PART I. THE NEED FOR GREATER PARTY RESPONSIBILITY 1. The Role of the Political Parties

1. The Parties and Public Policy. Throughout this report political parties are treated as indispensable instruments of government. That is to say, we proceed on the proposition that popular government in a nation of more than 150 million people requires political parties which provide the electorate with a proper range of choice between alternatives of action. The party system thus serves as the main device for bringing into continuing relationship those ideas about liberty, majority rule and leadership which Americans are largely taking for granted. For the great majority of Americans, the most valuable opportunity to influence the course of public affairs is the choice they are able to make between the parties in the principal elections. While in an election the party alternative necessarily takes the form of a choice between candidates, putting a particular candidate into office is not an end in itself. The concern of the parties with candidates, elections and appointments is misunderstood if it is assumed that parties can afford to bring forth aspirants for office without regard to the views of those so selected. Actually, the party struggle is concerned with the direction of public affairs. Party nominations are no more than a means to this end. In short, party politics inevitably involves public policy in one way or another. In order to keep the parties apart, one must consider the relations between each and public policy. This is not to ignore that in the past the American two-party system has shown little propensity for evolving original or creative ideas about public policy; that it has even been rather sluggish in responding to such ideas in the public interest; that it reflects in an enlarged way those differences throughout the country which are expressed in the operation of the federal structure of government; and that in all political organizations a considerable measure of irrationality manifests itself. Giving due weight to each of these factors, we are nevertheless led to conclude that the choices provided by the two-party system are valuable to the American people in proportion to their definition in terms of public policy. The reasons for the growing emphasis on public policy in party politics are to be found, above all, in the very operations of modern government. With the extraordinary growth of the responsibilities of government, the discussion of public affairs for the most part makes sense only in terms of public policy. 2. The New Importance of Program. One of the most pressing require-