1 Coalitions and the Making of Modern American Politics The American political landscape has changed drastically since

the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960. Within those fifty years the global structural economy has transformed and the Soviet Unionso long the focus of American foreign policyhas collapsed. None of these events, however, has meant as much to American politics as the shift in political coalitions and the subsequent rise of a powerful conservative movement. Once in power, this movement secured itself through conscious policy choices; these choices have been supported, and indeed propagated, through an ideology that can be called historical fundamentalism.1 Only in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis has there been a serious challenge to this conservative factiona challenge that has taken only tenuous steps, though meaningful ones, towards progress. During the 1950s and the Eisenhower administration, many in the Republican Party reconciled themselves with the New Deal and consensus based politics. By the 85th Congress in 1957, nine Republican congressmen actually voted to the left of the median legislator.2 A vocal minority, however, stood well to the right of the political spectrum. They were led by Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft;3 his supporters, however, were continuously disappointed when they were repeatedly rejected by the mainstream Republican Party.4 Eventually, after the death of Senator Taft, a new conservative figurehead was needed. Clarence Manion, a conservative activist who claimed the Eisenhower administration was secretly influenced by leftwing communists,5 began this process in June 1959.6 He attempted to draft the junior Senator from Arizona for the Republican nomination in 1960: Barry Goldwater. Though the nomination effort in 1960 failed, Manion, now joined by more activists like Clifton White, created a nationwide network to wrest control of the Republican Party from the Eastern establishment. When the two factions of the Republican Party met at the Republican National Convention of 1964 in San Francisco, the result was a convention floor brawl broadcast for the entire country to see.7 When liberal Republicans like Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New

2 York attempted to address the crowd, they were shouted down; Goldwater himself capped the convention with the now infamous quote that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.8 Terrified liberal Republicans grabbed LBJ buttons on their way out of town.9 That Goldwaters campaign came to an ignominious defeat surprised none but the staunchest partisans. William F Buckley himself spoke of the impeding defeat of Barry Goldwater to a national convention of the Young Americans for Freedom.10 Yet Buckley, conscious of the new conservative organizational prowess, delivered a message of perseverance in the face of defeat which carried the conservative movement through a period of relative powerlessness.11 President Johnsons actions after his 61.3 percent landslide, however, showed only arrogance.12 The mandate delivered by the American people reflected Johnsons courageous actions in signing legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and promising to declare War on Poverty. When Johnson also gave the United States a war in Vietnaman ill managed war at thathe split the Democratic Party into two factions, separating the emerging New Left and the nascent peace movement from traditional establishment liberals.13 Lyndon Johnsons handling of the Vietnam War, indeed his handling of the press in general, shattered the trust placed in him by the American people.14 As the election of 1968 approached, the increasing division in his party gave the Republicans a chance to exploit those divides. While the Democratic Party reeled after the assassination of RFK and then fought a vicious floor fight at their Chicago convention,15 Richard Nixon was cashing in the chits he had earned behind the scenes during the past eight years.16 When the Democrats finally nominated Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, Nixons campaign was already well underway. While Humphrey eventually differentiated himself from the incumbent administration on Vietnam, he could not overcome Nixons financial advantage. Media, and therefore money, had become so influential in campaignsas evidenced by the importance of the 64 and 68 convention

3 coveragethat whistle stop comebacks like Harry Trumans in 1948 became increasingly difficult. Only the overwhelming support of organized labor, in the form of millions of dollars and thousands of volunteers, narrowed the election.17 The narrowness of the election, however, only somewhat obscured the fact that the Democratic Party was now rudderless while the Republicans were united behind a master political architect.18 Nixon had returned from a political wasteland to lead a rejuvenated Republican Party. He was moreover, by the definitions of the day, a conservative.19 Yet there was a difference between Barry Goldwaters movement and Richard Nixon, who had called Goldwaters candidacy a tragedy until it was no longer politically expedient to do so. Whereas Goldwater wanted to destroy his enemieshe famously hauled Walter Reuther before a Congressional investigationNixon sought to co-opt them.20 He spent much of his first term building what he called a New Majority to replace the New Deal Coalition.21 He especially sought to pry organized labor, which had almost been his downfall in 1968, from its traditional allies in the Democratic Party. Though he was unable to win over labor leaders like AFLCIO president George Meany, Nixons appeals to the Hard Hat Rioters and men like Peter Brennan, head of the New York building trades, helped immensely in securing the votes of rank and file union members.22 Nixons political calculus was vindicated during the election of 1972. Not only did he crush George McGovern, but he won 54% of the union vote as well.23 Just under two years later, however, Richard Nixon was forced to resign in the wake of the Watergate scandal; a crime which resulted in the worst constitutional crisis since Reconstruction.24 His resignation threw the reins of power in the Republican Party to a conservative movement which had been waiting to return since Buckleys speech in 1964. They were almost able to unseat an incumbent Republican president, Gerald Ford, at the 1976 convention.25 Four years later, they had their apotheosis.

4 Ronald Reagan beat Democrat Jimmy Carter in the election of 1980 with 51% of the popular vote and 489 to 49 in the Electoral College.26 Carter had failed to reverse Nixons division of the new and establishment liberals and suffered because of it. Reagan, however, made such considerations irrelevant in the immediate future. Unlike Nixon, his administration was not content to operate within the confines of the postwar consensus in cooperation with its opponents. Reaganwho had started his political career as Goldwater stump manwould crush what was left of the establishment New Dealers.27 Reagans response to a strike by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association, a union which had endorsed his candidacy, set the tone in industrial and labor relations for the rest of the 1980s.28 By breaking the PATCO strike, Reagan signaled a return to the type of strike breaking and union busting not seen since 1919. Stacking the NLRB with management friendly members effectively eliminated any recourse to the Federal government and undermined any new organizing drives as well as the process of collective bargaining.29 Destroying the traditional source of Democratic campaign contributions and volunteers ensured that Reagans policies of deregulation and tax cutting would dominate political discourse for the next twentyfive years. The policy choices that defined the Reagan administration did indeed have significant traction. Even in the face of fallout from Savings and Loan deregulation and rising inequality from unbalanced tax cuts, the faith of supply side economics, as David Stockman, Director of the Office of Management and Budget called it, marched on.30 Even into the second Clinton administration, deregulation carried broad, bipartisan appeal. The repeal of the GlassSteagall Act, a Depression Era piece of financial regulation, passed congress with wide support and was signed by President Clinton in 1999.31 In addition to continued deregulation, even the tax readjustments that occurred under both Clinton and Bush Sr. failed to stanch the rising inequality between the wealthiest Americans and the rest.32 Any progress was lost to George W. Bushs 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

5 Much of the continued support for Reaganera policies and the conservative movement has come from what historian Jill Lepore calls historical fundamentalism; this doctrine combines constitutional originalism, an assumption that the Founding Fathers could make sense of modern politics, and ideologysometimes religion, sometimes libertarianism.33 When applied to the policy of deregulation, historical fundamentalists see business regulations as analogous to the Tea and Stamp Acts of the American revolutionary period; unsurprisingly, the same arguments are used against new taxes. This view of history has spread across the country through institutions like Pat Robertsons Regent University. It received a serious boost in the public sphere when the Texas School Board adopted a new history curriculum complete with defense of McCarthyism.34 The greatest challenge to these beliefs, indeed to the Reagan legacy, came from the financial and economic collapse of 2007-2008 which helped elect Barack Obama. Obamas election has so far resulted in a version of national healthcare, the Lily Ledbetter Act, the repeal of the discriminatory policy of Dont Ask Dont Tell, and, recently, a nuclear disarmament treaty.35 Liberals, labor, civil rights activists, and peace protesters have all seen the beginnings of reform once again. Yet the Obama administration has still taken cautious steps in reversing years of tax cuts and deregulation. Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, both veterans of the deregulatory Clinton administrations Treasury Department, have been key economic advisors to President Obama.36 Allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire has also been compromised away for two years. The Obama administration has, however, to its credit, passed more progressive legislation than any other administration in the past three decades. It behooves one to remember that neither was the New Deal Coalition formed overnight nor the Great Society built in a day.
Jill Lepore, The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Partys Revolution and the Battle over American History, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 15-16.
1
2 3

Paul Krugman, The Conscience of a Liberal, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2007), 75.

Rick Perlstein , Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, (New York: Nation Books, 2001), 10; ibid, 48. 4 Ibid.

Ibid, 10. Ibid, 48. 7 Ibid, 382-84 8 Ibid, 391. 9 Ibid, 393. 10 Ibid, 472. 11 Ibid, 472-73. 12 Ibid, 513. 13 Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1968, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010), 111. 14 Ibid, 116. 15 Ibid, 206; ibid, 328-29. 16 Perlstein, Before the Storm, 389-90. 17 White, Making of the President 1968, 426-27. 18 Jefferson Cowie, Stayin Alive: the 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, (New York: The New Press, 2010), 138-39. 19 Perlstein, Before the Storm, 390. 20 Ibid, 38-39. 21 Cowie, Stayin Alive, 138-39. 22 Ibid, 135-37. 23 Ibid, 161. 24 Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History 1974-2008, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 16 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid, 124. 27 Ibid, 132. 28 Ibid, 277. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid, 145. 31 Jonathan Alter, The Promise: President Obama, Year One, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 316. 32 Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, WinnerTakeAll Politics: How Washington Made the Rich RicherAnd Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 18; ibid, 23. 33 Lepore, The Whites of Their Eyes, 15-16. 34 Ibid, 13. 35 Alter, The Promise, 428; ibid 112. 36 Ibid, 28.
5 6

Cowie, Jefferson. Stayin Alive: the 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. New York: The New Press, 2010. Hacker, Jacob S. and Paul Pierson. WinnerTakeAll Politics: How Washington Made the Rich RicherAnd Turned Its Back on the Middle Class. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010

Lepore, Jill. The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Partys Revolution and the Battle over American History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. Perlstein, Rick. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, New York: Nation Books, 2001. White, Theodore H. The Making of the President 1968. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010. Wilentz, Sean, The Age of Reagan: A History 1974-2008, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008.