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Goodbye, Two Parties; Hello, Four!
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10567 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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2 / 1986 |
2,629 Words |
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Claudio Campuzano
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An engaging portrait of a senator making up his mind on what U.S. foreign policy should be was recently painted for us in the pages of the Washington Post.
"Last March, flying home to Kentucky, Sen. Mitch McConnell…in his second month in the Senate, read a national news magazine account of the growing violence in South Africa." McConnell, reported the Post, "was struck by the basic justice of the cause of South African blacks in their struggle against apartheid…Back in Washington, the new senator asked his staff to explore the issue. Within a month a bill to impose economic sanctions against the white-minority government of South Africa was introduced by McConnell…"
Just like that. Senator wanders over to magazine rack on plane, senator picks up Time or Newsweek; senator is struck by basic justice of black cause, senator has his staff explore the issue; senator decides to "seize on South Africa for his first major foreign policy foray…"
The Post's choice of words to describe McConnell's action is particularly apt. "Foray," according to Webster's, is "to raid for spoils; plunder, pillage." And the senator was plundering foreign policy to satiate his naïve liberal soul. "In the 1960s, when I was in college, civil rights issues were clear," he states. "After that, it became complicated with questions of quotas and other matters that split people of good will. When the apartheid issue came along, it made civil rights black and white again."
If you assumed McConnell to be a Democrat, think again. He is a Republican, who made it to the Senate by only 5,000 votes of almost 1.3 million cast, hanging on for dear life to Ronald Reagan's coattails as he won three to two in Kentucky. Two short months in Washington, and he was helping to dismantle the president's policy toward South Africa. Not because this new Republican senator had any thoughts on how to deal with a country geopolitically important for the United States and vital as a source of strategic materials. Only because "the apartheid issue came along" and "it made civil rights black and white again" for him.
Kentuckians elected--they thought--a Republican, although the Almanac of American Politics, that blessed repository of knowledge put out by Michael Barone and Grant Ujifusa, wisely anticipated that McConnell was "likely to be much more Bob Dole's than Jesse Helms's kind of Republican." Just as there is a Christopher Dodd kind of Democrat and a Bill Bradley kind.
Americans--Republicans, Democrats, Independents--chose their lawmakers from two parties as best they can, but the elected have two more parties to choose from once they leave their constituents behind and become part of the Washington political scene.
The parties from which Americans chose their candidates are represented by the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee. The RNC has been kept busy finding room in the GOP for well-known Democrats who would rather switch than fight it out with the liberal-left in their party. Meanwhile, the DNC is trying to figure out what went wrong with their party in 1980 and 1984, and what it should do to gain the Senate in 1986 and get back to the White House in
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