Hillary Clinton and the Democrats seem poised for a historic victory. The only question is how far it will go. Will the Democrats win control of the Senate and/or the House of Representatives? Can they end the Republican control of most state governments, and eventually even tip the Supreme Court?
Sometimes Democrats have felt almost like the Chicago Cubs (no championship since 1908) or the Cleveland Indians (none since 1948). Maybe this is the year they can shake off the curse.
I came of political age in 1960. I cast my first vote for president that year. In the end the outcome was scarily close, but the victory over the forces embodied in Richard Nixon seemed deeply satisfying.
Camelot ended tragically in Dallas. But then Lyndon Johnson took over. Under him the Democratic Party accomplished things never dreamed possible: enacting a very strong Civil Rights Act in 1964 (the greatest legislative achievement of my lifetime, bar none); the Voting Rights Act of 1965, another huge triumph, though recently compromised by the Roberts Court; the Great Society and the “war” on poverty. Politics got muddier as the 1960s wore on, but these were monumental reforms by any standard.
Did LBJ expect to be lionized for these achievements? In fact he knew, better than anyone, that the Democratic Party would pay a heavy political price for these bold leaps. The Voting Rights Act would eventually lead to the enfranchisement of millions of black voters, but it would drive most of “solid South” into the arms of the GOP, sorting American voters into two national parties, one to the left, the other to the right.
Then came the war in Vietnam, and the Johnson presidency limped to its cruelly disappointing close.
Richard Nixon, with assistance from Henry Kissinger and Daniel Moynihan, knew just how to take advantage of that. Nixon’s presidency, like the man himself, was profoundly complicated. We mustn’t forget that it was Nixon who in 1970 created the Environmental Protection Agency, by executive order, and signed into law the bill that created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
EPA and OSHA led the way to the new regulatory state, triggering the wrath of many free enterprisers – people like John Olin, the Koch brothers, Richard Mellon Scaife. Jane Mayer’s book, “Dark Money,” traces the origin of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” against Hillary Clinton, finding it in a memo written by Lewis Powell, a lawyer in Richmond Virginia, then “of counsel” to several major corporations.
Powell’s influential tract described the predicament of corporate America. It was, he said, under assault, not only from the radical left, but on college campuses and from pulpits, in mainstream editorials and influential journals. To combat this hostility, he outlined a strategy and called on wealthy donors to support it. What was needed was a campaign to reshape the dominant culture, to strengthen institutions that leaned toward the right, to create new institutes and support institutes, think-tanks and scholars that understood and valued the free enterprise system.
Soon this call to arms, vigorously promoted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, gained wide circulation. President Nixon appointed Lewis Powell to the Supreme Court (Powell had resisted earlier efforts by Nixon to name him to the court), where he served with considerable distinction until 1987.
Eventually Nixon got caught in the Watergate scandal and was forced to resign. The awful moment was partly saved by Gerald Ford’s brief remarks at his inaugural ceremony. “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over… Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.” It was a little glib, but a worthy aspiration at that troubled moment.
Jimmy Carter’s troubled presidency ended in a harsh quarrel among Democrats, leaving Ronald Reagan to pick up the pieces and launch his own powerful political movement. In due course it took control, not only of the presidency, but of many state governments as well. They were in position to draw the lines that defined congressional and state legislative districts. This they did, with a vengeance, leading to the current norm (except in Massachusetts, thanks to Stan Rosenberg) where legislators (incumbents) choose their voters, rather than the other way around.
Following Reagan, George H.W. Bush, after overwhelming Michael Dukakis’ risible campaign, enjoyed a brief term, but was unable to withstand the hurricane that Bill and Hillary presented. The Clinton presidency left a mixed legacy, but politically it was remarkably shallow. It produced virtually no Democratic victories at the state level, and left Al Gore without much momentum for his campaign.
The Reagan coalition returned to power with George W. Bush’s narrow win over Gore (aided and abetted by the Republican cabal at the Supreme Court) and Bush’s more decisive victory over John Kerry in 2004.
More importantly Republicans kept hold of politics at the state level, where the GOP was again able to use gerrymandering to win congressional and state legislative districts across the land.
Obama scored a huge, historic, personal victory in 2008 and an even more decisive win in 2012, but midterm elections in 2010 and 2014 enabled the Republicans to gain and maintain effective control of Congress – and of the Supreme Court.
What patterns do we find in this history? Let me emphasize just two.
1. The framers’ system affords manifold ways for political minorities to frustrate even very powerful political currents. What happened to Obama at the hands of Mitch McConnell and the Roberts Court was not new. The system frustrated Bill Clinton’s presidency, too, and Kennedy’s, and Reagan’s. These were not accidents. The system was built that way.
2. Powerful political movements seem inevitably to overreach. David Broder’s 1972 account of the end of the New Deal coalition in the late 1960s , entitled “The Party’s Over,” is a classic. In due course we will have a similar tale of how the plutocrats came to grief in the 2016 campaign.
Can Hillary Clinton dislodge the Reagan coalition, following over 30 years of frustration? Can she replace it with something equally durable and coherent?
A wonderful old prayer asks God to “… give rest to the weary, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous….” Let us take courage and instruction, especially from that last petition.
Don Robinson, a retired professor of government at Smith College, writes a regular column for the Gazette which is published the fourth Thursday of the month. He can be reached at at drobinso@smith.edu.