Vermont Firster
The decline of party politics.

By Charles R. Kesler, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College & editor of the Claremont Review of Books
May 29, 2001 8:55 a.m.

enator James M. Jeffords's defection from the Republican party is another sad episode in the decline of the Yankees. I don't mean the baseball team. I mean the people of New England, once the sharp, self-sufficient, God-fearing, liberty-loving core of the Republican party, whose name the Confederates honored by applying it to all the northerners and westerners who fought for the Union.

Today, the most famous Yankee family doesn't live in New England anymore. As a young man, George H. W. Bush moved his family to Texas where he could make a name for himself in business and politics--where he could be a Yankee, in other words, without the disadvantage of actually living in Connecticut. He kept a place in Kennebunkport, however, and in many ways never quite shook off his cultural ties with the Northeast. His son, by contrast, is a convincing Texan, even down to his born-again religiosity. When President George W. Bush spoke recently at Yale's commencement, he seemed to be visiting a foreign country rather than his alma mater.

As the Republican party's electoral base moved southward and westward over the past 40 years, it took a large part of Yankee pride and principle with it. Old-time Vermonters would be the first to tell you that the state has changed. What would Calvin Coolidge think of a state now famous for its politically correct ice cream, Ben and Jerry's, which, incidentally, sounds like one of those "civil unions" that Vermont recently legalized?

In what was once the most Republican state in the Union, ice-cream socialism has replaced the ice-cream social. So when Senator Jeffords began his momentous statement by declaring, "Anyone that [sic] knows me knows I love Vermont," he was courting not the old but the new New England. He tried to obscure this by the usual progressive sleight-of-hand, claiming that his state has a continuous tradition of "independence and social conscience." But the meaning of those terms has changed decisively, and the changes were evident in his own statement's incoherence.

Jeffords hailed the "independence" of five former U.S. senators from Vermont who "were all Republicans, but they were Vermonters first." Their party, and his party, he said, was "the party of Lincoln," and he and his predecessors had done their best "to guide the party in the direction of those fundamental principles" of Lincoln's G.O.P. But Jeffords's states' rights plea comported poorly with his theme of "the party of Lincoln." After all, Vermont's sons marched off to fight in the Civil War not because they put Vermont first but because they put the Union first.

What was missing in his statement was America — or more precisely, the connection between state politics and national principles that America's political parties were intended to provide. Jeffords's complaint was that the national G.O.P. had grown out of touch with Vermont Republicans and with Vermonters generally; that the national party no longer reflected local principles. Yet Jeffords resigned not just from the national G.O.P. but from the state party as well. On his own grounds, then, it seemed that Jeffords's beef was not so much that the national party was out of touch with state voters but that Vermont Republicans were out of touch with him! (And indeed, conservatives are becoming more active within the Vermont G.O.P.)

Similarly, he claimed that though "we don't live in a parliamentary system, …it is only natural to expect that people like myself, who have been honored with leadership positions, will largely support the president's agenda." Why not resign his chairmanship, then, and fight on for the principles of Vermont as a humble Republican backbencher? Because it was more important for him to be a Senate committee chairman than to be a Republican — of any stripe, local or national.

Precisely because the U.S. government is not a parliamentary system, we have a great tolerance for a diversity of local views within our national parties. And so Jeffords came around to the question of "social conscience," of those "fundamental principles" that would prevent him henceforth from being a Republican. What were these great maxims? He coughed up three: "moderation; tolerance; fiscal responsibility." Alas, moderation in pursuit of tolerance is no virtue. And besides, what irked him was that in fact his views were being tolerated by the G.O.P. very well — tolerated, but not adopted.

Plainly, it was Jeffords who refused any longer to tolerate his colleagues' views. He tried to insist, for example, that "fiscal responsibility" meant spending still more federal dollars on education, whereas his fellow Republicans had the pinched view that $44.5 billion next year, $4.6 billion above this year's amount, might be sufficient.

At any rate, Jeffords concluded that, "I was not elected to this office to be something that I am not." Actually, he was elected to be a Republican senator, but he could no longer live that particular lie. Amusingly, he did not become a Democrat either. He switched to Independent, posing as a man too large for either party. But Jeffords is the rare case of a man too small for either party — or at least too small for the G.O.P. For though formally nonpartisan, he will now caucus with the Senate Democrats (in a wonderful euphemism) "for organizational purposes."

In his small way, Jeffords thus contributes to a paradoxical trend in modern American politics. The parties and their loyal supporters grow more partisan, even as the independent bloc grows larger and more disdainful of partisanship. The country, including Vermont, awaits the politician who can restore the good name of party politics.