| In my previous diaries, "Three Lies of Saint Ronnie And One Truth From Michael Moore" and "Drilling Down Into Reagan's Big Lie About The Economy", I looked at some founding lies at the core of modern conservatism under the banner of Reagan, focusing in one economics in the second diary. The bottom line there was that Reagan continued relying on Keynsian economics-but without crediting Keynes and without following the principles inherent in Keynesian models for managing the economy responsibly. Instead, the new conservative economics was presented in a barrage of distracting explanations that appeared to be designed for maximum gut appeal regardless of whether they actually made any sense or not.
Democrats generally were totally flumoxed by this approach. It simply confounded them what to say beyond, "But that's ridiculous!" Because Democrats did not want to cut domestic programs to balance the budget, and were sensitive to "soft on defense" charges when it came to the bloated military budget, and "tax and spend" charges when it came to trying to close the budget gap by restoring revenue balance, they ended up going along with a clearly unsustainable fiscal policy, which increasingly disturbed a certain centrist constituency, which Chris has argued elsewhere represents a long-term intergenerational presence of reform-oriented voters, who have voted populist, progressive, even socialist in various past elections dating back over a century now. Whether these are actually the same voters or their desecendents, we cannot actually say. But we can say that a certain level of these reformist sentiments seems to be an enduring feature of the political cultures of some states far more than others, and Perot's support came disproportionately from these long-term centers of reformist tradition.
In this diary, I want to discuss how Perot's Reform Party presidential bid precipitated a flipping of partisan allegiance among a segment of these voters sufficient to switch control of Congress from Democratic to Republican in 1994, and to "elect" George W. Bush in 2000. I also want to explain how this process fits into my larger framework of realignment theory, as well as how this contradicts the currently popular Versailles media meme that the Clinton Administration got into trouble by trying to be too liberal for the country. In doing so, I rely heavily on the book, Three's a Crowd: The Dynamic of Third Parties, Ross Perot, and Republican Resurgence by Ronald B. Rapoport and Walter J. Stone. All that begins on the flip. |
| Realignment Background
In Three's a Crowd: The Dynamic of Third Parties, Ross Perot, and Republican Resurgence Ronald B. Rapoport and Walter J. Stone argue that third parties play a critical role in facilitating political change that's normally resisted by the two-party system. This is consanant with Walter Dean Burnham's realignment theory, which sees a succession of distinct party systems, which grow ossified over time, until the accumulating tensions result in a realignment of forces, around a new constellation of issues that have not been dealt with by the previous dominant and subdominant parties. Burnham sees the emergence of third parties as a symptom of the growing ossification. In the first two party systems (1796-1828 and 1828-1860), one of the major parties disappeared entirely as they came to a close, while the Third Party System (1860-1896) saw the merging of a rising third party-the Populists-with the subdominant Democratic Party, under the banner of William Jennings Bryan. Furthermore, the Fifth Party System (1932-1968) ended with emergence of the segregationist candidacy of George Wallace, a constituency that Nixon absorbed via his "Southern Strategy."
Things were a good deal messier with the Fourth Party system (1896-1932), which saw much stronger and varied third party activity in the middle decade (particuarly in 1912) than it did toward the end, and during the Sixth Party System (1968-2008), which similarly saw the highpoint of third party activity in 1992, a full 16 years prior to the realigning election which has just ended this period. The reasons for these anomalies are similar, in my opinion: both the elections that began these party systems were inherently more ambiguous than the other ones, with greater tensions within the dominant and subdominant party coalitions than during other party systems. Indeed, the 1968 election can better be thought of as a "de-aligning" election, in that it gave birth to a period in which party identification was significantly weakened, and divided government became the rule, rather than the exception. Thus initial divisions within a small, yet significant portion of the electorate had consequences that spread the blurring more generally. This was capitalized on in 1980, as I have described in the previous diary, when Keynsian economics was hijacked, disguised and used to confuse and confound the already fragmented Democratic Party, as described in the introductory paragraphs of this diary.
The Perot phenomena emerged in large part because of this confused state-though economics alone was not the sole factor involved. The book Three's A Crowd does not focus on the broader sorts of issues just described, but is generally (though not perfectly) consistent with them. I will quote some passages, and present some graphs to show how their argument fits into and provides supporting detail for the broader framework of realignment as I understand it.
Ross Perot, the 1994 Election And Beyond
The importance of the 1994 election can be seen most dramatically in the sharp increase in Southern GOP seats that it produced. Although the trend had long been underway, this represented a sharp shift that was only further consolidated in the following elections:
This is readily observed backdrop for the more precise analysis presented below.
At first, Perot appeared to have a stronger affinity with the Democrats, once Clinton emerged as the nominee. He even went so far as to withdraw from the race for a period of time. However, after the 1992 election, the Clinton Administration alienated both Perot and his supporters, most strikingly by pushing through NAFTA without any meaningful labor or environmental provisions, which they had promised during the campaign. Even though more Republicans than Democrats voted for NAFTA, the Clinton/Gore leadership was decisive in pushing the agreement through Congress-something Bush could never have accomplished.
The book then has a rather extensive discussion of how different forces within the Republican Party struggled over the question of whether to make a play for engaging Perot and his supporters. For example:
"As the dynamic of third parties suggests, after Perot identified and mobilized a large constituency, both major parties bid for its support in subsequent elections. The Republicans, as the party out of power in both houses of Congress and the presidency, had the greater opportunity and incentive to appeal aggressively to the Perot constituency. Beginning with the February 1993 Republican postelection retreat, a group of Republican leaders, spearheaded by Newt Gingrich and John Kasich, established close ties with Perot and his UWSA organizations. Despite initial reluctance form other party leaders, including Bob Dole and Haley Barbour, Gingrich and his collegaues brought the Republcian Party into line behind a Perot-base strategy. Most impresdsive in this effort was the Contract with America, which reflected both the form of Perot's checklist for candidates at the end of his book United We Stand America and many of the same issue priorities of Perot and his supporters, while ignoring issues--such as abortion and free trade--where differences between the GOP base and the Perot movement were sharp."
This was, in effect, an example of profound ideological deception. In fact, one can argue that the Contract With America was not very strongly believed in by the Republicans who advanced it. Many, for example, who pledged voluntarily to abide by term limits would later go on to seek continued re-election. More striking, arguably, was the greater importance that these Republicans placed on the missing issues-abortion, free trade, etc.-as opposed to the issues included in the Contract. This would eventually be reflected in the erosion of GOP seats held outside the South, and they were replaced by more Southern seats. But all that had not yet come to pass.
The authors go on to argue:
"The 1994 Republican landslide two years after Ross Perot's remarkable 1992 campaign was no coincidence, nor was it simply the culmination of long-term partisan trends. Rather, the GOP victory was firmly rooted in Perot's electoral success two years before and in the dynamics of third parties.
Figure 8.3 connects the size of the 1992 Perot vote in congressional districts with the Republican vote share and the chanced the district flipped from Democratic to Republican control in the 1994 elections. Only 2.2 percent of Democratic districts where Perot received 10 percent or less of the district vote flipped to the Republicans in 1994, while 42 percent of Democratic districts where Perot ran most strongly in 1992 switched to the GOP. The question is whether this relationship between the 1992 Perot vote in districts and Republican success in 1994 holds up in a more fully controlled analysis."
The authors then go on to demonstrate that it does. After doing that, they go one step further, and ask the question, "What would have happened if Perot's 1992 vote hadn't been that large?" They answer:
"Had Perot won the same popular vote as he captured in 1996 (8.4 percent, less than half of what he actually received in 1992), we estimate that the Republicans would have picjed up about twenty-nine seats over what they held in 1992, leaving Democratic control intact. If the Republicans had gained twenty-nine seats, their performance would not have been exceptional for a midtern election--the average number of seats lost by the president's party between 1946 and 1990 was twenty-six. If Perot had received the same popular vote as John Anderson did in 1980, the Republican total would have been even lower. Had Perot won the same popular-vote share that George Wallace secured in the 1968 presidential elections (13.5 percent), the Republicans would have won a bare majority of House seats. By our estimate, if the Perot vote in 1993 had been below about 13.2 percent, the Republicans probably would not have won control of the House in 1994.
"In sum, we have shown that the Republican victory in the 1994 elections resulted from the party's successful bid for the Perot constituency's support. That bid reflected coordinated actions by national party leaders in the form of the Contract with America, and it came in the form of individual decisions by strong potential House candfidates on the GOP side who saw opportunity signaled by the size of the Perot vote in their districts. Districts with the largest concentrations of Perot voters responded, in turn, by producing the change in party control and the GOP House victory."
The authors also go on to show that there is a correlation between Perot votes in 1994, and presidential votes in 1996 and 2000. Without the influence of Perot in 1994, they conclude, Bush would not have been "elected" in 2000.:
Conclusions
Several points can be drawn from this analysis.
First, that Perot's 1992 run had a significant realigning impact, but that this impact amounted to more of a reshuffling from one unbalanced state to another. It did not result in Clinton's defeat in 1996, nor did it result in a majority vote for Bush in 2000. Thus, it and its resultant shits to the GOP appear to have more in common with "failed realignments" like the Democratic victory in 1912 or the GOP victory in 1952 than it does with successful realignments. The bare Republican majority it created was highly unstable, and propelled the party to increasingly self-contradictory policies over the following decade and a half. These internal contradictions within the GOP appear to have taken the place of a resurgent third party-as can be seen most vividly in sharp divisions visible in the GOP presidential primary of 2008.
Second, it is obvious that Clinton did not suffer as a result of trying to govern too far left in 1993-1994. Rather, Clinton shifted to the right of where he promised to go-most notably by passing NAFTA-and thereby opened up space for the GOP to make a direct play for Perot's support. Thus, the same party that created a huge national debt, and outsourced millions of manufacturing jobs was able to gain the votes of millions of Perot voters who were most upset by precisely those same policies, precisely because Clinton moved right and aligned himself with the very policies that Perot voters most objected to. (This was not the sole fact, as Mike Lux recently pointed out-there was also a sharp drop in base Democratic voter turnout, due some the exact same reasons, as well as failure to deliver on promises such as health care.)
Third, although the timing and other factors strongly suggest that 2008 is a true realigning election, there remains a very high probability that if not handled properly, it could be a very ambiguous realignment, much more like 1896 or 1968 than 1932 or 1860. The blurring of alternatives currently being promoted by the political establishment is precisely the sort of thing that leaves voting blocks in a prolonged state of flux, and that is precisely what leads to policy incoherence of the sort seen throughout much of the Fourth Party Sytem (1896-1932) and the Sixth Party System (1968-2008).
What is needed--not just for progressives, but for the political system as a whole to function effectively in making decisive choices and forging proactive policies--is a significant clarification of ideological differences and alternatives. Such a clarification need not be incompatible with a subsequent negotiation of policies that can satisfy people across a signficant spectrum of opinion. Indeed, such clarification most likely is necessary in order to reach such agreement. Without a clarification of terms and alternatives, political discussions remain mired in multiple misunderstandings that leave large blocks of voters profoundly confused about the sources of their own discontent, and thus fundametnally powerless to do anyhthing about them.
P.S. On McCain
The authors also note that McCain qute consciously modelled his 2000 presidential campaign in terms of trying to capture the Perot/Reform vote. It appears vitally important to consider McCain's ultimate failure, and the many gyrations he went through over the past 8 years as further symptoms of the ultimate incompatibility of the Perot reformists and the GOP base. This is further complicated by McCain's own inability to decide exactly who "the Real McCain" ultimately was. |
