What Went Awry in Miami
Politics of Representation is the product of a Dartmouth enterprise in which those who planned and conducted the project may properly take satisfaction and in which all members of the Dartmouth family may take pride. It had its origin in the spring of 1972 in an idea that came to three men teaching the introductory course in American Government, as they searched for new ways of giving their subject greater intellectual challenge and heightened everyday meaning for students.
A student-faculty group, aided by a Ford Foundation grant and supplemented by funds from the Dartmouth Public Affairs Center and the President's office, would travel to Miami in July to observe the Democratic National Convention. First, they would test our theories concerning presidential nominating conventions set forth in the standard literature on the subject. Second, and more important, they would measure and try to improve on certain hunches and hypotheses of their own, through interviews with convention delegates and continuous and careful observation of the convention process.
Space here permits only a brief sampling of the findings, factual and theoretical, of this brief but profoundly stimulating book. Although four classic dilemmas in the "empowering process" by which our national party conventions are organized and candidates selected were to be tested by the group, the study was essentially searching for the answer to a simple question. Which of two factors was more responsible for the debacle that overwhelmed the Democratic Party in November 1972: (1) the drastic McGovern-Frazer reform rules by which convention delegates were chosen and state delegations were compelled to compete with group "caucuses," in particular those represen- ting blacks, women, and youth; or (2) the weaknesses that the McGovern campaign ultimately revealed, in common with most earlier "insurgency" tickets offered by either major party - especially the Goldwater Republican ticket in 1964?
The authors of this study conclude that the shortcomings of the McGovern candidacy had more to do with Democratic defeat in 1972 than did any insidious damage inherent in the party's reform rules, although they do acknowledge that these two forces in the 1972 experience of the Democrats were not wholly unrelated. In rejecting "the proposition that the so-called quota system was responsible for the radicalization (or the "unrepresentativeness") of the convention," the authors seem implicitly to be arguing for a group quota system of selecting delegates as a permanent aspect of our presidential nominating conventions.
A basic underlying issue in all that is written here concerns the tension, the dichotomy, existing in any convention that seeks simultaneously to serve two goals - fair recognition to all legitimate population groups in the selection of delegates (thereby maximizing the potential for fractionization in the party) and a unifying effort to "bind up the wounds," to shape a united party, not only for the purposes of the ensuing Presidential campaign, but for effective "running of the government" by the party that wins the election. How much purism, how much pragmatism; how much justice, how pluralism, make for successful democratic government? It is to these vitally important American dilemmas that this admirable book ultimately addresses itself.
THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION:THE DEMOCRATICCONVENTION 1972.By Denis G. Sullivan, Professor ofGovernment; Benjamin I. Page, JeffreyL. Pressman, and John J. Lyons'73. St. Martin's Press, 1974. 152pp. Hardcover, $8.95; paperback,$2.95.
West Memorial Fund The Herbert Faulkner West Library Fund has been established by the Friends of the Dartmouth Library, in memory of their founder. Envisioned as a permanent endowment, the fund will be used for the annual purchase of rare books to honor "a splendid teacher, a fine bookman, and a uniquely outstanding individual." Tax-deductible contributions should be payable to Dartmouth College and sent to the West Fund, Dartmouth College Library, Hanover.
The former Joel Parker Professor of Law andPolitical Science at Dartmouth College, wherehe taught from 1937 to 1959, and president ofOberlin College from 1960 to 1970, Mr. Carr isnow executive director of SACHEM(Southeastern Association for the Cooperationof Higher Education in Massachusetts.)
