Governing in the public interest: then & now

Daedalus, Fall 2007 by Whitman, Christine Todd

"Good policy is good politics" was one of Webster Todd's favorite political aphorisms. Twice chairman of the New Jersey State Republican Party, a behind-the-scenes party leader who was one of those who traveled to Paris to persuade Dwight Eisenhower to come home from Europe and run for president as a Republican, and a delegate to numerous Republican National Conventions, Web Todd was what would have been called back in the 19405,19505, and 19605 a member in good standing of the Eastern Republican establishment. He was also my father.

Underlying his belief that good policy was good politics was his conviction that government, and those who sought to lead it, had a responsibility to act always in the public interest, to serve the needs of the people, from whom government derives its legitimacy.

During most of my time observing and participating in political life (I am somewhat abashed to admit that it has been more than fifty years since I attended my first Republican National Convention - and I have not missed one since), most of the politicians I have known and worked with had a fairly clear idea of what was meant by 'the public interest.' Without getting into a discussion of John Stuart Mill and the philosophy of utilitarianism, I believe they viewed serving the public interest as doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people. It also meant protecting personal liberty, encouraging individual initiative and opportunity, and safeguarding the fundamental rights that every member of a free society possesses.

Contemporary political history (which I define as the political history I can remember) is filled with examples of Washington putting the public interest above partisan ones. Perhaps the most notable example is the passage of the landmark civil-rights bills in the mid19608 : the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The enactment of these measures required that Republicans and Democrats work together to end the insidiously persistent institutional instruments of racism in America.

Over the past forty years, the Democratic Party has received the lion's share of the credit for these bills. Undeniably, President Lyndon Johnson staked an enormous amount of his political capital on this issue. But he knew, because few have ever been better vote-counters than Johnson, that to succeed, his most important legislative priority had to have the backing of Congressional Republicans - and he was right. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would not have been possible without strong support from the Republican Party - from the most-senior Congressional leaders to the backbenchers.

Indeed, the measure would never have even come to the floor of the Senate had Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois not broken the Senate's longest filibuster in history (led by West Virginia's Robert Byrd). And when it did, 80 percent of the Republicans in both houses voted for it, as compared to just 61 percent of the Democrats in the House and 69 percent of those in the Senate.

One need not be a political science Ph.D. to imagine any number of scenarios in which the Republicans could have sought to play this issue for its own political advantage by handing Johnson a major legislative defeat. Instead, the Republicans acted in concert with their leadership counterparts across the aisle and with the White House to advance the greater good. Some will argue that by later tying the enactment of major civil-rights legislation to the Democratic Party, the Republicans were able to split the Democrats and lay the foundations of the 'Southern Strategy/ which broke the Democrats' century-long stranglehold on the South. But that was not the thinking at the time, for many Republicans would also face the displeasure of their constituents for their vote.

The first two decades of the modern environmental era (1970 -1990) were also a time when Democrats and Republicans were able to come together to serve the public. They constructed an entirely new legal, regulatory, and institutional framework for preserving, protecting, and restoring America's environment. It was bold and thus controversial.

By the time Richard Nixon was inaugurated president in 1969, there was a growing consensus in the United States that the mechanisms then in place to safeguard what was commonly called the ecology were not working. Rivers were spontaneously combusting. People were choking on thick, dirty smog. Land all over America was being used as toxic waste dumps.

During the 1968 campaign, neither of the two major party candidates spent much time addressing the growing environmental crisis. Other, more immediate issues were confronting the voters and the nation : Vietnam was tearing the nation apart; street riots were igniting American cities ; the country was still reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy. And after the results of that election were decided, there was no love lost in Washington between the Republicans, who had just taken control of the White House for the first time in eight years, and the Democrats, who had been in control of Congress since 1955.