A Public Affair; A New Majority

[bars and tone] [music] Most generations do not see the turning points in history in which they play a part. These great movements are perceived long afterwards. Historians looking back in American history can spot the fundamental shifts.

What is forming in this country, in my opinion, is a new mainstream, a new coalition of people who are dissatisfied with the status quo. We must remember that all the center is not silent, and all who are silent are not centered. But a great many quiet Americans have become committed to answers to social problems that preserve personal freedom. The new constituency embraces a much stronger voice for the women. It embraces a stronger voice for young people. It embraces the whole spectrum of people that are anti-war. It embraces the alienated blue collar worker. They reject the answers of the thirties to the problems of the day. And as this silent center has become a part of a new alignment, it has transformed it from a minority into a majority. This is a coalition of change, a coalition of conscience, a coalition of progress. It's against the status quo, and I think it represents a majority of the American people.

[music] Tonight, "Assessment: Is there a New Majority?" with Impact senior correspondant, Sander Vanocur. American historians have long subscribed to the idea that the American party system moves in cycles, that every 28 to 36 years a major realignment occurs that shapes the nation's politics for a generation. According to the theory, such a critical election is overdue.

And many, including Richard Nixon and George McGovern, believe that 1972 will be one of those landmark election years. Beginning with Jefferson's election in 1800, America's unique form of political party was established. 28 years later, Andrew Jackson led a new force, the common people, in winning the presidency. This signaled what was to become a deep-rooted tradition. In 1860, another turning point. The modern Republican party emerged under Abraham Lincoln, producing the basic two-party alignment that we know today. McKinley's election in 1896 was another critical juncture. Though William Jennings Bryan lost his populist campaign, invigorated and broadened the Democratic party, and possibly initiated the progressive era. But it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who fashioned the most enduring coalition in 1932, forging a powerful alliance of the South, organized labor, and the major ethnic blocs of American immigration. Elections have been fought along those lines for 40 years, but in the view of many, the old New Deal coalition is breaking up.

If indeed, 1972 is a critical election year, what shape will the new majority take? We asked three respected political observers to offer their theories of what's happening. First, Frederick Dutton, whose book, Changing Sources of Power, emphasized the impact of greater participation by the young, women, and blacks. This country is approaching one of the great political watersheds in its history. The crossover to a new era will perhaps come this year, perhaps not until 1976. But the nearing of a major threshold is unmistakable. The huge post-World War II baby boom is now coming of age. The share of young voters is increasing from 1 in 16 in 1968 to 1 in 8 this year. The generation condition in the 1960s will swell to 1 in 4 of all voters by 1976 and 1 in 3 by the end of this decade. Women are also massively adding to their political clout, likely up 10% in this decade, as great and actual numbers as the more publicized increase in the young vote. The Black vote is rising by over 50%. The Independent vote is up from 6 million in 1960 to 25 million now, and it is still rising.

It is now as big as either the reliable Republican or Democratic base. Which way these elements will turn right, left, or nowhere is what the coming elections are all about. But the fact that we are at a key junction in our history could not be clearer. Kevin Phillips, a Nixon campaign advisor in 1968 and author of The Emerging Republican Majority, supplied a quite different appraisal of the shifting in the old Democratic coalition. My contention is that the emerging majority lies on the Republican side, and that the November re-election of Richard Nixon will mark a watershed of American political history. The emerging Republican electorate is a new alignment of the South, the Heartland, and the Middle American North, including many of the formerly Democratic Catholic ethnic groups; Irish, Italians, Poles, and others. In terms of style, it will be an old morality coalition, in contrast to the new morality grouping of George McGovern. And despite the glib talk of the new left, most of the old populist constituency is lining up on the Republican side.

Fittingly, the Nixon GOP is weakest in the fashionable Northeast, which is the traditional seat of minority politics in the United States. Our third contributor, Haynes Johnson, is a political reporter for the Washington Post. It was Johnson's nationwide survey early last year and resulting series of articles that alerted many people to widespread voter alienation. We are witnessing the demise of conventional politics and the decline of the political parties. The way is now open for new movements, new coalitions, and even new parties. The tide is inevitable, it can't be stopped. Where it will take us, no one can be sure, but this much is certainly clear. It is the citizen, not the political boss, nor the political party, who will play an increasingly decisive role in shaping the future. And that citizen is going to exercise his rights with ever greater independence. No politician who wants to win can ignore these forces. But that doesn't mean we're going to see the emergence of a clear majority on either side this year. If anything, we're going to float for a while.

With us in the studio are two of those observers, Kevin Phillips, editor of the American Political Report, and Haynes Johnson of the Washington Post. Fred Dutton, who's an advisor to Senator McGovern, is out in South Dakota with the senator, but joining us in his place is Michael Rappaport, a McGovern delegate at the Democratic Convention last week, and a contributing editor to the Washington Monthly magazine. Gentlemen, I'd like to begin by picking up something that Fred Dutton said. He said the question about this coalition is whether it's going to go right, left, or center. And Haynes Johnson, everything you've been writing in the last two years says there ain't no such animal. Yes, I agree with that. I mean, I agree with what I wrote, I guess, Sandy. But I know, seriously, I think it's, we don't have the conventional labels, they don't mean much anymore, right, left, center, and so forth. I think the country is changing, it's changing culturally, it's changing in attitudes, and this all this affects the political process. I don't think you can label Americans as much. And I think that's one thing we've been seeing this year. We're going to see that test in this election, and it's what's going to lie beyond, I think.

Mr. Phillips, in this emerging Republican majority, if it's still emerging. If it is emerging, can you classify it as conservative, or liberal, or do you agree or disagree with what Haynes just said? Well, I think you have to sort out the terminology and no, we can't use the old definitions of left, right, liberal, or conservative, because the spectrum of issues involved has changed very drastically. I think the old terminology was geared in more to an economic spectrum of outlook, and we have now have more of a cultural denominator of American politics. However, I think that a new coalition is taking shape around certain outlooks, which I think culture is more of a factor than ever before, which can be differentiated, which to some extent can be identified, and I think that will create a new nomenclature. And I think that, before too long, maybe we'll be able to have some labels back again that we can use authoritatively now. This is what we disagree about, I think, here. Do you disagree? I disagree to a significant point, which is I tend to think that the labels on the whole spectrum, if you're trying to apply labels to the whole spectrum, that they're not too meaningful. I think that perhaps you have to pick out several different spectrums, and to each of those, you can characterize one position as cult left and another one right, but that- I don't think on the other hand that that's going to disappear.

I think that a good part of the problem is that most Americans, a great bulk of Americans, are to the point where they have a large number of issues that interest them, but no one issue that overwhelms everything else the way you pocketbook used to in a very real sense. And the result is that individual Americans are left on one thing and right on another and center on another. And as a result, the parties themselves are liable to stay that way. I would agree that it's not really possible to demonstrate the parties are going to stay that way so much as just to guess at it. Well, if the parties stay that way, where are the people going to go? Well, that's- the question is whether the people are ahead of the parties or what? That's really one of the questions tonight. And I think the rise of- the most fascinating thing, and I think I hope we'd all agree on this, is that the rise of the independent voter is what we're seeing increasingly. The Republican Party represents what 24% of those who call them, classify themselves by party affiliation, Mr. Nixon's a minority president of a minority party, and what we're seeing is increasingly the rise of that independent voter, just what you said. On one election day might vote for a liberal candidate, a conservative candidate, he might vote for all in one election, in that same booth.

Well, the parties are redefining themselves too. I think we can clearly agree. They're trying to seek out these new attitudes in some ways. The fact that a voter might be left on one issue and a right on another by the old nomenclature. And I think that the administration, for example, the Republican Party has moved towards the more popular stance, or if you want to call it left on economics, very clearly, because its constituency is less now middle class and upper class. It's following culture into the blue collar and poorer rural areas. The same time, I think, it's sharpening some of its conservative positions on social issues, where your lower middle class and blue collar people are homing in on a more conservative outlook. Well, how does that break down this term? What's the real difference then between the Republican and Democratic parties, for instance? They say that the Republicans- obviously they are. They're moving just a year ago, the president would not have had wage and price controls. He said he wouldn't. He did. It was Mr. Nixon who moved to China and Russia and so forth. And earlier in his career, it's Mr. Nixon who's winding down the war eight years ago. He was the one who was saying we should invade North Vietnam. He's changed. His party is changing. Now, what's the real difference between the Democratic and the Republican Party in principle?

Social issues now. Social issues. That's the thing. We have narrowed it down. The president by his movement on foreign and economic policy has cleared away some of those issues, which historically divided the parties. The Democrats, by picking George McGovern, have put a new emphasis on cultural and social issues on the left. So I think we now have more than ever before a differentiation on these cultural and sociological factors ranging from busing, the old morality, abortion, whatever you want to call it. I think those are the big things. What's the social issue? What's the social issue of the left as opposed to the social issue of the right? It's just a stance that people take different positions on them. But is it your feeling? We get down to the social issue. That was Scammon and Wattenberg wrote about, that this was what was supposed to define the electorate and give you assurance of winning and so forth. But my own travels I've done and talking to people is if you take these people out of what you've called middle America or the silent majority, whatever it might be, that they really don't differ very much on these basic points. I mean, who is against law and order really? What American of any stature basically?

There might be a few, small but very few. Who is for wild use of drugs and so forth? Who is for bad schools? It goes to more [inaudible]. And you just take it on. Who is really for destroying the environment? But then you get into dealing with, do you want another plant there which might have some jobs, or do you want the shoreline of Delaware to be reserved for beaches? And what you find, I find anyway, is that you can't predict people's positions on these things. The thing that bothers me about the social issue is that it's not an issue. It's a whole complex of issues. And I find very little what I would call consistency in the sense that people that line up on one side of one of these line up on the same side of the next one and the same side of the next one. So that my problem with seeing parties coalescing around the social issue, is that the point of social issues almost is that different social issues have greatly different degrees of salience to different people, different individuals. And as a result you get a continuously shifting coalition, people who were wildly in favor of McGovern on one thing were unalterably opposed on something else.

Well, I think if you take some of these which have been raised, now you mentioned law and order and you defined it who's against law and order. Well, there's a very real difference in who's for what interpretation of the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court, as you know. The same time who's for bad schools, nobody. But who's for busing, a real difference between the parties. I could go down the list. And on this basis, I think this is a large measure of what we're talking about how it sorts itself out this year. This year, my problem is, I would agree that sorting this year in large measure may well be on that set of issues. The problem that I have is that that doesn't seem to me to lead to stable parties, that it doesn't sort on those same issues next year, or 76 or 80. Are stable parties a desirable thing in this country today? We've always said we ought to have the two party systems, should we? Well, I guess I'm convinced enough, Sandy, to think it's a good thing if you have some unity and direction in the political process. I suppose none of us would like to see us in the position of France where you have so many parties that no one can govern and there's no sort of consensus, which enables a person or a party

who does have control of the government to get what it wants to do- cross through to get it passed. But I think they're certainly breaking down. There's no question about that. And part of it is what we talked about earlier, the cultural changes in the country and the fact that Americans are better educated, they're more sophisticated. They look at issues in entirely different ways, very complex ways, and they aren't really appealed to, if I'm right, on the basis of this old one, two, three points. It's why I agree with Mike on this, that there are a whole tissue of issues that interlaces and interacts upon each other. And that makes the role of the person who's going to appeal to them very, very difficult. Kevin, on the basis of this emerging Republican majority that you predicted several years ago, are not these things that are coming up to cultural changes, the things that we can't get are purchased on in terms of political reporting? Are these things not offering some kind of upsetting factors in your calculations? Actually, I've been, as I'm sure people would realize, very pleasantly surprised by the last 10 to 12 weeks, the Democrats picking George McGovern,

to me has been very rewarding in that sense. It seems they're going further in the direction I thought the Democratic Party would. I thought they'd pick a more moderate candidate who'd have a platform of the same sort. Instead, they picked a man I consider to be a left liberal candidate and a platform which doesn't go too far in the other direction. So, no, I don't really think so. As far as the youth vote coming into play, I think it's exaggerated. Time will tell, the end result, in Britain and Germany and Canada where they have automatic registration for 18-year-old voters, that turn out isn't that good. It's much below the adult turnout. I just don't see it here being more than 65-35 at the most. I just wasn't going to ask you. You don't expect that turnout to be more than that in other words. Well, I would say that perhaps they may get 55 to 60 percent of them out and they will go no more than 65-35 from the government. Well, would you argue that those people, this potential 25 million block of new voters in this country, do not represent some different attitudes?

Well, that too. That are quite beyond the norm. You said the nomenclature of the old political parties and the theories. But are both McGovern and Nixon this year, in a sense almost beside the point, almost irrelevant to these forces that we think we see moving. And certainly, not least of all, is the Wallace phenomenon that we saw this year. I think they are, Sandy. I think that what's happening politically in this country is, again, not to belabor the point, part of the cultural values, people's attitudes about their workplace, about their lives, about the kind of lives they want for their children have changed. I don't say it's a radical change or a dramatic change, but it's been an evolutionary change over the last decade. We've seen it, and I think I've seen it my own life, my own children's lives, and their friends and so forth. And I see that the middle American who was supposed to be appealed to a few years ago has long hair and he might smoke pot too.

And you talk to him for a while and you find it belies the stereotypes and the norms. And I think it's the question of, again, one we talked about many times. That trust in the leadership and in the institutions. Well, how do you put trust on a party basis? People don't trust either party, do they? I don't think you do put it on it. I think most people would say, in my experience, I don't vote for the party, I vote for the man. And that means that you want someone that you can look up to, who can make you believe that some of your better natures, is that he's a person who can give you leadership, that you believe him to be truthful and honest and doesn't promise to the millennium tomorrow, and so forth. That goes beyond that. One other thing that the McGovern people found when they went door to door, and it's a really strange phenomenon to those of us who had any professional training in political science, was that going door to door and talking about him was a tremendous advantage. People really were impressed by the fact that somebody was willing to come and knock on a door and talk about a candidate. It's against all the theory that people are really not too interested in that kind of thing and everything else, but it was quite clear for many places,

we did actually some controlled experiments in some counties where we thought we were going to win anyway, which we'd go into one district and not go into another, and get results that looked substantially different, and in districts we thought were much the same. I think people are very much willing to trust you if you'll come and knock on their door a lot more than they're willing to trust either the of the presidential candidates. Well, that's a factor when you're dealing in a primary situation or in a municipal election or a congressional race, you can do a lot more with the personal factors. When you're dealing with the actual confrontation for the Presidency of the United States, it's the hand on the disaster button, it's the man of competence, it's societal forces, it's probably to a much lesser extent the fact that a volunteer happened to ring the doorbell. [crosstalk] I wonder about that. One has the view in talking to voters, that is so far beyond the realm of their control. That it's why wasn't my garbage- why can't I collect it, why does Ralph Nader help me more than most presidential candidates? The same thing about the failure of institutions, and I don't mean that they don't entirely fail, but there are people who feel that the institutions of this country have not been performing well. That includes the political institutions, it includes my profession and the press, it includes the universities, it includes labor unions. Look what's happening within labor.

All right, let's take that up, put it in the coalition we're talking about, we used to think the labor was part of the Democratic coalition. Suburbia was a firm part of the Republican coalition. Are those two premises applicable? We can answer them in one question. One thing, the unions that are most strong for George McGovern are the white collar unions of people who live in the suburbs. And it's a kind of funny situation, the ones who are going to come out for Richard Nixon or be neutral are the most blue collar of unions, the ones who are for George McGovern are the most white collar of unions. There's a complete reversal going on there, I frankly think that that reversal is part and parcel of the whole reversal in class structure in the society, but it's quite clear that the traditional union, what you mean by union, when you talk about union, is a guy that works on a production line someplace, but the unions that are coming out for George McGovern are the state municipal employees. Well, most white collar people aren't unionized, and among those people who are in clerical or business, or I think your Republican percentages are still pretty high, we're seeing a flux situation, obviously the unions aren't all in one camp and suburbia is not all in one camp.

But going back to the point, when you talk about the union, it isn't just the leadership in what's happening this year, that the leadership is no longer as relevant, and the same way the parties are no longer as relevant. I mean, George Meaney may have been able at one point in the past to either dictate or to ensure a certain kind of a turnout in vote. Now what you're seeing, not only in politics, but in union contracts. The rank and file is rejecting and turning over its own leadership as people in the primary states are throwing out the party bosses and so forth. I think that's a very dynamic fact of American politics now. Where that's going to take, I don't know, but it's there. Well, the Democratic reliance on the labor people was enormous in 1968, as you know. I mean, they did everything. [crosstalk] But I think the citizen participation can't make up things in a lot of vital democratic areas, perhaps the way that the American people think it can. Well, that's one of the obvious issues of the campaign, is whether that's true, because it was quite clear that they had to rely on labor unions because they had it. There wasn't anybody else willing to work for Hubert Humphrey at that point.

There are other people willing to work for George McGovern, not really because of George McGovern, but just as an agent, I think, of what they think they want. And I think one of the main issues of the campaign, in fact, is can that kind of citizen organization really make up for the kind of concerted organization labor unions can provide? I don't think anybody knows the answer. What makes up the manpower of the Republican coalition? Well, I think that's becoming pretty clear, at least in this election. It's the south. There's one predominant element. A very good part of suburbia, perhaps the more traditional suburbia. The farm bill looks pretty solid. I just came back from there. People I've talked to all counted most of the farm building in the Republican coalition, the Rocky Mountains. A very, very increased segment of the Catholic electorate, ethnic groups, a lot of the old democratic constituency, the constituency that used to be the Jeffersonian or Jacksonian or Roosevelt constituency. But aren't these things dependent to a certain extent on what farm prices are going to be like in the farm belt? What the cost of living is going to be like in suburbia?

It seems to me that people in suburbia live as much on the margin as people working class districts. These are variables, are they not? Yes, but no great sign of a big upheaval based on those at the present time. Is it you're feeling that these people are basically contented and pleased with what's happened the last four years, that they think the country is on the right course, that we're heading forward to what Mr. Nixon talks about, the era of peace and so forth? Is that? No, no. [crosstalk] I get out of it entirely different readings of discontent among- that again cuts across all the parties and leaders and the rest. Sure, but instead of being alienated with the McGovern type of people and what they think of as the elites, they are alienated against them, they don't like their values. Now they don't like a lot of the Howard Johnson's values of Republicans or Nixon, but I think it's a question of comparative alienations among a lot of people. Which side they disliked the most, whether it be the hot shot set or the purple sunglasses set. I see a lot of that.

So it's a negative, rather. Yeah, I thought we'd get through the show without using the word alienation, but I think we're into it now. How does alienation bind together coalitions they may alienate from political institutions, but how do they bind together what ultimately become political? Well, certainly, Sandy, if you take just the one great factor of our last experience, the last 10 years, the war in Vietnam. I mean, I think there is a case where one single issue still can bring together all kinds of disparate groups of Americans and unite finally politically through the political process to form some kind of a coalition. It's very loose. It can fall apart, and it brings in new values and the rest. Environment's another. Did you just mention two moral issues, and how does that fit in with this group you call the educated mass? Are they motivated by moral issues more than- Some are, I think it's the function of leadership. It's the trite way of saying it, but it's the function of leadership to take these issues that have people upset, to find solutions that will work, and then to convince people that they will work. It's quite clear that, to the degree that the McGovern campaign was successful. It was successful because it convinced people, A, that it cared about the issues that they cared about, and B, that it was capable of doing something about it.

I frankly think that nobody knows who's going to win in November this year at this point, and anybody who thinks he does is really jumping the gun. And I have never felt that way about a political campaign before ,because I find myself seeing really massive movements back and forth on ecology as a perfect example. Everybody's in favor until it really starts to crunch at a particular point that he wants. But on the other hand, everybody really is in favor. It's not a joke. It's not something that you just pay lip service to. People really do want beaches to swim on. And there's still enough muscle politically to turn down an SST, which wouldn't happen 10 years ago. This makes it hard because the same factors which we're discussing, which are subjective to so many people, are subjective to us, and we bring our own cultural biases to bear. And whereas the, the old issues were simpler, you could more readily put them on the table and know where they were, which makes it very hard. We may feel we don't know what's going to happen, or we may as we all privately have ventured different, different outlooks.

It's probably going to be one of the hardest ones to even discuss in a way that you can convince anybody of your own case. It's a little humility, maybe. [crosstalk] of us in the press this year. Yes, and I think on that uncommon and unfamiliar note of humility, we may end this discussion. Next week, Robin McNeil and I will be in Custer, South Dakota, for what we hope will be an intimate conversation with Senator and Mrs. George McGovern. Until then, this is Sander Vanocur for NPACT. [music] A Public Affair has been a production of NPACT, the National Public Affairs Center for Television.

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