American Politics; 5; Let the People Rule

This is National Educational Television. Washington University and KETC, Channel 9, the St. Louis Educational Television Station present American politics, of course, for television, with Professor Thomas H. Elliott chairman of the Department of Political Science of Washington University. The rather flamboyant title that I've given this lecture tonight is Let the People Rule. Actually, the lecture is about primaries, and the title may seem at first a bit gaudy.

And yet I think it's a fair one, because what we're going to discuss is how candidates for office are selected. We've already seen that this is a basic party function, and now we must realize, too, that it's a function of popular government, of government by the people. The connection between the parties and the people in making nominations is the subject of our lecture today, in the primaries, the popular primaries, in which the party candidates are chosen, what is the party's role, and what is the extent of the people's rule? Let me be personal for a moment and discuss what I mean by a primary. It's good many years now, but there have been times, and I'm thinking of one, particularly. I don't want to sit on this elephant, or the donkey, be impartial.

There was a time when I was myself an active participant in a party primary, in fact, one of the aspirants for a party nomination. Few days before primary day, my wife, telephone, an old friend of ours, with whom she'd been at college. This young woman was the graduate of an excellent college. I think she'd been majoring in American civilization. I think she was Phi Beta Kappa. She was a well-educated and intelligent American citizen. So my wife called her up and said what she mined, driving her car to help to take voters to the polls for me, on the afternoon of primary day. She replied that she'd love to work all day for me on election day, but she did have something else to do on primary day, and would rather not on primary day in any way. She said that doesn't really matter, does it?

Because the primary is just a dress rehearsal, isn't it? I thought about that a few weeks later, when we won the primary by a vote that I recall was 13,206 to 13,106, and maybe if we'd had her a car, we would have had a somewhat easier time in that particular contest. No, sir, the primary is most decidedly, not a rehearsal. But if it's not a rehearsal, what is it? Is it the mechanism by which we, the people, select the ultimate candidates, between whom we finally choose at the election, or is it the way in which the parties nominate the people that they wish to have placed on the final ticket? Well in the old days, nominations were decidedly a party matter. The office holders, the people already elected and holding office, got together and chose the party slate. For instance, and 100 years ago, so, in a particular state, all the weeks in the legislature

or all the Democrats in the legislature would meet and decide who they would like to see as their party candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, all the other state offices. This was the caucus for quarter of a century or so, the established method by which nominations were made. Back in the 1830s, though, as many of you will recall, we saw in this country the rising tide of what the historians speak of as Jacksonian democracy, greatly increased belief in the ability of everybody to do everything, greatly increased belief in the efficacy of direct popular rule. Obviously, the caucus was not a particularly democratic way of making nominations. And in the 30s, in the states and also with respect to nominations for national office, it was replaced by the convention, as far as the presidency is concerned.

Of course, we've had it now for a hundred and twenty years. The convention was not just the group of party office holders that formed the caucus. It was a group of delegates representing the party members. The delegates meeting together and picking the party nominees. Even this, of course, was a far cry from direct popular rule, and a number of people became quickly discontented with it. In the late 1840s in a western county of Pennsylvania, a number of active and interested citizens decided that they would do away with the convention in their county, at least, and nominate candidates by direct popular vote, giving the individual voters a chance to participate personally in the choice. Few years later, in 1851, in the city of St. Louis, the Democratic leaders sent out a notice that all people who considered themselves Democrats would have a chance on a particular

day in June to cast a ballot, or whoever they wanted to see nominated for the local city offices on the Democratic ticket. This was the primary. Despite these early beginnings, it didn't spread, not until the present century did it become the recognized habitual method of nominating candidates for office. Then, under the leadership chiefly, I think, of Robert M. LaFollette, senior, fighting Bob LaFollette, the famous governor of Wisconsin, the primary movement spread across the country. Now, although for its top offices in New York still nominates by conventions, the primary is the typical way by which candidates for almost every important office, except that

a president of the United States, are chosen. The big job is almost always accomplished by the voters making the decision at the polls. On primary day, which may be anywhere from seven weeks to four or five months, before election day, it differs in different states. On primary day, voters go to the polls and typically ask for the ballot of one party or another. Let's say that John Jones goes down to the place where the elections are held and asks for a Democratic ballot. The impartial again, he might be asking for a Republican ballot. These are primary ballots. Let's say, just for example, he asks for a Democratic ballot. He's given this piece of paper on which have printed the names of all those who desire Democratic nomination for particular offices that are being settled at the forthcoming election.

It doesn't take much, incidentally, to get your name on a primary ballot, except possibly for state-wide office. Sometimes only a few signatures, at the most even for Congress, in many states, only a very few hundred signatures. Mr. Jones, our Democratic primary voter, takes this pencil and this ballot in the privacy of the polling booth and makes his choices marking the ballot down the line for those aspirants for the nomination whom he would like to see chosen as the nominees of the Democratic Party. This is known, incidentally, as the closed primary, the closed primary where he selects one party ballot or the other and makes all his choices on that party's ballot. Now what happens in a typical closed primary, the kind of primary incidentally that is involved under the laws of more than three quarters of the states of the Union?

Well, first, let's remember that the primary was established when it spread across the country in 191 and thereafter, primarily to give the people the chance to have a voice in the nominating process. Conventions had been condemned because they weren't sufficiently Democratic. They were assailed very sharply criticized, too, because it was said unscrupulous bosses might make deals in conventions. Nominations might be parceled out under the table, as it were, and delegates, it was whispered, were even possible victims of or recipients of the primary. To democratize and to purify the nominating process, the primary system was adopted in state after state. Now, has it made nominations really more Democratic? Potentially, of course it has.

The sad thing, however, is that most of us, by and large, have not appreciated the opportunity which it gives us. We don't vote in the primary. We just don't bother. The title of this lecture, as I said, is Let the People Rule, which would have been an appropriate slogan for the reformers, that beat the drums for the primary system, half century ago. But the question remains, what people and how many people do rule? For instance, actually selects the majority of the members of the United States House of Representatives. Professor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. of Harvard and a colleague, recently compiled some figures which seemed to me so startling that I'm going to modify and adapt them a bit tonight and be more conservative. But even so, I think the figures that I'll show you in a moment have a certain shocking

quality. They indicate, my figures at least, my conservative figures indicate, that the majority of the United States House of Representatives, most of our congressmen, are actually the choices of 5% of the mature citizens of the United States. You know, I think the figure now is 250. There are 435 members of the House of Representatives, members of Congress, not including the Senate, 435. Of those, in the last election, 1954, I think, 251 candidates were elected by a larger than three to two majority, 251 congressmen obtained more than 60% of the vote in their districts.

That means that each of them comes from what we quite justifiably call a safe district. The party system being as traditional as it is, it's going to take a veritable cataclysm, a war or a terrific depression or an extraordinary shift in the population. To turn over any of those districts within a short time, or the time being in probably for some elections to come, any district that was 60% Republican last time is going to stay Republican for some time to come. Any district that was over 60% Democratic last time is likewise safe for the Democrats in the foreseeable political future. 251 more than a majority, comfortably more than a majority, of the congressional districts fall into this safe category. That means that in a safe district, the candidates of the major party, whether it's Republican or Democrats, are going to win. That means that the actual choice of the congressman is made when the party nominates its candidate. From here on, we've headed to something that's sort of like a game of 10 Middle Indians.

Let's take just for a round number 100 mature, 21 years and older American citizens in any congressional district, 100 old. Well in the election of 1952, nearly 70%, nearly 70% of the people turned out in the final election. But we must recall that that was a record-breaking turnout. It was a very unusually large vote. And it's safer to say that about 60% of the voters in the district on the average register to vote, whether they are required to register, or take the trouble to vote on election day, even when they're not, as they are not in some places, required to register. All the figures indicate that out of the people that actually vote, that's the 60. One third counting both parties together, vote on primary day before the election.

One third of 60 being 20. So in our district now, in the primary, we have a total of 20 voters for both the Republican and Democratic primaries put together. Now we have said that one party is comfortably ahead of the other in this district. So let's divide the primary voters. Twelve of them vote in the primary of the stronger party, the one that has the district safely within its grasp. The other eight, whom we can forget, vote in the primary of the other party. The choice is really up to these twelve. Now, in the primary, seeking the nomination of the almost certainly victorious party are three candidates, A, B, and C. Mr. A, out of the twelve votes, gets three votes. Mr. B, gets four votes. And Mr. C, gets five votes. Mr. C is the winner of the primary.

Mr. C is the candidate of the stronger party in the district. Mr. C is the next congressman. And Mr. C has the support actually in the beginning of just five percent of the population in that district. And now this rather horrifying number is game points up two or three things. One is the importance of registration, which I need not go into tonight. It isn't universal, but where it is required, it certainly is the first step toward voting. And second, of course, the very great importance of primaries. The way the people are going to rule through the ballot box, first we've got to register if that's required, and then we've got vote. Otherwise, as we can see here, the real choices of the people who are supposed to represent us are going to be made not by us, but by tiny minorities. That brings us to the second disappointment, suffered by the reformers. They thought that the primaries would put the nominating power in the hands of the people, more especially as opposed to the bosses.

But obviously, if you have a small, well-knit, boss led, disciplined, political machine, all of whose members take care to vote at the primary, and the total vote in the primary is very small, the machine is going to win the primary. It will name its favorites. It will name the bosses candidates as the parties candidates. And then having stayed home on primary day, some of us had the frontery to moan about the low caliber of the people whom the parties have nominated. Now let's make some qualifications. We need, we should brighten this rather dark picture, and we can brighten it considerably. First in some places, in some primaries, there is a much better turnout than the average, quite a number of people actually do vote. And second, as we saw in the last lecture, in a great many places, including large cities, there are not now in existence the well-knit, disciplined machine organizations of which I spoke a moment ago.

Therefore, often the primary is a real open contest between the various aspirants for office. Often the candidate has to do a very personal type of campaigning in such an open primary, because essentially it's a popularity contest within one party in a particular state or district. It isn't likely that there are going to be very many great differences of policy. It's unlikely that a primary will suddenly uncover burning issues. Each aspirant simply hopes to be more popular than any of the others. This picture here by George Caleb Bingham was painted, I suppose, before the days of primaries, and yet the old-fashioned form of campaigning, which it depicts, is still the kind of campaigning that candidates' phenomenation must often engage it in a primary campaign, that is. You know, if this was a picture of a primary candidate, the candidate, the fellow there with the tall hat, would have two jobs to perform.

First, he's got to make the old codgers like him, and second, and probably much harder, he must persuade them to go to the polls on primary day. It doesn't look to me as if that fellow in the middle is ever going to get that. So we see that the primaries do at least give us the opportunity to have a voice in the selection of candidates if we will but use that voice. Another defense of the primary is that if we're going to have a party system, we must have party organizations, and who has a better right to select the party's candidates than the devoted members of the party. Furthermore, the organization is, by any chance, corrupt or just misguided. The primary gives people who don't like it, and don't like the organization, the chance to overthrow it and overthrow the boss. A local party organization can lose an election and survive, but a local boss or a local party machine that loses in the primary has very dim prospects for healthy survival.

I've been talking now about the typical closed party primary. In such a primary, each voter asks for the ballot, as we've seen, of one party or the other. He votes as a partisan. In as much as the winner is going to be the party's nominee, this seems to make sense. The Democrats are choosing the Democratic Party's nominee for governor, let's say, why should the Republicans have any voice in that choice? Or the independents, either, let the Republicans go and vote in the Republican primary for their own candidates? Let the independents stop being independent and join one party or the other, or else stay home, and if they stay home, let them keep quiet later on, rather than criticize the party nominees. Now, that's the logic behind the closed primary. It does seem consistent with the party's system and with the party's function of narrowing down the list of candidates and making nominations. Yet, this system is again criticized, and criticized quite vehemently sometimes, on two grounds. First, some people on three grounds, I think.

First, some people think it's a shame to require a voter, to register as a Republican, for instance, if he wants to vote in a Republican primary. And second, it's still called undemocratic. Nominations, it said, should be made directly by the people, regardless of party. I got into kind of a hassle about this, a year and a half or so ago, and was berated by major newspapers, opinions I respect very greatly, because I raised some questions about these arguments. I felt that if the people could vote regardless of party in a primary, that possibly this might have some damaging effect upon the party's system, and I couldn't quite see why there was any denial of civil liberties, and this was a third argument, in requiring a person to say which party he wanted to belong to for the purpose of voting in the primary. I certainly agree that our ballots must be secret, and that in the election no one should be compelled in any way to indicate which party or which candidate he preferred.

What I can see, not the same argument being effective at all, when what the voter is asked to do is to select a party nominee. This points up, I'm not sure I'm right, by any means in this. This argument points up, the question that I raised at the very beginning, whether these nominations are primarily the people's function or the party's function. Logically speaking, if you go all the way, if you don't have the mask for party ballots, why have any party ballots? Why not have all the names of all the aspirants, Republicans and Democrats alike, all printed in a great, long ballot, all jumbled together, and let everybody vote for whoever he likes. And if you do that, leave the party labels off in the election too. Actually, this is what's done in the good, many big cities that have non-partisan elections. The two top men in a non-partisan primary end up as the final candidates with no party designations. But on a national level or even on a state level, where so much of our politics and our whole political system is wound up with the continuance of the parties, and the parties

really have a pretty strong part play, an argument can be made that such a system which would pretty much destroy the significance of parties might do more harm than good. However, some states, less than a quarter, but still some states, had gone a little way along that road. On a primary day, our vote of Mr. Jones doesn't ask for a democratic ballot in those states or a Republican ballot. He simply is handed both ballots. He then goes into the polling vote, and he tears one of them up, but nobody knows which he tears up, and he votes the other. That leaves him free, you see, to keep secret his party affiliation, while still taking part as a party voter, the only trouble with it is that it enables, of course, great many people who might be Democrats to vote in the Republican primary for whatever purpose they might find in doing so, or the Republicans might vote, likewise in the Democratic primary. This, which is, I think, in effect now in 11 states, is the open primary.

In one state, Washington, they go even further than that. There's just one ballot. These two ballots are printed like this, but they're tied together. They're put right together without any separation. The voter can vote for the Democrat for his favorite Democrat for governor, and his favorite Republican for Lieutenant Governor, and so on all the way down the line. That's what you might call a wide open primary. And yet you know, despite what I was just saying, and despite the indications of some opinions of my own, it occurs to me that the controversy, the arguments that sometimes rise about the merits of these types of primaries are unnecessarily sharp. The party thus far, the party system thus far, seems to have endured the open primary, that even has endured Washington's wide open primary, party system, party organization I'm told flourishes in the state of Washington, just as much as anywhere else. I'm not surprised at that.

Most people who vote on primary day are politically interested. Most politically interested people, probably, are basically partisans one way or the other. And therefore, on primary day, most of them that go to the polls if their Democrats want to vote for Democratic potential nominees, and most of them if their Republicans want to vote for Republicans. Thus the parties, however, we may define them, continue to perform their real vital function of narrowing down the list of candidates through the primary system closed, open, wide open, and presenting manageable alternatives to the voters on election day. Now, just two more points about primaries. First, they began, as we have seen, on a strictly voluntary basis. Now however, they are part of the regular, legal, statutory electoral process governed by state law.

Some years ago, the states of Texas and South Carolina argued that in fact the primaries were still private affairs, that the parties themselves were like private clubs. And like a private club that they could exclude people whom they did not wish to be members of the club, specifically that they could exclude all people who were not white from voting in the party primary. The Supreme Court, however, said, no. The party is not a private club, and even less is the primary. They voting of a private club. The primary is part of the election, and in the election, the ballot cannot be denied to people on the basis of race or color. The primary, as the Supreme Court has now decided with respect to both state and national primaries, is a part of our formal governmental system. Second, primaries, strictly speaking, nominate candidates. I emphasize this because there's been so much confusion about presidential primaries.

I'm sorry that that term ever was used because presidential primaries do not nominate anybody. We go to the primaries and we nominate candidates for governor and senator and representative. We do not go to the polls and nominate any candidate for president. The so-called presidential primaries are simply either elections of delegates to the nominating convention, or they are public opinion polls or expressions of public opinion, which have no binding force and effect. And so, but our time is up, I'm sorry, our time is up. How the presidential candidates are nominated will be the main subject of our next lecture. American politics is presented by Washington University and KETC Channel 9, the St. Louis

Educational Television Station and Production Center. This is National Educational Television.