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PARTISAN REVIEW
real. Whatever one thinks about the notion itself, the idea held its own:
it will result in the election to Congress of an enormous number of
women. Maybe Bill Clinton is a return to what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
has called the vital center. Maybe Clinton rejects falsely polarizing
choices: after all, family values and individual responsibility needn't stand
in opposition to ending social inequities. Certainly, Clinton has cam–
paigned as a champion of centrism. How he will govern is another ques–
tion.
At this point, let me stop. I really just wanted to throw out a few
thoughts. We all will learn a lot more from Mr. Schlesinger, and from
listening to things that you yourselves have to say.
Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr.:
As Eric Breindel suggested, one measure of
political alienation might well be the decline in voter turnout. We all
know that in recent elections, hardly more than fifty percent of eligible
voters have voted, which means that the person elected as our next
president could conceivably be chosen by twenty-six percent of the eli–
gible electorate. Clearly, this is a rather new situation. In the election of
1988, about fifty percent of eligible voters turned out. In the election of
1888, almost eighty percent of eligible voters turned out. It is interesting
to wonder why there has been this striking decline. It cannot be because
the candidates in 1888, Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison, or the
issues of 1888 were more compelling than the candidates or issues of
1988. Indeed, those were years in which the presidential candidates were
of such mediocre quality that James Bryce, in his book
The American
Commonwealth,
also published in 1888, included a chapter entitled,
"Why Great Men Are Not Chosen Presidents."
Why would eighty percent of the voters turn out in 1888 and barely
fifty percent in 1988? I think one great difference between 1888 and
1988 is the decline of the political party as an agency of voter mobiliza–
tion. In 1888, the party was a very effective political unit. People were
born into their political parties as they were born into their churches.
They would as soon think of switching from Republican to Democrat
or vice versa as from Catholic to Baptist or vice versa. These were the
days when you had great torch-lit party processions; when Bryce, com–
ing to this country, talked about the "military discipline" of American
political parties. And these were the classic days of party control of the
political process. What has happened between 1888 and 1988 or 1992 to
transform the parties from vital, effective, disciplined units controlling the
political process, to the enfeebled, vague labels that they are today? I just
read today in
The New York Times,
for example, that many candidates,
among them Senator Dole, the Republican leader in the Senate now
