When the Democratic National Committee tilted its presidential primary process in 2016 to help Hillary Clinton and block Sen. Bernie Sanders, critics heaped an avalanche of abuse on its head, reacting as though it had been caught doing something obviously wrong. My reaction, on the contrary, was, “Why shouldn’t the party favor someone who is actually a member of the party and whom it thinks will win?”
One is obliged to acknowledge that by putting a finger — maybe it was an elbow — on the scales for Clinton, the DNC made a massive blunder, shooing in a profoundly unappealing candidate doomed to humiliating defeat. But this miscalculation doesn’t change the principle of the thing, which is that a self-selecting group of politically active people should enjoy freedom of association and pick whomever they like as their champion. If you don’t like it, make your own party and pick your own candidate.
In the GOP primary, the opposite happened. The party didn’t structure the contest to arrive at a predetermined result, and this allowed the bulldozer that was Donald Trump to roll across the level field sweeping away the hopes of Republican panjandrums.
But the Democrats didn’t get away with anything. Not only did they lose the presidency, now their party is being taken over, too, by its socialist wing; it’s just happening 30 months after the parallel fate befell the Republicans.
Why is this? The answer is that both main parties have, over the course of decades, enfeebled themselves with “democratic” rule changes, ill-considered legislation, and the abolition of disciplinary customs. They were tottering and ready for a knockout blow.
That’s the subject of Jay Cost’s cover story, “American Hangover.” The ability of the parties to control their fates, leaders, and troops has been attenuated by “reforms” that dragged politics out of smoke-filled rooms. But the process contributed mightily to the mess we’re now in. As readers will perhaps know from their own experience, it’s not unusual to have a headache when a party ends. But all is not lost. Cost argues that there is a way back to disciplined and effective politics. It involves the regeneration of the parties. So, the parties are dead — long live the parties!
Speaking of not having the leaders we want, Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, argues for the crucial distinction between those who are authoritative and those who are authoritarian. This applies as much to the workplace as to politics, and explains why staff dread it when the boss joins them for lunch.
Philip Terzian examines the monumental narcissism of the Obama Presidential Center which, unlike all presidential libraries before, has no books or documents relevant to the tenure of its eponymous chief executive. What it does have are a fitness center, a sledding hill, a monumental tower hundreds of feet tall, and an overall air of determined self-aggrandizement.
Maybe it’s appropriate after all!
