Suchergebnisse

In The Politics of Equality, Leslie Lipson points out that modern party organization has "exorcised some of the old devils from the body politic but has invoked others that are new and, as yet, untamed." Applying to parties John Dewey's statement that"Individuals can find the security and protection that are prerequisites for freedom only in association with others—and then the organization these associations take on, as a measure of securing their efficiency, limits the freedom of those who have entered into them…. We have now a kind of molluscan organization, soft individuals within and a hard constrictive shell without.…,"Lipson adds: "How to harden the individuals and to soften the shell, both to the right degree, remains one of the outstanding political problems of our century."American parties are extremely soft-shelled mollusks—if, indeed, they have any shell at all. In contrast, the Australian Labor party has as hard a shell as any mollusk in the political zoo.

The 1944 campaign was the second presidential election in which the ceilings of the Hatch Act were operative, and the first campaign in which contributions from labor organizations were prohibited. It furnishes convincing evidence of the ineffectiveness of these limitations and of the imperative need for complete revision of existing regulations of campaign funds.The financing of the 1944 campaign was subjected to close study by special committees of both the House and Senate, and their hearings and reports supplement at many important points the reports required by the Corrupt Practices Act. The most controversial issues of the campaign centered about the Political Action Committee of the CIO, and this organization was subjected to close study by both committees. The House committee, headed by Representative Clinton P. Anderson (now Secretary of Agriculture), also stressed the increasing importance and questionable practices of non-party "opinion moulders," but did not attempt to summarize the total expenditures of the campaign. Senator Green's committee, in addition to studying certain party committees and independent organizations in detail, made a great effort to compile complete data on receipts and expenditures affecting the presidential campaign, and its report makes available what is probably the most complete and accurate over-all picture of the financing of a presidential election ever recorded. The notable recommendations of this committee will be discussed later.