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The Parties: Bloodied but Still Standing
| Article
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20559 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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11 / 1992 |
2,720 Words |
| Author
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Stuart Rothenberg
Stuart Rothenberg, a Washington political analyst, is editor
and publisher of the Rothenberg Political Report. |
Whatever the outcome of this year's Presidential race," writes Cornell University political scientist Theodore Lowi, "historians will undoubtedly focus on 1992 as the beginning of the end of America's two-party system."
But Lowi's conclusions are not all that new. Political scientists and colonists have been writing for years about the decline of the major parties. It is now 21 years since political reporter David Broder noted the demise of the parties in the book The Party's Over (1971), and more than a dozen years have passed since political scientists Norman Nie, Sidney Verba, and John Petrocik wrote in The Changing American Voter (1979) that voters are "less likely to identify with a party, to feel positively about a party, or to be guided in their voting behavior by partisan cues."
Leaving aside Lowi's hyperbole and self-professed preference for a multiparty system, the 1992 election cycle has demonstrated both the public's limited attachment to the two major parties, as well as the Republicans' and Democrats' uncertainly about where they are going. But it is far from certain how much the events of 1992 reflect a more fundamental shift in American politics.
Are we witnessing the breakup of the GOP presidential coalition that has won 7 of the last 10 elections? Are the Democrats forging their own presidential majority coalition now that the Cold War is over, and abortion rights is a more salient issue? Or is there something even more revolutionary going on, possible the breakup of the two-party system and the formation of a true multiparty system in the United States?
The Perot Phenomenon: The Antipolitics Party
The twists and turns of the 1992 presidential election campaign provide ample anecdotal evidence that the two major parties are weaker than they have been in more than a century.
Ross Perot, a billionaire businessman and folk hero with no political experience, showed just how anxious voters were for the political outsider when, during the spring, they catapulted him to the top of polls for president. Virtually all of the major surveys conducted in early June--including ABC News/Washington Post, Gallup, USA Today/CNN, Harris, and Yankelovich Clancy Shulman for Time/CNN--showed Perot leading in a three-way race for president.
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