| The 1351st. meeting of the Connecticut
Academy of Arts and Sciences was held on Thursday, April 15,
2004 at 4.p.m. at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University
of Connecticut in Storrs. Some sixty people attended the lecture
and some 25 members and their guests enjoyed cocktails and dinner
following the presentation. Margot Kohorn, the Secretary, opened
the meeting and welcomed the audience. She announced the names
of the newly elected members and noted that several of them were
in the audience: Donald L. M. Baxter, Professor of Philosophy,
The University of Connecticut, Robert R. Birge, Harold S. Schwenk,
Sr. Distinguished Chair, Dept. of Chemistry and Molecular and
Cell Biology, the University of Connecticut, James L. Cole, Director,
National Analytical Ultracentrifugation Facility, the University
of Connecticut, Daniel Nelson, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences,
University of New Haven, Irving S. Schloss, Tyler, Cooper and
Alcorn, LLP, Counselors at Law and Carolyn M. Teschke, Associate
Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, the University of Connecticut.
The Secretary encouraged the members to travel to the other sites
at which the Academy functions are held because not only are
the presentations interesting but also the members they would
meet. She also said that her précis of the talks appear
on the Academy web site. Professor Bruce Stave, the Vice President of the Academy for the University of Connecticut, also welcomed the audience and introduced the speaker for the evening, Dr. Howard Reiter, Professor and Department Head of the department of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, whose talk was entitled "The Making of the President 2004". Professor Reiter began by describing the nominating process for the election of the President in this country, explaining that this was a complex process for three reasons. It was a federal system, which meant that each State nominates the candidate; the political parties are semi-autonomous, which means that the winner takes all or a proportion of the votes, and finally, the system is continually evolving. As a sop to the protestors against the anti-war demonstrations during the Democratic Convention in 1968 a reform Commission was set up headed by Senators McGovern and Fraser. In 1972 the number of Primaries was increased, the process became decentralized and the voters began taking over. Leaders were supplanted by voters susceptible to heroes and thus developed the expensive practice of advertising and the need for greater resources. This led Professor Reiter to turn to the subject of Campaign Finance reform. Senators McCain and Feingold advocated in their bill that soft money could be used for advertisements regarding a specific topic or party rather than a particular person. They also suggested that soft money could be given to organizations rather than parties, which has resulted in the development of such organizations as "Move On". The bill also doubled the amount of hard money that could be given to political parties or candidates. Professor Reiter then turned his attention on the present campaign for President. He said that the undecided votes were determined by how well the incumbent was doing, that there were a shrinking number of undecided and independent voters and that people were more inarticulate about their feelings towards the political parties. He said that negative campaigns can get people mobilized by making them angry and that the congressional parties were more unified than ever before and therefore tended to be more negative. These trends can all be explained historically with the candidacy of Barry Goldwater for President. He ran against the popular movement of Civil Rights and began a thirty year trend of the South being Republican and the North East being Democratic which was a total reversal of the status quo. Professor Reiter then discussed the implications of these trends for present-day politics. The federal system and decentralization forced bargaining, compromise and moderation. Checks and balances are fundamental to our political system. Currently the Republicans have been focused and ideologically driven and starting with Ronald Reagan have changed the direction of American politics in that the era of big government is over. Newt Gingrich changed how the Congress operates which has helped George W. Bush achieve his policy goals. The election of 2004 may answer the question how permanent this trend is. |