Tides of American Politics

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Most American of American institutions, our political parties surpass the understanding of the average intelligent foreigner. Indeed, what is their true nature? The biologist sees in them many of the attributes of an organism. The economist recognizes them as a special form of Big Business. The student of religion observes in their emphasis on faith, orthodoxy, and hereditary attachment an inescapable likeness to the church. Their very longevity entitles them to respect. The Democratic party is nearly a hundred and fifty years old. In fifteen years more the Republicans will celebrate their centenary.

None will deny the prominence of parties on the political terrain. But to assume that they have been a primary force for change implies that they have been cohesive bodies of voters espousing coherent programs. No one would make such a contention regarding the two major parties to-day. President Roosevelt appointed representatives of both to his Cabinet; two former Democratic presidential nominees opposed his re-election; and the President has spent more energy in castigating the anti-New-Deal elements in the two parties than he has the Republican minority as such. Nor does this situation differ markedly from the recent or the remote past. As Professor Holcombe has pointed out, Samuel Blythe in 1922 described the party names of that time as “labels on empty bottles.” James Bryce used the same figure in discussing the party alignments of the late 1880’s. Alexis de Tocqueville took a somewhat similar view a hundred years ago. Even Thomas Jefferson in his first Inaugural Address asserted, “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”

The extent to which sharp differences of principle have arisen at particular junctures has depended upon the temporary ascendancy of one faction over the other in either party or in both parties. As a result, each party has pursued a zigzag course, often reversing its former dearly held tenets and sometimes even exchanging positions with its rival. The Democratic party of the mid-nineteenth century bore little resemblance to the party Jefferson had sired. Had Lincoln lived, he could hardly have recognized his own political progeny a generation later. Long before Al Smith decided to “take a walk” in 1936, Van Buren, Cleveland, and Theodore Roosevelt had declined to vote for presidential nominees of the parties which had raised them to eminence.

It is evident, therefore, that energies greater than those residing in parties have swayed popular sentiment and bent Congresses and Presidents to their will. The nature and import of these energies become clearer if one forgets the much publicized rôle of presidential Administrations, masterful personalities, and political parties, and considers only the course of governmental policy as recorded in legislation and executive decrees. Certain trends immediately become manifest. Jefferson once observed that “Men, according to their constitutions, and the circumstances in which they are placed, differ honestly in opinion.” One group, he said, “fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society”; the other “consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them, therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent.” He called these contrasting attitudes Tory and Whig, aristocratic and democratic, Federalist and Republican. To-day we should call them conservative and liberal.

Any scrutiny of American political development discloses the alternate predominance of these opposing points of view. A period of concern for the rights of the few has been followed by one of concern for the wrongs of the many. Emphasis on the welfare of property has given way to emphasis on human welfare. An era of inaction— for stability generally suits the purposes of the conservatives—has usually been succeeded by one of rapid movement. Change in itself is, however, no index of purpose: the important thing is the direction, whether it is towards less democracy or more.

These swings of opinion can be plotted with reasonable definiteness. In some instances, historians might quarrel as to the exact terminal years, but at most such differences would involve only slight alterations. The analysis cannot be pushed back of 1765 because not until then did anything resembling national political movements exist in America. Thereafter the periods run:

The periods with Leftward trends are indicated by asterisks.

In the first period occurred the uprising against England, the establishment of independence, and the “excesses of democracy” during the era of confederation. With the assembling of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 a conservative backwash of sentiment began, bringing about a new frame of government based on the principle of safety first and vesting power in the political friends of the business classes. Jefferson’s accession in 1801 returned the government to policies conceived in the interest of the agrarian masses, including a long-sustained effort at peace at any price in a world then rent with war. From 1816 to 1829 conservative purposes reasserted themselves in the form of higher tariff protection, the federal financing of roads and canals, and the re-establishment of the United States Bank. But with Jackson’s elevation the plain people romped into power, rejected the program of federal aid to business, and gave a democratic impulse to politics which even the conservative Whigs took into account in their log-cabin campaign of 1840. Under Tyler as President in 1841 the current again set away from liberalism, involving the nation in the land-grabbing war with Mexico and in a series of measures for strengthening and extending the institution of Negro slavery.

The sharp reaction beginning in 1861 precipitated an armed conflict between the sections, during which the North initiated the policy of free farms for settlers in the public domain, abolished slavery in every part of the land, and took strong steps to safeguard the freedmen’s rights in reconstructing the Southern States. The tide, however, reversed when Grant entered office in 1860. For the rest of the century, the government devoted its principal energies to the promotion of business enterprise—the “politics of acquisition and enjoyment”—through such expedients as land grants to railroads, tariff subsidies, the protection of the gold standard, and the bagging of colonial dependencies. Theodore Roosevelt’s accession in 1901 signalized a new Leftward sweep characterized by the reform measures of the progressive movement and culminating in the high resolve to make the world safe for democracy. But President Wilson lost control of his own war, and from 1918 to 1931 conservatism and “rugged individualism” once more reigned. The Hoover Administration’s setback in the congressional elections of November, 1931, marked the advent of a new era.

It should be emphasized that the designation of a period is determined by the dominant national mood as expressed in effective governmental action (or inaction). The ulterior motives of politicians and parties may be disregarded. So far as the course of public policy is concerned, only the results are important for this analysis. Nor do theoretical differences as to constitutional construction enter in, for conservatives and liberals have favored or opposed a strong central government in accordance with their immediate purposes. Broadly speaking, the group in power, whether of the one school or the other, has supported a vigorous exercise of federal authority. It hardly needs to be added that in no period has public opinion been unanimous. Even at times of great national crisis, such as 1765–1787 and 1861–1869, dissident voices cried out against the conduct of those in charge of affairs. To cite another example, the epoch of conservative ascendancy from 1869 to 1901 was constantly disturbed by the agitation of agrarian groups and labor elements. Without the existence of unconvinced minorities, the alternating current from Left to Right could not operate. These disaffected groups serve to keep alive the altar fires of a faith temporarily discredited, but destined to shine forth again upon a naughty world.

Since these basic swings are more powerful than the agencies which men have set up to control them, it is important to ascertain whether they are periodic in their operation. Is there a rhythm of American politics which not only explains our past development but may also provide a clue to the future? The average length of the ten periods is 16.6 years. The actual length has usually fluctuated within a few years of the norm. These irregularities probably arise from the fact that, under the American constitutional system, new directions of public sentiment generally find effective expression at two-year and four-year intervals—the congressional and presidential elections. In two instances, however, the deviation from the arithmetical average was far greater: the short Civil War era, from 1861 to 1869, and the ground swell towards conservatism which succeeded it, lasting thirty-two years. It is clear, however, that the abnormal state of society in the Sixties made possible a rapid accomplishment of reform measures which might otherwise have required a much longer time; and it may be that the prolongation of the period that followed was a form of compensation to restore the rhythm. At any rate, the average of the two swings was twenty years, only about three and a half years off the norm.

For purposes of prediction the analysis needs to be further refined. The five periods of conservative rule average 18.4 years; the five liberal periods, 14.8 years. If, however, the two exceptional periods falling between 1861 and 1901 be omitted, the results are different. Conservative régimes would then seem to run their course in an average of 15 years, liberal ones in 16.5. These figures provide a fairer basis for prognosticating the future, for the recurrence of destructive sectional struggles such as the Civil War is too improbable to be taken into account. On the other hand, if a form of totalitarian government should replace our democratic system sometime in the future, any forecast based on an analysis of past trends in a society where men’s minds were free would lack validity. On the assumption that no such catastrophe lies ahead, it is evident that the revolt against conservatism which began in 1931 will last until 1947 or 1948, with a possible error of a year or so one way or the other. The next turn of the tide will then be due in the neighborhood of 1963.

The prospect of a continuance of the present liberal swing for seven or eight years does not mean that Franklin D. Roosevelt will remain in the White House for that length of time, though it will doubtless redouble the energies of his followers to secure him a third term. They are already urging that, if the “Roosevelt revolution” is to be carried forward, the man best equipped for the task is the one who “brought it about.” The President’s foes, on the other hand, find in the third-term tradition a decisive reason why he should not be returned to office. It is a curious fact that this tradition was created largely by liberal Presidents—by the self-denying ordinances of Jefferson, Jackson, and Theodore Roosevelt. It gained further strength from the successful efforts of the reform elements in the Republican convention of 1880 in denying a third nomination to ex-President Grant. But American history has yet to test the force of the tradition in a straight-out contest between a third-term candidate of one major party and the nominee of the other. It may be noted that when Theodore Roosevelt after three years of political hibernation experienced a change of heart and tried for a “second elective term” in 1912, he polled a larger popular support than his Republican opponent; and this despite the fact that he was heavily handicapped by running on the ticket of a new party and by having to divide the liberal vote with Woodrow Wilson. Should Franklin Roosevelt seek to succeed himself, he would doubtless suffer in some quarters from a fear of dictatorship, but he would gain support elsewhere from the belief that in the present world crisis a practised hand is needed at the helm of state. According to a Gallup poll taken last October, a year before the 1940 campaign, forty-three per cent of the voters declared they would back him for a third term and fifty-two per cent said they would do so if the war should be still going on at the time of the election.

Quite apart from the President’s personal fortunes, the current trend need not be interpreted as meaning that the Democrats will continue in power. What is indicated is that, whichever party or parties may gain office, the political mood known loosely as New Dealism will govern their conduct of the government. That is precisely what happened when President Taft took over the reins in 1909. A conservative by temperament, he found it impossible to resist the liberal spirit of his day, and the statute book of his Administration actually recorded greater victories for progressivism than had been won in the seven years of his predecessor, the first Roosevelt.

That the Republicans have already begun to sense the need for tailoring their policies to the times was shown in the congressional elections of 1938. As the “New York Times” remarked editorially in reporting the outcome, “In order to achieve its gains in many instances the party of opposition found it necessary to reorient itself and adopt as its own the purposes of the party in power.” More recently, Mr. Landon, referring to the election of 1940, warned Republican reactionaries “that the duties of government in the United States are different and will continue to be different from what they have hitherto been, regardless of what party is in power.” The Republicans will find their most effective appeal in the presidential campaign—if the European conflagration permits a discussion of domestic issues—in the claim that they are the “practical liberals,” the only ones who know “how to make the New Deal work.”

These recurrent swings of opinion suggest, some say, the action of the pendulum. The analogy is faulty, however, in so far as it implies that the oscillations occur between two fixed points. The American conceptions of conservatism and liberalism have been in process of constant change. Ordinarily, the liberal gains remain on the statute books; the conservatives on winning power usually acquiesce in the essentials of the new status quo, but halt its further development, perhaps try to sabotage it through lax administration and, if possible, push out in new directions. As a case in point, the conservatives of 1918–1931 accepted principles of the government regulation of economic life which their predecessors in the years 1869–1901 would have rejected as populistic and socialistic. Liberalism in its turn has steadily advanced to fresh ground. In fine, from the historical point of view, liberalism has constantly grown more liberal and conservatism less conservative. For this reason a somewhat more appropriate figure than the pendulum is that of the spiral, in which the back-and-forth movement occurs at successively higher levels.

There remains the question of what causes this basic alternation of sentiment. In Jefferson’s language, is it a response to what men desire “according to their constitutions,” or does it arise from “the circumstances in which they are placed”? The latter explanation would accord with the present-day predisposition of historians; but a scrutiny of the oscillations reveals no clear relationship to any rhythms which students of the business cycle have yet discovered in our economic life. There is an old saying that in hard times opinion veers to the Left. Yet two of the worst depressions in our history fell between 1869 and 1901 without altering the predominantly conservative trend of national policy. On the other hand, the present era of liberalism has thrived in a period of almost continuous depression.

A friend who, following in the footsteps of Jevons, has worked out an ingenious theory of the influence of solar radiation on economic affairs kindly volunteered to apply the same explanation to these fundamental reversals of political opinion. But, for lack of adequate data or for other reasons, he has failed to discover any convincing correspondence. At the most, he finds that “changes toward conservatism are predominantly (not exclusively) associated with years of Sun Spot Maxima, and changes toward liberalism, with Sun Spot Minima.” Other possible correlations yield as poor results. Our foreign wars have been about equally distributed between conservative and liberal eras. They have come at the beginning and at the end of periods, and sometimes in the middle. Though it is true that a strong-willed President has inaugurated every liberal era under the Constitution, other Presidents of this stripe—Polk, Cleveland, Wilson—fall outside any such generalization. It is clear, however, that the recurrent revolt against conservatism characteristically finds its initial outlet through the channel of a colorful or dominant personality.

Contrary to expectation, the increasing territorial extent of the country has had no effect on changing the length of the cycles; and the same is true of improvements of transportation, communication, and mass education. If the year 1861 be taken as the dividing line, the evidence indicates that, despite the greater speed of American life since then, the average time span of the periods has been longer rather than shorter. The difference, however, is small.

It needs to be considered whether in the future the activities of high-powered pressure groups may not alter the periodicity of the swings. Pressure groups, of course, are not new in American history, as anyone knows who recalls, for example, the part played by the Sons of Liberty and the committees of correspondence in hastening the Revolution. Yet to-day they possess powerful new instruments of molding opinion in the movie and radio, and before long they will probably acquire an additional advantage in television. If the theory set forth in these pages is valid, however, the propaganda exerted by such groups cannot materially affect the direction of public policy. To be effective it must harmonize with the national bent towards conservatism or liberalism, whichever mood happens at the time to prevail. If this condition is met, such tactics may cause the government to adopt extremer measures than it might otherwise have chosen. It is true that in some instances after an eloquent plea by a well-known radio speaker the Gallup poll on the question involved has shown a shift in opinion towards his point of view. But unless it should turn out that all the effective speakers were to be found on only one side of an important issue, or unless for some other reason our American system of arguing such issues pro and con should collapse, the net result of the extension and intensification of public debate through the new technological devices would not seem likely to differ from what it has been in the past. There is no evidence as yet that propaganda, however artful and amply financed, can of itself reverse the deeper drift of opinion.

One would expect to find a parallelism between basic political shifts in the national government and those in the separate States. Only an elaborate study, State by State, can settle this point. It is simple, however, to compare the national swings with periods of intense activity in the revision of state constitutions. Down to 1902 seven such periods had occurred, with an average interval between them of 18.7 years. By and large, the changes adopted were in the direction of greater liberalism. Yet four of the seven periods fell at times of dominant conservatism in national politics.

It is further relevant to inquire whether the ebb and flow of American politics agrees with similar movements in our sister democracies of Great Britain and France. From the data supplied by authorities in the history of those states it appears that the duration of the periods is peculiar to each, and that in neither case do the dividing lines match those in the United States. It is probably a coincidence that between 1760 and 1922 the average English period runs to 16.2 years as compared with the American average of 16.6. In France, where the analysis is more difficult to make, the average length seems to be less than half as great.

For lack of a better explanation, one is driven to seek the cause in our national temperament, in the reaction of Americans “according to their constitutions.” Thomas Jefferson held the view that a new political generation appears on the scene every 18.67 years. Taking his figures from M. de Buffon’s table of mortality, he reckoned that it required that length of time for half the voting population in any given year to die off. This conception of a new generation periodically replacing an old one and asserting its own notions of public policy belies the facts, however. The biological process is one of continuous emergence with no point of time differentiated from another. In any case, the span of years, even if correctly computed, does not accord with the length of the political sweeps; and with the remarkable progress of medical and sanitary science since 1789 Jefferson’s calculation would have to be radically revised. According to the latest data, the correct figure for to-day is 29.6 years.

It seems, therefore, that the veerings of popular sentiment must be explained in other terms. A suggestive analogy appears in spheres of thought and endeavor where the confusing elements of the political scene are absent. The modern history of belles-lettres has consisted largely of changes of emphasis from realism to romanticism. Theology has witnessed a recurrent trend from fundamentalism to modernism. In other fields as well, the same alternate freezing and thawing of the human mind has marked the course of development. It is reasonable to believe that American politics has been subject to a similar interplay of influences—influences which resist the impact of local circumstance and temporary demand. Apparently the electorate embarks on conservative policies until it is disillusioned or wearied or bored, and then attaches itself to liberal policies until a similar course is run.

This process sheds a significant light on the workings of the American democratic system. Not preconceived theory but pragmatism has been the guiding star. American society has moved forward by fits and starts, choosing its course in obedience to the prevailing national mood. Unlike the French, the American people have tried out each set of policies long enough to give them a fair test. On the whole, they have shown a greater tolerance of liberalism than of conservatism. In this respect they have differed from the British electorate, which has shown a somewhat greater preference for conservatism.

Though this method of progress may seem haphazard and wasteful, it has the merit of its defects, for it has enabled both the liberals and conservatives to make their special contributions to the public weal. Macaulay to the contrary notwithstanding, the American political system has not been all sail and no anchor. Nor has it been all anchor and no sail. A period of imaginative leadership, of experimentalism and democratic innovation, has been followed by one of sober reflection, of digestion of the gains and a renewed concern for propertied interests. As in the familiar instance of the child, the nation has run fast, then stopped to catch its breath and reorganize its energies before starting to run again.

Since each school of thought has been assured of an eventual lease of power, its votaries when out of office have not had to yield to despair, or harbor thoughts of revolutionary violence. They have needed only to work and wait in order to impress their philosophy upon the nation. No system could provide greater security against government by direct action. Only once did it fail to function—in 1861—with consequences which the country has never ceased to regret. With democracy on trial throughout the world to-day, every citizen should mount guard to see that nothing is allowed to clog this safety valve of peaceful evolution. Not conservatism nor liberalism, but a fair field for both, is the American ideal. Herein lies the principal argument for the jealous preservation of the constitutional rights of free speech, free assemblage, and freedom of the press.