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Foreign Affairs and Party Ideology in America: The Case of Democrats and World War II
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2010
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5. The Democratic Party was, at least until recently, comprised of conservative “Southern Democrats” and liberals based in the Northeast, the Midwest, and the Far West. Similarly, the Grand Old Party had its Goldwater conservatives as well as its more moderate “Rockefeller Republicans.” Rae, Nicol, The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans from 1952 to the Present (New York, 1989)Google Scholar; Rae, , Southern Democrats (New York, 1994Google Scholar); Shafer, Byron and Johnston, Richard, The End of Southern Exceptionalism: Class, Race, and Partisan Change in the Postwar South (Cambridge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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12. Ibid. For an extensive discourse on defining ideology, see Gerring, , “Ideology: A Definitional Analysis,” Political Research Quarterly 50, no. 4 (December 1997): 957–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I adopt Gerring’s conclusion that “the definitional core of the concept consists of three intertwined attributes—coherence, differentiation, and stability. … One might note that this core definition of ideology takes no cognizance of whether a party’s views on political matters are distorting, dogmatic, repressive, self-interested, or reflective of a particular social class or social order.” Gerring, , Party Ideologies in America, 6Google Scholar.
13. Gerring, , Party Ideologies in America, 274–75Google Scholar.
14. Ibid., 7.
15. Ibid., 6. See also 22–27.
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18. For the purposes of this discussion, I follow Gerring in understanding class warfare to be one possible form of populism.
19. See, for instance, Burnham, , “The System of 1896: An Analysis,” The Evolution of American Electoral Systems, ed. Kleppner, et al. (Westport, Conn., 1981), 158Google Scholar; Hofstadter, , The Age of Reform: From Bryan to FDR (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; Ladd, , American Political Parties, 161Google Scholar; Milkis, Sidney M., The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System Since the New Deal (New York, 1993), 21Google Scholar; Sundquist, , Dynamics of the Party System, chap. 3Google Scholar.
20. This account of Democratic ideological history complements realignment theory’s emphasis on 1932. That year’s “critical election” and the federal government’s ensuing activist policies created a massive partisan realignment in favor of the Democrats. Sundquist writes: “The millions of voters who switched from the Republican to the Democratic party or were mobilized into the electorate as Democrats for the first time, attracted by the Democratic program and the Rooseveltian personality and leadership … made the latter the country’s clear majority party for the first time in eighty years” (Sundquist, 214. See also Key, , “A Theory of Critical Elections,” Journal of Politics 17 (February 1955): 3–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Key, “Secular Realignment and the Party System,” 198–210; Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics.) Even critics of realignment theory recognize the 1932 election as a turning point in American political history. Indeed, for realignment skeptics, 1932 is perhaps the only election in the canon that clearly satisfies the theory’s requirements. (e.g., Shafer, , The End of Realignment, Shafer, , ed. (Madison, 1991Google Scholar); Mayhew, , Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre (New Haven, 2002), 141Google Scholar). In addition, a key statistical study demonstrates the significance of 1932. Jerome Clubb, William Flanigan, and Nancy Zingale measure the amount of enduring electoral change each presidential election produced from 1836 to 1964. They show that Roosevelt’s first contest for the White House produced the largest and most significant lasting change of any election in their study (Clubb, Jerome, Flanigan, William H., and Zingale, Nancy H., Partisan Realignment: Voters, Parties, and Government in American History (Beverly Hills, 1980), chap. 3Google Scholar. See especially table 3.1a, pages 92–93). Thus, not only did 1932 purportedly bring about a sea change in the dominant strain of Democratic ideology, but it also brought the party to power for the better part of the next several decades.
Yet it is important to note that these two outcomes (ideological change and electoral dominance) represent two separate and not necessarily connected claims. The first identifies an intraparty ideological hinge point. Theoretically, a shift in Democratic ideology could make the party less popular, more popular, or result in no popularity change and could occur independently of any specific election. By contrast, realignment’s emphasis on 1932 is more broadly concerned with the relationship between the two major parties and their relative levels of electoral success. In theory, then, the two developments are not co-dependent. Practically, however, it is not a coincidence that these two literatures both emphasize 1932 because there is obvious overlap between them. And this convergence makes for a neat, logical, causal narrative. It is comforting, in a sense, to have everything coalesce around 1932. Under this appealing and accessible plot line, the Democratic Party, led by Roosevelt, reacted to the Depression’s economic horrors and the do-nothing policies of Herbert Hoover with a new ideology geared toward the nation’s challenges. As a result, the electorate rallied to the Democratic banner, thereby crushing Republican dominance rooted in the “System of 1896” and ushering in a new political era.
21. This is not to say that the party’s ideology was synonymous with the liberal Democrats’ position. The Democratic Party was, in Milkis’ words, a “bifactional party with durable ideological and policy divisions” (75–76). Conservative Southern Democrats were powerful and influential in many respects. Nonetheless, Roosevelt’s policies did represent the dominant strain of the party and was clearly in control of the party’s national rhetoric (the “presidential party,” as Gerring calls it). Milkis, , The President and the Parties, 75–76Google Scholar; Gerring, , Party Ideologies in America, 6Google Scholar. For more on the Southern Democrats, see Rae, , Southern DemocratsGoogle Scholar.
22. Milkis, , “Programmatic Liberalism and Party Politics: The New Deal Legacy and the Doctrine of Responsible Party Government,” in Challenges to Party Government, ed. Kenneth White, John and Mileur, Jerome M. (Carbondale, Ill., 1992), 109Google Scholar. For most scholars, then, this was the decisive break in Democratic ideology. Today’s party is still the same as the one forged by Roosevelt in the 1930s. See, for instance, Beer, Samuel, “Liberalism and the National Idea,” Left, Right, and Center: Essays on Liberalism and Conservatism in the U.S., ed. Goldwin, Robert A. (Chicago, 1965), 145–46Google Scholar; Fraser, Steve and Gerstle, Gary, The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980 (Princeton, 1989)Google Scholar; Ladd, and Hadley, Charles D., Transformation of the American Party System (New York, 1975)Google Scholar; Leuchtenburg, William E., In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan (Ithaca, 1983)Google Scholar; Parmet, Herbert S., The Democrats: The Years After FDR (New York, 1976)Google Scholar; Skocpol, , “The Legacies of New Deal Liberalism,” Liberalism Reconsidered, ed. MacLean, Douglas and Mills, Claudia (Totowa, N.J., 1983)Google Scholar.
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25. Ibid., 188 (italics in original). I follow Gerring in using “Populism to refer to the ideology of the Democratic party in the 1896–1948 period and populism to invoke the general (nonspecific) concept” (188). See also Bimes, Terri and Mulroy, Quinn, “The Rise and Decline of Presidential Populism,” Studies in American Political Development 18, no. (2004): 136–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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29. Roosevelt famously asserted as much in his commencement address at Oglethorpe University in 1932: “The country needs … persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.” Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Oglethorpe University Address,” 22 May 1932. See also Gerring, , Party Ideologies in America, 228Google Scholar.
30. This is not to say that everything changed. Postwar Democrats, for instance, had a similar understanding of social justice, welfare, and wealth redistribution.
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