Throughout all the years I’ve
been observing politics and particularly in the lead-up to this election where nobody
seemed to be look forward to a Biden-Trump rematch, there has always been a huge amount of
ragging on the Presidential primary system.
This has been going on practically
since Jimmy Carter managed to win the Presidency since he did something no
Presidential candidate had ever done before: compete in every primary and win
the nomination. Carter’s decision to compete in all thirty Presidential
primaries was successful because on every day he won at least one primary and
managed to get closer to the nomination every day. Even at the time journalists
like Jules Witcover bemoaned this strategy, perhaps because out of
self-interest. This meant that every candidate was going to take a similar
strategy and their lives would be much harder from that point on.
I have heard some
variation on this complaint from the moment I started paying attention to politics
in 2000 from at least one major media outlet several times in the course of the
cycle. I can practically recite the complaints verbatim: campaigns take an eternity
now and never end; too much attention is paid to smaller, non-diverse states at
the start; by the time bigger states get to weigh in, most of the ‘good’ candidates
are gone; it’s too long, protracted and expensive, the nomination is determined
by a minority of the voters, and of course the candidates we get are inadequate
to the task.
Except for the last part
which I repudiated in my last column, I’m actually in agreement or sympathetic
to many of the claims that are made. And I agree that this is the worst
possible way to choose the nominee of a major party…except for all the others.
And as someone who has studied political history extensively, I know of what I
speak.
The idea of the brokered
convention is mentioned at least once every election cycle, usually to drum up
suspense by reporters who genuinely want to draw in viewers when they know the inevitability
of the outcome. And I can understand the appeal of it. Conventions are basically
stage managed affairs for the cameras, all done to coronate a candidate and for
all intents and purposes they’re ceremonial. The problem is all of this
basically a myth that has been idealized by historians and academics that gives
the idea of mystery when in truth they were almost always as stage managed then
as they are today – there were just no cameras to cover it.
There was a huge amount of
discussion all through the spring and summer of 2024 that both conventions
should go against what the primary voters had done and vote to remove both Biden
and Trump as nominees for the good of America. There was always something basically
dictatorial about this idea – that, to paraphrase Clemenceau, democracy was too
important to be left to the voters – and it went against what conventions had
done in the past and in fact could do. There was even more discussion about
this leading up and after the debates and despite my basic problems with both
men, I always believed to go through with it would be a cure far worse than the
disease. The fact that the Democrats did so with Kamala Harris doesn’t make my
basic argument any less pertinent; indeed, should Harris end up winning the
Presidency (as seems very likely at the time of this writing) it makes the
issue more relevant. So given that, let’s discuss what conventions were prior
to the Presidential primary and for all intents and purposes I’m going to use
my starting date for that as 1972, which is when McGovern became the first candidate
to make the primaries more essential to the nomination then before
First let’s discuss the
delegates. Delegates, summarized briefly, are the representatives of a single
state at any convention, Democratic or Republican. For whatever reason
Republican conventions have historical had fewer delegates represent each state
then at Democratic ones. At the 1968 Republican Convention, for example, Texas had
56 delegates represent them; at the Democratic convention, Texas was
represented by 104. Ever since 1936 in order for a President to receive the
nomination of their party, they must receive a majority of the total delegates.
In 1968 Richard Nixon needed to receive 667 delegates to get the Republican
nomination for President; Hubert Humphrey needed 1312.
Between 1840, when
political parties began having conventions and 1968, after which a committee led
by George McGovern enacted reforms, delegations were headed, traditionally, by
the heads of the state parties for each political party. The Nebraska Republican
Party would send one slate of delegates (as they were called) to its convention;
the Nebraska Democratic Party would send another to that one. The head of these
delegations were traditionally the leaders in each state, usually an elected
official who was prominent in that state. Perhaps the most famous head of a
delegation in the twentieth century was Richard Daley, the long-time Democratic
mayor of Chicago who controlled the Illinois delegation for decades.
That’s the key word:
controlled. In theory, every delegate for a state had the right to vote for
whichever candidate he pleased. (I’m using the masculine term deliberately as
you’ll see.) Theoretically any one of the 112 members of the Illinois
delegation and the 1968 Democratic Convention was free to vote for say Eugene
McCarthy or George McGovern. But in practice, delegates were completely at the
mercy of Daley’s whim and didn’t say boo unless if he gave permission. Daley
had told them to vote for Hubert Humphrey and unless you wanted to survive in
Illinois politics you did what Daley told you to do.
Daley may have been the
last of the big city bosses by 1968 but he was just following what was the
tradition of both major political parties ever since conventions had started.
Every state delegation had a head, someone who told you who you were going to
vote for on the first ballot, the second ballot and so forth. If you were a
member of the New York Republican Party from the 1870s to the 1880s, you did
what Roscoe Conkling told you to do. Conkling was the senator from New York,
and one of the most famously corrupt politicians in the Gilded Age. If you
wanted to have a career in New York politics you went to see Conkling, and he
would give you power. In exchange you surrendered your free will to him and
that was true at every Republican convention during that period. You voted how
Conkling decided, and his decision were based on the highest bidder.
This term I should be
clear was literal at most conventions. How much actual money changed hands
after a certain point I can’t say for sure but after civil service reform was
enacted in the 1880s, both parties got subtler at it. The bosses in both
parties did still have power but they were more indirect. In exchange for the
Pennsylvania delegation in 1892, you would get appointments in the next administration
if you backed the winning candidate. If your candidate lost the election, well,
the bosses didn’t forget and four years later they remembered you as a ‘good
soldier’
None of this, of course,
actually effected the delegates who were voting: most of them held political
office in some form (Congressional, statehouse, alderman) and they were more
than familiar with horse trading. One or two might get promoting down the line,
maybe they’d end up remembered for higher office down the road. But the idea
that the delegates in either party had any real role in choosing the candidate for
the 19th century and well into the 20th was completely
fictional: they did what their bosses told you.
And to be clear, the
bosses had no intention of initially letting things like primaries get in their
way. In 1912 when Theodore Roosevelt decided to run for the Republican
nomination, he ran in twelve states that had Presidential primaries. He beat
Taft in nine of the ten states the two competed in, including Taft’s state of
Ohio. But the convention was controlled by Republicans who were loyal to Taft. TR
won 278 delegates in those primaries but at the convention, Elihu Root the chairman
of the convention elected Taft delegates in those states. Most of the members of
the GOP were old colleagues of Roosevelt; Root had once said he was TR’s
dearest friend. But they considered what TR was doing tantamount to treason and
they had no intention of letting him be their standard bearer, even if it cost
them the White House in November. This was either a betrayal of the people or a
profile in courage, depending on how you look at it. (I believe it was the
former; these days people might consider it the latter.)
After that, primaries
essentially became beauty contests that had nothing to do with who actually got
the nomination for basically the next forty years. In 1932 FDR was nominated primarily
because he managed to persuade the big city bosses that he would help them gain
more power In 1936, as David McCullough quotes in Truman,
at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, all of the big bosses were
gathered.
“Edward J. Flynn of the
Bronx, Frank Hague of Jersey City, Mayor Edward Kelly of Chicago, Boss Ed Crump
of Memphis and T.J Pendergast of St. Louis…At one time or other, Roosevelt had
courted and worked with them all, and he would again. He called them all his
friends. And all appreciated what wonders the Roosevelt magic had worked for
them in four years. As Marquis Childs observed: ‘The vast expenditures of
the New Deal had put into their hands power they had hitherto scarcely dreamed
of.”
That is how FDR was ‘chosen’
at a brokered convention. FDR managed to get the more socialistic aspects of
his New Deal through Congress not just because of the crisis but because he
also knew how the system worked. He knew these men were all corrupt –
Pendergast would never attend another convention and be indicted by the time FDR
ran for a third term - but he also knew this
was how the world worked and he was not about to change it. The New Deal was
giving Democrats majorities they hadn’t had in the lifetime of most men, and now
they had more power and influence. It was a mutually beneficial relationship.
You will hear stories
throughout history books of demonstrations in the galleries, loud cheering, and
spontaneous outpourings. What they frequently leave out is how few of these
demonstrations were spontaneous and not planned. The bosses didn’t like
surprises at their conventions, and they were fine with the galleries cheering
and roaring – as long as they got to pick the nominee. Most of the stories of
multiple ballots are true but the delegates rarely got to have much effect on
it. The dealings were being made behind the scenes usually in hotel rooms by
the heads of the delegations with the managers of the candidates. With few
exceptions – the Democrats fracture in 1860 and the Republicans in 1912 –
conventions did everything they could to keep the fighting behind closed doors
and not on the floors.
This was a lot harder with
the Democrats. The South in 1840 had formed a rule that no nominee could be
picked without two-thirds of the total delegates agreeing. The South did this
to have veto power over any candidate; first to ensure slavery, then to make
sure Jim Crow was the standard in the South. As you might imagine this often
led to Democratic conventions taking longer than Republican ones. In 1912 Champ
Clark got a majority of the delegates by the tenth ballot, which almost always
led to the leading candidate getting the nomination. But because of the 2/3 rule
and opposition from certain parties he didn’t have it, which led to Woodrow
Wilson getting it on the 45th ballot. This carried on throughout the
1920s until after FDR was nominated in 1932 and he got rid of the two-thirds rule
– for which many Southern Democrats never forgave him.
And for everyone who told
me Wilson and FDR were what you could get with a brokered convention, they were
the outliers not just for the Democrats but for both parties. The bosses
didn’t want candidates who would upset the order of things; that’s why the
Republican bosses wanted Theodore Roosevelt to be McKinley’s running mate in 1900.
Even at 41 TR scared the hell out of the old guard and they figured if they
made him McKinley’s vice president, his political life would be over –
something TR himself thought would happen when McKinley was elected.
Neither party want the
social order changed which is why some of the greatest political figures over
that century from Daniel Webster to Robert LaFollette to Sam Rayburn were never
nominated for President or even serious candidates. This system gave us just
historic Presidents as Franklin Pierce, Benjamin Harrison and Warren Harding.
And those were the winners in this system. Below is a picture of Alton
Parker, the Democratic nominee for President in 1904
Except…I tricked you. It’s
actually James W. Cox, the Democratic nominee for President in 1920….Nope I was
lying again. Or was I? Well, even if you were the greatest American history
buff imaginable, you wouldn’t know because you’ve never heard of them even
though they were picked by conventions.
And in case you hadn’t
figure it out already, the people who picked these nominees were all rich,
white men. In their minds there was a certain kind of person who could be
president and only him. WASP probably wasn’t invented yet but that was what all
nominees were. It took until 1928 for a Catholic to be nominated for President
and there was just furor when Al Smith earned the Democratic nomination that
millions were afraid that if he was elected the Pope would run the White House.
And to be clear, whatever
roles women and African-Americans had at any convention up until the 1960s, it
was almost entirely ceremonial no matter which party. It took a long time for
either party to start going so far as to let women address the conventions in a
serious role. I think the first significant one was when Claire Boothe Luce, a
Republican Congresswoman addressed the 1948 Convention and called Truman ‘a
gone goose’. I’m not sure the GOP would have been willing to go that far even
if she was an elected official if it were not for the fact, she was also
married to Henry Luce, one of the most prominent publishers of the era.
And neither party really
wanted to talk about ‘the Negro problem’ as it was called for most of the
twentieth century for fear of isolating the South. It wasn’t until Hubert
Humphrey spoke out in favor of it at the 1948 Democratic convention that they became
part of the conversation, and as he did so the South did walk out of the
convention. (I’ve written about this in a couple of articles before.)
That’s all of the argument
about platforms, that thing writers admonish Republicans for not having. Well
even when they were prominent for both parties neither wanted to change that
much. Republicans hated the New Deal but Americans loved it, so for the next
thirty years Republican nominees for President from Landon to Nixon, all said
the New Deal was great but if you elect us we’ll do it better. Even civil
rights wasn’t really much of a difference between both parties until 1964 when
Goldwater, who had voted against the Civil Rights Act, made sure it was a non-starter
so he could woo the South. That’s not to say the Democrats covered themselves
with glory that year: when the Mississippi Freedom Party had Fannie Lou Hamer
about to testify before the credentials committee on national TV, LBJ basically
stopped in its tracks because he didn’t want the South to walk out of his
convention. One was right and one was wrong, but neither wanted black faces on
the screen.
That is what these
conventions were for a hundred and thirty years: where the decisions of who got
to lead our nation, what was part of the discourse and who got to run for
President was decided by the political elite, through corruption, bullying and
arm-twisting, and exclusive run by white men in both parties. How could anybody
with a straight face argue that our primary system, messy, expensive and broken
as it is, is anything but an improvement? For all intents and purposes, our
political leaders were essentially managed by oligarchies and mediocrity wasn’t
just the norm at the end of it, it was what both parties wanted.
And these primaries are
more democratic in a far more important way. There is no way that Shirley
Chisholm, the first African-American to run for President in 1972, could have
even had a hope of being nominated for anything at any convention if the
primaries didn’t exist. The futile campaigns of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton
for Democrats and Alan Keyes and Ben Carson for the Republicans, wouldn’t have
been a possibility during convention era, and the idea of an African-American
becoming the nominee of either party, much less winning, would have given
nightmares to the bosses of both parties in 1956.
Nor would Elizabeth Dole,
Carly Fiorina or Nikki Haley have been able to run for the Republican
nomination, or Hilary Clinton finally win the Democratic nomination in 2016. It
wasn’t until 1972 that a woman’s name was even put into nomination at a major
party (Sissy Farenthold, the Democratic convention.) The bosses might have wanted to win women
votes but they would have never considered letting Geraldine Ferraro or Sarah
Palin run on either ticket in 1964. And the idea of Kamala Harris even being
allowed to run for President, much less have a chance of winning the office…you
really think that could have happened under that system?
The old cliché in our country
for the last two hundred years was anyone could become President. We all knew
it was a lie, and it was a ‘white man only club’ for most of our nation’s
history. It’s still mostly a lie, I grant you, and we can discuss the idea of
privilege all you want. But at least you can tell your daughter as well as your
sons they have a chance and not be dismissed as easily as you would have been
even twenty years ago. I’m not saying that the Obamas and Hilary Clintons or
Harrises of the world are perfect; I’ll be the first to say they’re not, and if
you want to dismiss them in the same breath as the Nikki Haleys or Tim Scotts
of the world, fine, you’re entitled too. But this dream would have out of hope
to all of them, no matter which party they voted for, half a century ago under
the old system. How is this not a sign of the promise of American democracy
that we’re having the kinds of discussions about these candidates Presidential
prospects that our parents would have just dismissed because of their race or gender?
That’s the real reason I
can advocate for some kind of backward momentum on primaries regardless of what
happens in this year’s election. I agree with everything people say about the
campaign season and what primaries have turned into. But the idea that at the
end of the primary season the delegates could, if they didn’t like the nominee,
change their mind and nominate someone else – someone who didn’t get a single
vote from the people – that’s a step backwards for democracy no matter how high
you say the stakes are.
Look I get that no one was
enthusiastic about this year’s matchup before Biden dropped out. I’d be more
upset about that if I hadn’t heard the exact same argument made in 2016. And
2012. And 2004. And 2000. And 1996…
Yes I know Trump is a
threat to all we hold dear, and democracy is a broken system, blah, blah, blah.
(I’ll have more to say about that when I deal with 2016.) I share your frustrations
and fears and I’m open to reasonable solutions. But the idea that in order to
save democracy we have to destroy it at least partially – which is what the
media was talking about for both candidates and that they actually did in the
case of our sitting President - then I
truly wonder we’ve lost as part of our democracy. And I question the commitment
to those same values of all those who’ve spent the last year arguing that it
needs protecting.
Our commitment to our principles as a nation
are importantly especially when it seems in the greatest amount of peril. A
nation cannot pick and choose what laws it wants to obey any more than the
average person can. We don’t govern based on opinion polls and breaking the law
isn’t any less illegal if the majority of people don’t agree with it. Over and
over I hear the phrase: “Your institutions will not save you.” That is as much
fear-mongering as anything that I’ve heard from a Republican in the last ten
years. It just strikes terror into a different set of people. I’ll be told to
look back and say these fears are genuine and those of Republicans are baseless.
Does that make what you’re saying any less conducive to rational discourse?
Kamala Harris has made her
unofficial campaign slogan: “We can’t go back.” And I’d argued that applies to
our wretched Presidential primary system as well. I’m more than willing to advocate
for reform and reconstruction but elimination – that something I refuse to
return too, no matter how things turn out in November.
In the next article in
this series I will finally get to 2016. Spoiler alert: New Yorkers will
appreciate this article more than most.
No comments:
Post a Comment