New Politics
Ideology in America.
by Everett Carll Ladd.
Cornell University Press. 378 pp. $11.50.
Major political realignments have been rare in American history. The last occurred during the 30’s, when Franklin Roosevelt molded a coalition of workers, Southerners, blacks, urbanites, and intellectuals into the majority party of the country. Since that time the basic outlines of American politics have remained amazingly consistent, and broad political strategies of the national parties have changed very little. To win national office, the Democrats must maintain their majority of diverse and frequently contradictory interests, convincing people to vote according to habit. Republicans, on the other hand, must wean away some elements of the Democratic majority, and persuade voters to support candidates against their normal party affiliations. In the broadest sense, this has been the picture of American politics since 1936.
Similarly, the political issues that arose out of the Depression and the New Deal have, for over thirty years, given structure and definition to the American political landscape. Thus, through the administrations of Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy the country has followed a foreign policy that is largely bipartisan, and a domestic policy that has revolved around the issues of welfare and the role of the government in the nation’s economy. Though the immediate political issues may change in each campaign, from social security to unemployment to inflation to medical care, the larger outlines have not altered. Throughout this period New Deal policies have provided the operative guidelines.
These facts have enabled Americans to develop a descriptive mechanism which serves to simplify and make comprehensible the vast heterogeneity that is American politics. Out of the multiple groups and conflicting interests of American society has emerged the liberal-conservative spectrum, a single axis along which any public figure can be placed to determine his position in the political scene or with regard to any other political figure. There are exceptions, of course, but the amazing fact is that the liberal-conservative dichotomy has worked so well for so long. As is commonly known, the words “liberal” and “conservative” carry little of the meaning that is traditionally reserved to them by political theorists, and ironists never tire of pointing out that the true disciple of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill is the modern conservative. But our modern usage derives, like so much else, from the politics of the New Deal, when these labels first entered common parlance. The liberal, as we understand him, is a man who supports the broad philosophy of the New Deal: government intervention in the national economy and public concern for the problems of welfare and security. The conservative opposes New Deal programs with a view that supports laissez-faire and relies more heavily on the private sector to solve social problems. There is, of course, considerable overlap, and a man may be liberal on some issues and conservative on others, but so long as public issues can be defined in terms of New Deal policies and philosophy, the labels continue to be meaningful and useful.
There is now, however, a general sense that the whole complexion of political life in America is changing. Roosevelt’s coalition, always tenuous at best, at last seems to be breaking down, and the traditional labels seem no longer to apply. Where, for instance, should one place Richard Daley or William Fulbright? The problem, of course, is that the issues that have defined American politics for thirty years are no longer the relevant concerns of the day; new problems have arisen for which the New Deal philosophy is outmoded and inapplicable. Bipartisan foreign policy is a thing of the past; race relations have entered a new phase; issues like obscenity, criminal rights, student demonstrations, and police power do not fit into the old categories; the military-industrial complex is a concept utterly foreign to the New Deal. Consequently, insofar as one continues to see politics in terms of the liberal-conservative dichotomy, the actions of individual politicians sometimes seem inexplicable. Thus, a “conservative” Senator, Sam Ervin, questions Nixon’s suggestions for increased police power; “liberal” Congresswoman Edith Green advocates anti-student legislation; Stuart Symington, former spokesman for the air force in the Senate, becomes a leading foe of the military, and “conservative” Senators James Pearson and Allen Ellender line up against the ABM. The political world is in disarray.
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It is not difficult to see the increasing inappropriateness of the liberal-conservative dichotomy; it is, however, quite another matter to produce a new descriptive axis that adequately defines the contours of American politics. This is the task that Everett Carll Ladd has set out for himself in Ideology in America. Ladd has organized his book around in-depth studies of three Connecticut communities. By focusing on a small town, Putnam; a suburb, Bloomfield; and a city, Hartford, he has hoped to accumulate the necessary data to arrive at a comprehensive description of modern American politics. Not surprisingly, Ladd finds that in Putnam politics is still a matter of personalities; general agreement exists on the issues, and the small town shows little concern for the world outside itself. In the suburb and the city, however, serious and divisive problems are reflected in such issues as school busing and urban redevelopment, which cut across traditional political lines and leave the liberal-conservative split a shambles. In Hartford, for instance, the business elite finds that it has much in common with dedicated civil-rights advocates against small businessmen and the white lower-middle class, and new political coalitions have developed.
What is the new political lineup that Ladd has found in his Connecticut communities? The axis of conflict that he feels most adequately describes the new situation is one that is bounded by positions which he calls cosmopolitanism and parochialism. Cosmopolitans are characterized as people who understand the nature of the problems facing their communities, who share in the new scientific, technological culture, whose approach to issues is regional rather than local, and who are secure in their social and economic status and therefore view issues in terms larger than simple self-interest. Parochials correspondingly, adopt positions that are described in terms like non-comprehension, prescience, localism, and marginal status. On an issue like public education, for example, cosmopolitans in Hartford feel that their schools face a crisis, attempt to apply the teachings of social science, and believe that a more regional approach, with assistance from the state and federal governments, is necessary if the problems are to be overcome. Therefore, they tend to advocate active and innovative school programs, including heavier spending and busing proposals. They are opposed by Hartford parochials, who want expenses kept down and who retain their allegiance to the neighborhood school. Similarly, on an issue like redevelopment, Bloomfield cosmopolitans urge a program to renovate the business district in order to give the town a better image and attract new business; parochials in Bloomfield oppose this on the grounds that the expenditures necessary for such a program are needlessly extravagant. Ladd recognizes that there are still many issues for which the liberal-conservative dichotomy is applicable, but believes that politics will be increasingly divided along a cosmopolitan-parochial axis. Further, despite a cautionary note, he suggests that what is true for Hartford today will likely be true for Dallas tomorrow, that in the political struggles dividing contemporary Hartford can be discerned the shape of America’s political future.
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Does Ladd’s system work? Will we some day be speaking of cosmopolitan Senators and parochial Congressmen? Probably not. If we attempt to apply the new dichotomy to current politics we find enormous difficulties, greater perhaps than our problems with the more conventional dichotomy. Ladd describes both Negroes and lower-middle-class whites as parochials, though there are probably no other groups so frequently at odds on current issues as these two. Surely, a comprehensive descriptive mechanism for modern American politics must be able to distinguish the civil-rights movement from the backlash reaction. Although George Wallace may be more aptly defined as parochial than conservative, it is unlikely that parochial Negroes will ever flock to the support of their ideological cohort. People can share attitudes and still be far apart on politics.
Here is suggested one of the primary problems confronting anyone who attempts to draw a new political dichotomy for America. What made the liberal-conservative axis so meaningful was that out of the New Deal there emerged broad agreement on the nature of the problems facing America, and the kinds of solutions required to overcome them. But in America today no such agreement exists, and people who, by Ladd’s definition, would qualify as cosmopolitans are often fiercely divided on crucial issues. How does one deal with the dispute between Walter Heller and Milton Friedman on the national economy, or Herman Kahn and Jerome Wiesner on ABM?
Underlying Ladd’s descriptive framework is a view of history, Hegelian in its implications, which derives from New Deal politics. Liberals have always believed that they were on the side of history, that conservatives stood in the way of ineluctable progress. It is this view which enables Ladd to conceive of a unified cosmopolitan orthodoxy permitting a single decriptive axis. Cosmopolitans accept the civilisation technicienne; parochials are fighting a losing battle against it. Thus: “Cosmopolitanism and Parochialism together appear as ideologies of our ‘over-developed’ society, the one positive and ‘progressive,’ the other reactive and ‘reactionary,’ both contributing to the changing face of American political ideology.” But these words can have no meaning outside of history, and few people today feel confident about history’s course. It is one thing to accept technology; it is another to predict its direction. The reason that the New Deal appeared to be on the side of history, that controversial programs of the 30’s are widely accepted today, has less to do with “progress” than with constituencies. Roosevelt’s coalition contained elements that were very much the wave of the future: workers, at a time when unions had entered a period of vigorous growth; urbanites, when cities were expanding; Negroes, who were leaving the South where they were powerless, and entering areas where their votes were crucial; the young. But who today can say wherein the wave of the future lies?
Still, Ladd’s dichotomy does not seem entirely without value. The cosmopolitan-parochial framework does appear to describe something, and a clue for its use is offered by Ladd himself. His political descriptions are most meaningful not when he employs his own mechanism, but when he uses a double axis combining the two dichotomies. Thus, Mayor Daley is probably more accurately defined as a liberal-parochial than by either word singly, and this fact is suggestive. For what it indicates is that American politics may have become so varied and diffuse that no single axis or dichotomy is sufficient to describe it. Coalitions form and re-form as issues change. Interest groups are shuffled about and bedfellows get stranger and stranger. We may have entered a period of extreme fluidity when comprehensive understanding is extremely difficult if not impossible. Until either party can devise a strategy and perform a political miracle like Roosevelt’s, we may be in for. countless surprises, with the result that American politics will become far less predictable but far more interesting.
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