A Blow for Moderation

For many Democrats, the big election did not take place on Nov. 7, when Richard Nixon faced George McGovern. They regarded the outcome as a foregone, forlorn conclusion. The dramatic confrontation came last week when Jean Westwood was challenged by Robert Strauss for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. At stake was not just a top party post but the shape the party will assume in the years ahead.

The battle lines had been sharply drawn. On one side were the McGovern sympathizers, who still commanded a nominal majority on the committee--far out of proportion to their strength in the party at large. In the early skirmishing, they stuck with Westwood. On the other side was a combination of moderates, conservatives, Southerners, labor members and even liberal Democrats who had been shoved aside by the McGovern drive. They wanted to reassemble the coalition that had been so shattered in the election. For many of them, the most appealing candidate was a moderate, Robert Strauss.

Fair. A Dallas lawyer, Strauss was regarded with suspicion by the McGovernites because he is a close friend of John Connally's and has helped out in Connally's campaigns. But Strauss also has ties to Texas liberals and has worked successfully with all factions--a necessity if the party is to be reunited. No one could fault his accomplishments as party treasurer from 1970 to 1972. With good-humored tact and often elegant evasiveness, he kept importuning creditors at bay and put the Democrats on a pay-as-you-go basis.

If chosen party chairman, said Strauss, he would be scrupulously fair. Though he had argued against many of the McGovern reforms, he pledged that he would not try to repeal them. A caucus of Democratic Governors voted to endorse him, but McGovernites held out. Westwood offered to step down if Strauss did the same so that a compromise candidate could be accepted. Strauss's backers said that they would be delighted to have Westwood resign--but beyond that, no deal.

On the first vote at the National Committee meeting in Washington, Westwood won. By 105 to 100, she beat back an effort to force her out of office. That victory allowed her to save face. She had not been purged, but she knew by then that her real support had crumbled. She offered her resignation. New candidates were nominated, and on the first ballot Strauss beat two other contenders with 106 1/2 votes--4 1/2 more than he needed.

Another sign of the changing atmosphere in the party is the formation of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, a group of moderate and liberal Democrats who take issue with the New Politics of McGovern. The coalition spokesman is Political Analyst Ben J. Wattenberg, whose book The Real Majority argues that the party must appeal to the middle-of-the-road American if it wants to win. Other members include such labor leaders as A. Philip Randolph, Louis Stulberg, Albert Shanker and Civil Rights Activist Bayard Rustin. There is also what Wattenberg calls a "Tiffany list" of intellectuals in America: Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Michael Novak, Seymour Lipset, Norman Podhoretz, among others. Writing in the December Commentary, Penn Kemble, executive director of the coalition, stated the coalition philosophy. "A majority party in the United States...faces a particular difficulty: that is of drawing together a variety of potentially hostile racial, economic, cultural, and regional elements into a more or less united front against the vast power of corporate conservatism." That is precisely the job Robert Strauss is preparing to tackle.

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