How George McGovern Made Donald Trump Possible
Cross posting from GD. I think that many here will find interesing
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027812237
By Philip Terzian
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Mandate for Reform was the report of the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection to the Democratic National Convention, called the McGovern Commission after its chairman, Sen. George McGovern.
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The McGovern Commission followed the tumultuous election campaign of 1968—and its national convention with antiwar protests and violent clashes with police on the streets of Chicago. This persuaded Democrats to take the selection of presidential candidates away from “the bosses”—officeholders, state and county chairmen, elder statesmen, etc.—and put it in the hands of “the people” by way of primaries. Our present system of state primaries and caucuses, as well as multiple televised debates, is a direct outcome of the McGovern Commission. Republicans, under pressure to progress with the times, saw fit to adjust their own rules accordingly.
Yet the old system had worked reasonably well in 1968. It is true that Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who ran in no primaries that year, won the nomination after candidate Sen. Robert Kennedy’s murder largely because Humphrey was favored by the—mostly unelected—convention delegates in Chicago. They had been chosen by the party’s leadership, or “establishment,” as we would say today.
But Humphrey then came remarkably close to scoring an upset victory against Richard Nixon in a year when Democrats and the country were riven by Vietnam, civil strife and violent discord. Could anyone believe that Humphrey’s challengers at convention time, Sens. Eugene McCarthy and McGovern, would have won more votes than he did in the general election?
The televised spectacles of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s machine in action—thwarting dissent and enforcing discipline on the floor—and the pitched battle between police and left-wing demonstrators in Grant Park, were evidently so traumatic that the party swiftly adopted the McGovern Commission’s populist judgment that delegate selection and the presidential nominee should be decided by voters in state primaries. As a result, “the bosses” were almost wholly absent from the next few Democratic national conventions. And the first beneficiary of the McGovern Commission rules was McGovern himself—who managed to carry only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia against Nixon in 1972.
Fortunately for the Democrats, common sense intruded. After McGovern’s failed candidacy and President Jimmy Carter’s 1980 defeat by Ronald Reagan, Democrats assembled another commission in 1984, headed by North Carolina’s Gov. James Hunt. The Hunt Commission amended the McGovern Commission rules for delegate selection. Most important, it created so-called superdelegates, party leaders and public officials, who effectively dilute the power of elected delegates. Superdelegates have grown in number during the past three decades—and this year will probably save the Democrats from nominating Bernie Sanders. In five of the past seven presidential elections, the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote.
Coincidence? Perhaps. But the astonishing fact is that over the same period the Republican Party has in effect embraced the McGovern reforms—and with a democratic zeal unmatched by Democrats. The party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower now entrusts its delegate-selection process and presidential choice to the influence of TV debates and to primaries (often in states where Democrats can and do cross lines to cast a ballot). There are no superdelegates at Republican conventions to save the process from itself—or in 2016 to save the GOP from Donald Trump.
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Have Republicans lately wondered why people who ought to run for president don’t, and why people who shouldn’t run for president jump right in? Read 1970’s Mandate for Reform. In a half-century we’ve gone from a shrewd, top-down selection process to a traveling carnival of the lowest common denominator.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-george-mcgovern-made-donald-trump-possible-1461884978
