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PARTISAN REVIEW
actual ability to govern, or Clinton's actual ability to govern (I'll leave
out Ross Perot, who seems to me, aside from his proficiency with one–
liners, beside the point), is an interesting question, and one that has not
been particularly addressed. I think class considerations and class animus
remain the unspoken negative obsessions in America; if you look closely,
you'll see them casting shadows all over this election. I'm curious to
know what you think about this.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.:
Well, [ do think that part of the capacity to
govern successfully is to have a sense of the people, to understand what
they are talking about, and to have some identification with the distress
and problems people have. One of Bush's troubles is a lack of social
imagination, when he tries to perceive the problems of anyone beyond
the country-club set. On the other hand, the mere capacity to exploit
people's distress in a demagogic way doesn't guarantee wise government.
Barbara Gordon:
Professor Schlesinger, you were talking about the
decline of the American political party and Americans' growing indiffer–
ence to associating themselves with a political party, in the community
sense, in the sense of ideology. I think there's another reason that hasn't
been mentioned here, and that it is quite intentional. This gridlock that
everyone has been screaming about, keeping things bottled up - in a
certain sense, Americans want that. They want the social and economic
largesse in their towns and their communities that they suspect will come
from the party of the Democrats, but for at least the last twelve years
they felt that having a Republican in the White House was the best
thing, after the disaster of Jimmy Carter. So, as much as Perot and ev–
eryone says we have to get rid of that gridlock, I think it's a balance
that makes many Americans very comfortable and therefore diminishes
their need to be associated with a party.
It
leaves them free and easy to
swing in this way. I wonder what your comment on this might be?
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.:
I would agree that the American electorate
wants divided government, and that's why they have been voting rather
consistently for it since the Second World War. But I would add an–
other point. A serious reason why we have preferred divided government
is to check and contain the imperial presidency. When foreign policy be–
comes dominant, as it has been since Pearl Harbor, power flows to the
presidency. Congress is perfectly willing to challenge the presidency on
domestic questions, because legislators think they know just as much if
not more than the executive branch does about internal problems. But
there is a tendency to defer to the presidency on external problems, on
the grounds, sometimes real, sometimes wrong, that the president has su-
