32
PARTISAN REVIEW
because, in a system based on separation of powers, the party was one
means of bridging the separation and providing unified government.
So the party came to playa very vital role, and it still in some as–
pects retains a vital role. But the decay of the parties permits the Perot
phenomenon. As parties no longer control the process, any Texas bil–
lionaire who sounds like Will Rogers and can afford to pay for a cam–
paign is going to be able to enter the political process. I think the de–
cline of the parties means a rise in personalist political movements; the
George Wallace movement in 1968 was a preview of the Perot move–
ment of 1992. Politics without parties is going to be much more unstable
than politics with parties.
Stephen Koch:
I am impressed and enlightened by this discussion, espe–
cially by Arthur Schlesinger's remarks. But is it really true that the
Democratic Party is in such a state of disarray? Doesn't the Clinton can–
didacy represent a new unity? My feeling is that right now there are
large numbers of people, people who have been uncertain and disaffected
since the fragmentations of 1968, who are saying, "Here at last is a
Democratic Party candidate who I really believe
ought
to win, and who
is really
going
to win."
That's new. 1968 shattered the old Roosevelt coalition, permanently
breaking its grip on Washington politics. The task of shaping a new
unity has been troubled, and it has seen many failures. Professor
Schlesinger says that Jimmy Carter was the most conservative Democratic
president since Grover Cleveland. Perhaps - but many in Carter's cabinet
and sub-cabinet were among the most left-wing senior officials in recent
memory, and in fact his administraion was enfeebled in part by the many
unintegrated divisions within the Democratic Party. Carter was elected as
a centrist, but the Carter center did not hold. The Clinton center just
might make it.
Eric Breindel notes the small role that race has played in this elec–
tion. Yet only four years ago, with the Jesse Jackson campaign, race
dominated the scene. Jackson assumed leadership of black politics in
America partly to assert a new authority for blacks within the Party,
partly to assemble a new coalition from the classic constituencies of the
left. He got the new authority, and we'll surely hear more of it. But
Jackson's electoral combination failed. Yet Clinton seems genuinely to
be occupying the center, as any American president must. So isn't it pos–
sible that the Clinton candidacy represents not a continuing disintegra–
tion of the Democratic Party, but its new unity, its new face?
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.:
I would hope that this will be the case. I
