McGovern Commission changes led to gridlock

The late George McGovern leaves behind a political legacy of a presidential candidate who suffered the worst defeat in American political history and a man who played an instrumental role in shifting his party decisively to the left. This leftward shift of the Democratic Party that began following the disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago set the course that has led to the current gridlock in Washington, D.C.

McGovern was a man of high principle, intelligence and great affability. I met the late senator in the mid-2000s when I was invited to give a keynote address at a conference held at the McGovern Center at Wesleyan University in South Dakota. Before my talk, we were asked by the conference organizers to have our photo taken together. As we posed, the senator put his arm around my shoulder and declared, "Does not anybody realize that this man is going to skewer me tomorrow?" I did not skewer McGovern in my talk, although I did discuss how the McGovern-Fraser Commission, established in 1969 by the Democratic National Committee, transformed the Democratic Party.

In 1968, anti?Vietnam War activists were outraged that Vice President Hubert Humphrey won the Democratic nomination despite earning a small percentage of primary votes. The Democratic Party responded by appointing a commission, headed by Sen. George McGovern, an outspoken opponent of the war, to revise the party's process for selecting delegates.

Reformers on the commission -- especially young staffers who came out of the anti-war movement -- quietly rewrote the rules to give much greater power to left-wing activists, including peace protesters, feminists, environmentalists, community organizers, gay-rights advocates and ethnic minority leaders.

These rule changes have had long-term consequences for the Democratic Party, enshrining identity politics and pushing the party much further to the left.

The first signs of polarized politics came early to Washington. Paying the price for the Watergate scandal, Republicans suffered in the 1974 midterm elections. Democrats gained 43 seats in the House of Representatives and three in the Senate. The new class of congressional Democrats in the House was more ideologically liberal than their own party leadership. In their victory, the new Democrats who entered Congress displayed antagonism and arrogance toward the Republican minority. Assuming committee chairs, liberal Democrats -- the so-called Watergate Babies -- pursued an agenda with little input from their GOP colleagues. Democrats restricted debate, changed House rules for their own benefit, and exacted penance from Republicans for the sins of Watergate and political defeat. These actions allowed liberals to exercise control over executive-branch agencies and departments.

Meanwhile, the rules established by the McGovern Commission gradually took full effect. Motivation to take the White House tempered the Left's takeover within the ranks of the party for a while.

But in 2008, the activist rank and file found their candidate. Barack Obama almost certainly could not have won the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination without the McGovern Commission's changes to the nomination system that favored progressive activists.

After two years of Democratic control, American voters reacted in electing a Republican House.

We now have the politics of gridlock at the moment when the nation confronts the worst economic crisis since World War II. I wonder how George McGovern viewed the changes he wrought.

After all, he told me that he voted for Gerald Ford in 1976.

Donald T. Critchlow holds the Barry M. Goldwater Chair of Politics and American Institutions at Arizona State University. He is the co-author, with W. J. Rorabaugh, of "Takeover: How the Left's Quest for Social Justice Corrupted Liberalism."

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