THE END OF POLITICS?
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one percent in the polls now) is that those parties still haven't lost their
ability to control their own choice of candidates. We have, and that's a
fundamental difference.
Another thing that I would like to add concerns the question of the
parties' function of problem-solving. One of the reasons why the parties
are now weak in problem-solving is because the courts, for better or
worse and more often for worse, have taken over the question of prob–
lem-solving. This means, for instance, that on the streets of New York,
begging is legal even if it's aggressive and invasive to others, because a
federal judge says so. A federal judge says so, because an interest group
went to the judge and said, "Give us some help."
On the media: here I have to agree largely with Eric, although not
entirely. Anyone living for these last few years in New York has to be
struck by how it was possible in the course of two years to lose three
hundred and seventy-two thousand jobs, effectively fifteen percent of the
private sector, and not have that fact covered by
The New York Times.
The
New York Times
in fact has stopped publishing the monthly features
on unemployment that it used to run. We just had a senatorial campaign
in which, although one of the candidates, Comptroller Elizabeth
Holtzman, had these unemployment figures and knew what the story
was, she was afraid to use them. Instead, it became a race to see who
could claim to have been more victimized.
Now I come to the point on which I disagree with Eric, when he
says that the media is distorting the current economic situation. Part of
the problem is that Bush has never come to grips with the structural
changes affecting the economy, the loss of manufacturing dominance, the
effect of international trade. I think people have a sense that Bush is
simply not concerned with these things. A friend of mine who has reason
to know pointed out to me that in four years Bush never asked a single
question at the Council of Economic Advisors meetings. He just wasn't
interested. He thought it would take care of itself. And we saw in that
debate last night that Bush had nothing to say on the economy. It was
functionally a TKO. One other point, Eric. I think you're wrong about
the Clinton people not having a sense of how bad it is. Today's
Los
Angeles Times
picks up what I've been hearing informally, that the
Clinton people are very well aware of the prospective bank failures in
California, come December. And they are very well aware of the fact
that they may need a stimulus package right away, even if that undercuts
fighting the deficit.
Following up on the question of political cycles - and here I must
say
that I have been under Professor Schlesinger's spell since I was an un–
dergraduate - these cycles have always been in my mind. But I wonder
