The Next Hurrah

Picking Presidents with care

“All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy,” said New York Governor and Democratic Presidential Nominee Al Smith. The remedy is worse than the disease, replies former North Carolina Governor and now Duke University President Terry Sanford. Fearing that runaway democracy has made a shambles of the presidential selection process, Sanford last week announced the formation of a new bipartisan committee to promote changes in party rules in advance of the next election campaign. “You can’t run this nation like a town meeting,” said Sanford. “We should make the system less democratic and less chaotic. We must involve the political leadership more. We must strengthen the political parties.”

Sanford’s panel includes some 20 heavyweights from both major parties, among them former Secretary of State Edmund Muskie, Republican Senator Robert Dole, Carter National Campaign Chairman Robert Strauss and onetime Reagan Presidential Campaign Manager John Sears. In coming months the group will hold a series of meetings around the country, under the auspices of Duke and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, inviting contributions from politicians, journalists, campaign organizers, pollsters and anybody else with ideas about ending the current chaos. The committee hopes to build enough momentum to cause the rules committees of both parties to make changes in time for the 1984 contest.

Though the panel has not yet made specific recommendations, it generally favors giving convention delegates more independence, restoring a greater role for the parties, shortening the length of the campaign, reducing the importance of the primaries, and deflating the influence of special-interest groups. Says John Sears: “This is a horrible system, a terrible system. Under the current arrangement, single-issue groups can essentially blackmail a candidate.” Agrees Bob Strauss: “When national conventions are dominated by single-issue groups, the conventions don’t represent America.”

To add to the pressure for changing the rules, Sanford is publishing a book in June, A Danger of Democracy (Westview Press; 184 pages), analyzing the selection process. In it he cites the need for “thinking delegates” who carefully deliberate on their choice for President. Like other critics of the present system, Sanford wants to liberate convention delegates from their rigid commitment to a particular candidate. Under the present system, the delegates have virtually no flexibility to adapt to changing political conditions once they are selected, says Sanford. “They are instructed and bound more precisely than when they were bound and driven by the bosses.” And the nominees they pick are more likely to be unrepresentative of the party’s mainstream, as in the case of George McGovern, or a Washington outsider, as was Jimmy Carter.* Or both: witness Ronald Reagan.

One side benefit of the process as it is today is that it assures seats for women and minorities, who were underrepresented in the past. But that advantage may be illusory, says Sanford. Women and minorities are certainly more prominent at the conventions now, but he suggests that they have only the appearance of power. They have little room for maneuvering or expressing their own viewpoints; they are bound delegates. “Would it not be better if we had a system that would draw in women and minority delegates because each had an intellectual and political contribution to make, rather than because the party wants superficial proof that it is broad and fair?” More independence for the delegates would also revive the importance of the national convention, which Sanford describes as a “consensus-building instrument that is crucial to our effective self-government.” This, in turn, is likely to produce better nominees. Democratic government can be destroyed, writes Sanford, if “we mistakenly assume the goal to be participation rather than selecting the best possible presidential candidates.” ∎

*The former President proposed a change of his own last week. While visiting Princeton University, he told students that the President should serve a single six-year term in order to pursue his policies without being accused of playing politics. Ever a loner, Carter also called the Democratic Party an “albatross around my neck” during his re-election campaign.