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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, May 2, 1968
In this election year...
Liberals, conservatives split the major parties
Editor's note: In the past 100 years, both major political parties in the United States have undergone transformation. But now, as before, both have problems of sharply conflicting ideologies and aims among members which often transcend party labels—a fact dramatically apparent in this election year. This is the first of a five part series exploring those differences and their effects on the presidency, Congress and public policy making.
By Arnold B. Sawislak
WASHINGTON —(UPI)— Late in the 1950's, American political scientists discovered a truth that had been known for years by the nation's political mechanics: That the party that wins the presidency frequently cannot deliver on its promises even if it wants to.
In theory, the party that captures the White House should be able to carry out its platform pledges. In recent practice, only the Democrats behind Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson have been able to redeem substantial portions of their platforms without serious compromises or lengthy delays.
Even FDR and LBJ were brought up short after their "honeymoons" with Congress.
Roosevelt and Johnson started losing when their party still had big majorities in Congress. The reason is that the Democrats have a liberal-conservative ideological split that gets papered over around election time, but invariably reopens. The Republicans have the same kind of split and the same problem.
One common understanding of the difference between the two ideologies is that liberals are for a strong federal government and an internationalist foreign policy while conservatives favor state and local government and a more nationalistic attitude in foreign affairs.
Democrats frequently are given the liberal label and Republicans are called conservatives because most of their leaders and dominant factions have taken these positions in recent times. But in the daily give-and-take of American politics, both party lines and ideological boundaries often become blurred.
The two major parties originally promoted specific solutions to both great and small national problems. They generally were regional and identified with particular economic groups.
The parties now try to attract voters from all areas and classes. As a result, their basic national goals are the same. It is often hard to define any real difference between their specific proposals to run the country.
The two parties now seem to exist primarily to win elections.
The battle of ideas still is fought by the factions inside the parties. It is with these conflicts that contemporary presidents and other leaders have had to deal.
Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy had to shop for support among moderates and liberals of the opposite party when their own conservatives made trouble. Johnson did, too, following the 1965-66 liberal spree.
Why, then, don't the liberals and conservatives in this country abandon existing party labels and form new and "pure" ideological groups?
There are a possible number of answers—not the least of which is that each of the factions in both parties claims to be the rightful heir to the party name, goodwill and —most important —organization. Without the first two, a political party has no image, and without the last, it has no chance.
The main reason, however, that the often-predicted realignment has not taken place is that both parties have made it possible for warring factions to remain under the same tent. Party discipline including expulsion, as practiced in
other democratic systems, is seldom attempted in U.S. politics.
One theory holds that ability of the two national political parties to maintain conflicting factions is a keystone of U.S. political stability. In this view, debate within the parties is almost as important as competition between the parties to keep extremists of any ideology from capturing, first, the party apparatus and then governmental power.
With both major parties steering close to the so-called mainstream of political, economic and social thought, radical movements are isolated from the instruments of power but are still free to add the yeast of dissent to debate on public affairs.
There seems to be no mistaking the present direction of mainstream American politics. Right or wrong, it is toward the liberal persuasion—toward stronger federal and weaker state government, toward more national domestic welfare programs and toward wider foreign involvement.
This started as the nation tamed its last continental frontier. It has continued, unevenly but in the same direction through half a century of political power shifts. And it shows only the faintest signs of stopping soon.
March-
Continued from page 1
The committee met with Secretary of State Dean Rusk for an hour and 20 minutes Wednesday and demanded that the United States quit Vietnam and use the war money to stamp out domestic poverty. Rusk said he would give the group's demands "serious thought."
Abernathy said thousands of marchers would converge on Washington from the North, South, East and West between May 12-19 and ask what the federal government intended doing about the demands.
U.S. may have foiled plot to regain Hue
SAIGON — (UPI) — Fresh fighting broke out Thursday morning between American paratroops and the remnants of a reinforced North Vietnamese battalion which was all but wiped out by the U.S. forces in a vicious May Day battle near Hue.
Members of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division killed 135 North Vietnamese troops Wednesday and captured 95 prisoners.
The paratroopers smashed what U.S. intelligence believes may
have been a Communist May Day plot to recapture the ancient imperial capital of Hue.
The heavy fighting around the bombed-out village of Phuoc Yen, five miles north of Hue, entered its third day Thursday morning, UPI correspondent Raymond M. Wilkinson reported.
The 135 Communist troops killed Wednesday brought to 352 the number of North Vietnamese dead since the battle began Monday night.
Wrinkled student seeks to break shower record
STORRS, Conn.—(UPI)—James P. Stronski, his wrinkled body coated with baby oil, sat in a shower stall Wednesday and steamed toward a world record.
The 20-year-old University of Connecticut physics student charged 25 cents a peek at his attempt to set a world marathon shower record.
He is expected to emerge at 7 a.m. EDT Thursday with the record of 81 consecutive hours under the shower spout.
He began his watery attempt at
9:50 p.m. Sunday and said he would break the record of 72 hours, 8 minutes set by James Hostler of the University of Illinois in 1965.
The Norwich, Conn., honor student refused to leave his shower stall at the Theta Sigma Chi fraternity house Wednesday for initiation ceremonies into Phi Beta Kappa.
The money he collected at 25 cents-a-peek goes to charity as part of a week-long University of Connecticut carnival to help raise $12,000 for civic groups.
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