Depersonalizing Politics

Weak institutions, especially parties, led to this moment

At the height of the George W. Bush era, former Senator Bill Bradley (who I worked for in the 1990s) published an op-ed in the New York Times that identified a fundamental difference between right and left, or between Republicans and Democrats. The right, he argued, had constructed something like a pyramid, made up of think tanks, foundations, messaging and polling, partisan media, and the party itself. “At the very top of the pyramid you'll find the president. Because the pyramid is stable, all you have to do is put a different top on it and it works fine.”

Democrats, on the other hand, had “no coherent, larger structure that they can rely on.” Each presidential candidate had to build an infrastructure for him or herself: “Imagine a pyramid balancing precariously on its point, which is the presidential candidate.” Some were more successful at that than others — the candidate who would be most successful at building such a candidate-centered structure was at that time still in his first months as a a senator from Illinois — but this personalized politics was fragile and incoherent.

I’ve been thinking about Bradley’s insight — which was not unique to him, but he expressed it better than anyone — since the June 27 debate debacle as I read various rants about how “the DNC” or “the party elders” or “the Democratic establishment” had foisted an aging president on Democratic voters, had forced out primary challengers and punished dissent; while that same party establishment could, if it chose, “put a different top” on the pyramid.

If only that were true! There was a time when there was a Democratic National Committee that operated somewhat autonomously from its presidential candidates, empowered in part by strong state- and sometimes local-level party leaders (aka “bosses”) who controlled blocs of convention delegates and resources. But that was eons ago, and had its downsides. As the Democratic Party became more democratic, particularly in a series of reforms before the 1972 election that expanded primaries, the institutions of the party became weaker and politics more personalized. Especially as more and more money flowed into politics, institutions such as the DNC and RNC became largely giant bank accounts, struggling to coordinate with other big pools of political cash, some controlled by individual mega-donors.

In this world of weak or hollow parties, politics is largely individualized. The choices that led to Biden’s securing renomination were personal and uncoordinated: Biden hinted that he would be a transitional president or “bridge” to the next generation of leadership, but at some point decided his remarkable successes meant he should run again. Other potential candidates except for a third-term member of the House chose not to run, not because they were threatened or yelled at but because they expected to lose and know that intra-party challengers such as Ted Kennedy in 1980, who opposed Jimmy Carter, often get the blame for weakening an incumbent. Democratic primary voters overwhelmingly supported Biden because they too respected his accomplishments and didn’t see a better alternative.

There are no “bosses” anywhere in this story, and no stable institutions. Just an accumulation of individual choices, as in the market. Big donors now play an influential role, especially the few who have their own staffed political operations, but while many of them aspire to coordinate other donors, their egos and their conviction that their wealth reflects their intelligence makes coordination difficult. That’s the case in both parties. There’s no mediating institution to manage all the individual preferences of candidates, elected officials, voters, donors and activists.

Since Bradley’s article in 2005, there has been considerable progress in amassing a stronger “pyramid” on the center-left. A think-tank building boom led to the emergence of the Center for American Progress, the Roosevelt Institute and several others. The progressive infrastructure, once paltry compared to the right, now comprises such a dense web of issue-advocacy, membership, and quasi-electoral organizations—some formed in reaction to Bush-era policies, others from the more positive aspirations of the Obama campaigns, and many from the Trump resistance—that it’s almost impossible to map it all. But with the exception of the brief pre-Obama period when Howard Dean served as DNC chair and sought to rebuild state parties, the Democratic Party itself has been kind of an afterthought — an instrument of the president when there’s been a Democrat in the White House, and otherwise primarily a giant pool of money, and — in part because of the mess that is campaign finance regulation — not even the most important of several giant pools of money.

Meanwhile, the right/Republican pyramid that we envied has been turned completely upside down. The party has been fully personalized, its institutions flipped in service of a single individual. In 2020 it didn’t even have a platform; this year the platform was drafted without debate and described as “a pledge of allegiance to former President Donald J. Trump rather than [a] statement of party values.” Some core organizations in the conservative pyramid, notably the Heritage Foundation and others involved in Project 2025, turned themselves over completely to service of that one individual, while others, such as the older American Enterprise Institute, kept their distance, became home to “never-Trumpers,” and gave up some of their traditional influence.

Meanwhile, many proposed reforms to American democracy are similarly rooted in a view of politics as a wholly individualized enterprise, ignoring the need for stronger mediating institutions. One approach that’s gaining momentum is the nonpartisan primary in which the top two, four, or five candidates advance to a general election. Voters are expected to know about multiple individual candidates without any of the information or engagement that parties provide. This reform might help mitigate polarization by elevating more moderate candidates, but at considerable cost. The combination of campaign finance regulation, and the giant holes in it created by the Federal Election Commissions de facto deregulation, likewise reduce the influence of parties, relative to loosely aligned SuperPACs and donor pools.

The list of reforms that might strengthen intermediary institutions and build a more robust pyramid on both sides (or multiple sides) is long and for another article. They include proportional representation, ballot fusion and campaign reforms that would center parties. But the main point is, democracy is collective action and we should think about how to build institutions that enable long-term, constructive collective action. With luck, we might never face another crisis like today’s.