverence and obedience, and nothing more sacred, than the authority of the freely chosen magistrate of a great and free peo- ple; and if there be on earth and amongst men any right divine to govern, surely it rests with a ruler so chosen and so ap- pointed.'

This is the essence of White's love affair, and as with other lovers he has been led astray. He had Kennedy inheriting Camelot, which was one of his silliest ideas, and even Nixon was raised to the American pantheon.

He was unaware of Watergate at the time, and afterwards wrote Breach of Faith. It must have been doubly painful; not only was the American electoral system shown to be less than perfect but his own judgment and reporting style were found wanting.

In a way, this book is an attempt to ex- plain what went wrong with the United States despite the system which was suppos- ed to produce rulers with a divine right to govern. As usual, it makes fascinating reading.

In the old days the primary elections were relatively unimportant. Presidential can- didates came up through the parties. The wards and precincts were organised by the local captains, and the national conventions decided who would be the candidate.

The system could be corrupt and a few unworthy candidates were chosen in smoke- filled rooms, but it produced Jackson, Lin- coln and Roosevelt as well as Harding. It also played a unifying role in the life of the nation; not least among the ethnic groups of the industrial North-East, which was then the fount of power.

Machine bosses such as Richard Daley of Chicago 'stole the city blind', but their ethnic coalitions prevented the Irish, Italians, Poles, Hungarians and Jews from being at each other's throats. The machine was run with tribal justice; all the lesser chieftains were equal, and each group received its proper share of the spoils.

Daley was a power in the land. He laun- ched Adlai Stevenson into politics, which Roy Jenkins chose to ignore in his potted biography. There is a suspicion that Ken- nedy would not have become President if Daley had not stuffed the ballot boxes in Cook County.

He was still a national force in Democratic politics in 1968, but a lone one because of the shift to the suburbs and the mass migration from the Frost Belt to the Sun -Belt. These changes were destabilising for the political parties, especially for the Democrats who had already lost the once Solid South.

Other factors were no less damaging. Kennedy proved that the primaries could be a direct route to the White House, and new money from Texas swayed votes in other states. Television transformed campaign- ing, as did new techniques such as polling and direct-mailings which White has ex- plained so well.

The 1956 election was the last in which the parties played a major role. Thereafter they were taken over by men who could raise money to contest the primaries, which rapidly increased in number, and to buy television time in order to arrive at the national conventions with enough pledged delegates to guarantee their nomination. Kennedy and Carter were outstanding ex- amples of candidates who in effect hijacked their party.

This was when American politics took the wrong turning. The old system was cor- rupt but no more than the new; the political action committees which raise immense sums of money are now seen to be a major threat to representative government and political stability. Eisenhower was the last President to serve two terms; and the per- sonality cult which is fostered by television must bear some of the responsibility for four assassination attempts, two of them fatal.

The period under review, from 1956 to 1980, also saw the flowering of American liberalism. It was fed from the cornucopia of federal goodies promised by presidential candidates to the various pressure groups which in terms of political muscle had replaced the parties.

White believes that the 1980 election was historically important because it marked the

end of the liberal era. Reagan was elected

because the majority revolted against the idea 'that the duty of government was to conceive programmes and fund them so that whatever was accepted as right and just, at home and abroad, would come to pass, whatever the cost, whatever the con- tradiction between good intentions and prevailing reality.'

1 am not so sure that this is true. Carter might well have been re-elected but for the Iran hostages and the economic crisis. Reagan, despite his age, was also the better television performer.

The liberal era was a great period in re- cent American history. Johnson's three Civil Rights Acts liberated blacks from in- stitutionalised discrimination; and the Great Society programmes, for all their faults, did something to help the American white, black and brown proletariat.

It is true that they were wastefully ad- ministered, and that index-linked en-

titlements removed much of the welfare

spending from congressional control. The main trouble, however, was that the new-

style Presidents responded to pressure groups with little or no concern for ordinary Americans or the public good. In their search for new constituencies they forgot Richard Scammon's dictum: the ma- jority of Americans are non-black, non young and non-poor.

They got their revenge in 1980, but it did not remain sweet for long. Reagan cut the welfare and social programmes, which did need pruning, but massively increased defence spending. Wall Street failed to res- pond to his supply-side economics and unemployment continued to rise. The budget will not be balanced within Reagan's lifetime. White finishes the book in a doleful mood, saying that 'another wrong turning in this decade could take politics away from traditional politicians and bring us to con- vulsion in the streets.' He also seems to

believe that the Democratic party has been reduced to a rump of blacks, women, Hispanics and Jews.

This is nonsense. The United States can be violent, but it is also an immensely stable country. The Democratic party, the world's oldest political party, was well established when the Tories and Whigs at Westminster were still factions. It has had its, ups and downs, as have the Republicans who were written off in the mid-Sixties.

The United States will survive and flourish once more, and its revival will be

hastened if the parties can again become the unifying forces they once were.