Such attempts normally run against pretty strong local resis tance, particularly in fields like education and the police. People seem to be perfectly willing to have joint plans on airports, and even willing to plan joint sewage disposal systems, but when it comes to police or schools, people get awfully touchy about becoming part of something else they're not sure of, or, worse still, becoming part of something else they are sure of and don't like. The only real brake to the growth of a strong federal central g?vernment is the growing feeling that government is not really the answer to many of our problems. Peter Drucker's new book, The Age of Discontinuity, and Pat Moynihan's new book, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding, are indications, I think, that people are developing a feeling that perhaps government is not the possessor of all virture and potential solver of all problems. So there are efforts to find private as well as public answers. But federal authority will grow, though it should remain flexible. We have seen in fhe last few years how the Federal Government has been able to move into a field like hous-ing and urban development. It's interesting to see how this has come about: An article appears in a Sunday supplement saying that we ought to have a Department of Urbiculture, and editorials appear in many newspapers. Gradually the movement builds up, and pretty soon you've got a Department of Housing and Urban Development. It is intriguing that in a politics that is essentially non-ideological, it's so much easier to move rapidly than it is in a politics that is wedded to a programmatic declaration of philo sophical points that must be followed through to the last jot and tittle by every party member. Turning to the other side of federal authority, I think there will be relatively few changes in the Congress over the next few decades. We might mechanize the voting system. We might install in-house TV so that members could sit in their offices and know what is happening on the floor. But I don't see much in the way of fundamental "reform," such as changing the seniority system. The difficulty with removing the seniority system, of course, is that nobody knows what would follow, and the inequities of a sys tem that is known are often preferred to the potential inequities of an unknown system. Nobody knows what would happen if the Congress were to remove the seniority system from its arrange ments of power, so I would guess that it won't be removed. Electoral College Will Likely Survive The same considerations apply to the Electoral College. Nobody can really agree on what ought to be done to replace it.
Author Scammon (right) talks with the World Future Society's Washington chairman, Frank Hopkins (center), and Joseph M. Coates (left), an Institute for Defense Analyses chemist. Coates is moderating the Society's radio program series, broadcast this summer over WAMU-FM, an educational station affiliated with American University.
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Everybody agrees that it ought to be replaced. But in the absence of overriding need, in the absence of a circumstance in which the failure of the institution is so marked that people are generally agreed that they would rather kill it than see it live longer, it probably won't be abandoned. The Electoral College has worked in a fashion since 1888; at least it has not reversed the will of the plurality of the Americans. Thus in the pragmatism and nonpurity of politics, the College will likely survive. I suppose there is no more meaningless phrase than "New Politics," unless it be "power politics." Both simply have no real identification. All politics is power politics. And when you call politics power politics, it's simply redundant. All politics is also new politics: there is change constantly in any political system new people, new ideas, new systems and techniques. Television alone has probably done more to change American politics than all the people engaged in politics in the last decade. And if you want to say it's part of the "new politics," I suppose this is true. But politics, by and large, is people, and people change: their views change, their ideas change, their concepts change. Politics in this country is probably a good deal closer to people than it is in many other nations because of our primary system. The development of the system of primary elections in the United States has probably had more to do with the stable flexibility of our American political system than almost anything else. The pri mary has meant that no political party in America can exist except as an empty bottle. Into this bottle the primary pours this or that kind of wine-or brandy, or gasoline, or horseradish sauce, or anything else you want. The bottle itself really doesn't mean much: It doesn't mean much in time, it doesn't mean much in location. It means the Mississippi Democratic party of Senator Eastland; it means a Minnesota Democratic party of McCarthy and Humphrey. It means a California Republican Party of Kuechel and Rafferty, in the same state at the same time. What has happened basically in American politics in the last 70 years is that the primary system-unique to American politics has really made of the two political parties something different from the programmatic, philosophical, we/tanschaulich, ideo logical groupings alleged to prevail in other countries. The parties have become simply two labels. The nature of the label changes from time to time. The Republican Party can be a Goldwater Party one year, and a Nixon party another year, and who knows what the year following. The parties can be whatever the voters make them. And this responsiveness of the American party struc ture will likely continue. Perhaps this isn't what futurists should say, but I don't see great changes in the next generation in our political system. I don't see it in our institutions. I don't see it in the pattern of the popula tion that supports the institutions. I don't see it in the political system itself. The fact of the matter is that unless we predicate very wide changes among the people themselves-in their atti tudes, in their habits, in their ways of going about their affairs we won't find those changes in any of the institutions or in the politics of our system. A democracy like ours, in which people are very closely related to the political structure, is one which changes as need is indicated from people. A great need was indicated in the depth of the depression, and changes were made. But even those changes, and even the changes most illustrative of postwar America-the explosion of the working class into the middle class and the flight from the land-are still more or less in the old pattern. I would say that if one looks at the future for 10, 20, or 30 years, one does not see an American politics substantially differ ent from what it is today. By the year 2000, I would think, the flexibility of our system will likely have produced a number of adjustments, a number of ameliorations, and perhaps new ills, but I wouldn't think it will have produced major overriding changes.
(The foregoing article is adapted from a speech before the members of the World Future Society in Washington, D.C. February 13, 1969. The Elections Research Center is at 1619 Massachusetts A�enue N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036)
THE FUTURIST, AUGUST 1969
TheW President Nixon announced that he had established a Nation Staff headed by a former law Garment. The following is the the President's statement tion of the staff. Statement by the President on the of a National Goals Rese In seven short years, the United States anniversary as a nation. It is time we consciously and systematically, to the qu nation we want to be as we begin our third We can no longer afford to approach haphazardly. As the pace of change ace change becomes more complex. Yet at extraordinary array of tools and techniques by which it becomes increasingly possib trends - and thus to make the kind of in are necessary if we are to establish mastery of change. These tools and techniques are gaining business, and in the social and physical sci not been applied systematically and co science of government. The time is at hand when they should be use must be used. Therefore, I have today ordered the esta White House, of a National Goals Research S small, highly technical staff, made up of expe correlation and processing of data relating o SCl the projection of social trends. It will operate of Leonard Garment, Special Consultant to will maintain a continuous liaison with Dr. Do his capacity as Executive Secretary of the G Affairs. The functions of the National Goals Res include: • forecasting future developments, a longer-range consequences of present soci • measuring the probable future impa courses of action, including measuring the c change in one area would be likely to affect • estimating the actual range of social what alternative sets of goals might be of the availability of resources and pa progress. • developing and monitoring social in reflect the present and future quality of Arr, the direction and rate of its change. • summarizing, integrating and correlati related research activities being carried various Federal agencies, and by State a ments and private organizations. I would emphasize several points about this nt l. It is not to be a substitute for the ma. activities within the Federal Government; rath. to help us make better use of the research no, bringing together, at one central point, those p relate directly to future trends and possibir · accessible what has too often been fragmented. 2. It is not to be a "data bank." It might me referred to as a key element in a managec system. For the first time, it creates within the W specifically charged with the long perspective provide the research tools with which we at lo the future in an informed and informative way. Since taking office as President, one of my THE FUTURIST, AUGUST 1969