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In the past seventy years, lasting reorientations of the national electorate have taken place in two periods, centering about the presidential elections of 1896 and 1918. Most other presidential elections have involved relatively uniform swings of states or counties toward one party or the other; Louis Bean summarized this phenomenon in his chapter title, "As Your State Goes, So Goes the Nation." But the occasions when this uniform swing does not occur are of special interest, because if the reorientations persist they can mark the injection of new issues into national and state politics for a generation. Lubell noted the importance of the "Al Smith revolution" which preceded the "Roosevelt revolution"; and Key, naming these phenomena "critical elections," went on to show that Bryan's candidacy in 1896 marked an earlier major reorientation of the electorate. He defined a critical election as one in which "the depth and intensity of electoral involvement are high, in which more or less profound readjustments occur in the relations of power within the community, and in which new and durable electoral groupings are formed."

If there is practice without theory, perhaps there is theory without practice. We have fairly fixed notions of practice without theory—action without reflection, hand-to-mouth existence, meeting problems as they arise, disdain of plans or strategy, and so on. Of theory without practice there seems but one common idea—theory that because of abstraction or irrelevance cannot be applied. Plato told us the story of Thales of Miletus who, gazing at the stars, fell into a well. A little maid laughed to see such sport. Her laughter still rings in our ears, reminding us to practice navigating the earth rather than contemplate the stars.Theory without practice, then, seems to be theory that cannot be applied. Applied to what? Applied to problems. Which problems? Problems that arise among men or in the community. Who there defines a problem? Not to get bogged down at the start, let us say merely that some men do or that some part of the community does.We can also conceive of a theory not being applied because it seems farfetched or too costly or immoral, or because the moment for its need is not yet at hand. These are not the main objections, even though they all have a bearing in one way or another on the ideas we are about to discuss. The main objections are usually the ones already mentioned—theory irrelevant or too abstract. Abstractness, for our purposes, can be dismissed. It means either that the theory cannot be understood—a matter of communication, we assume—or that steps are lacking to bring the theory down to the applied level. We are really back to the question of application. Either a theory has relevance but for one reason or another cannot be put into practice, or it has no relevance at all and that is the end of that.