AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973---Episode 8

AMERICA PREPARED FOR A POTUS ELECTION IN 1976

   As the United States prepared in 1976 to celebrate the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, a group of intellectuals and political leaders from Japan, the United States, and Western Europe, organized into "The Trilateral Commission," issued a report. It was entitled "The Governability of Democracies." SAMUEL HUNTINGTON, a political science professor at Harvard and long-time consultant to the White House on the war in Vietnam, wrote the part of the report that dealt with the United States. He called it "The Democratic Distemper" and identified the problem he was about to discuss : "The 1960's witnessed a dramatic upsurge of democratic fervor in America." In the sixties, Huntington wrote, there was a huge growth of citizen participation "in the form of marches, demonstrations, protest movements, and 'cause' organizations." There were also "markedly higher levels of self-consciousness on the part of blacks, Indians, Chicanos, white ethnic groups, students and women, all of whom became mobilized and organized in new ways. . ." There was a "marked expansion of white-collar unionism," and all this added up to "a reassertion of equality as a goal in social, economic and political life." 

Huntington pointed to signs of decreasing government authority:  The great demands in the sixties for equality had transformed the federal budget. In 1960 foreign affairs spending was 53.7 percent of the budget, and social spending was 22.3 percent. By 1974 foreign affairs took 33 percent and social spending 31 percent. This seemed to reflect a change in public mood : In 1960 only 18 percent of the public said the government was spending too much on defense, but in 1969 this jumped to 52 percent. 

Huntington was troubled by what he saw [ remember, he was a wing-nut]  : 

     The essence of the democratic surge of the 1960s was a general challenge to existing systems of authority, public and private. In one form or another, this challenge manifested itself in the family, the university, business, public and private associations, politics, the governmental bureaucracy, and the military services. People no longer felt the same obligation to obey those whom they had previously considered superior to themselves in age, rank, status, expertise, character, or talents. 

All this, he said, "produced problems for the governability of democracy in the 1970s. . . " 

Critical in all this was the decline in the authority of the President. And : 

     To the extent that the United States was governed by anyone during the decades after World War II, it was governed by the President acting with the support and cooperation of key individuals and groups in the executive office, the federal bureaucracy, Congress, and the mre important businesses, banks, law firms, foundations, and media, which constitute the private sector's "Establishment." 

This was probably the frankest statement ever made by an Establishment adviser. 

Huntington further said that the POTUS , to win an election, needed the support of a broad coalition of people. However : "The day after his election, the size of his majority is almost --- if not entirely --- irrelevant to his ability to govern the country. What counts then is his ability to mobilize support from the leaders of key institutions in a society and government . . . This coalition must include key people in Congress, the executive branch, and the private-sector "Establishment' ." He gave examples : 

     Truman made a point of bringing a substantial number of non-partisan soldiers, Republican bankers, and Wall Street lawyers into his Administration. He went to the existing sources of power in the country to get help he needed in ruling the country. Eisenhower in part inherited this coalition and was in part almost its creation. . . Kennedy attempted to re-create a somewhat similar structure of alliances. 

What worried Huntington was the loss in governmental authority. For instance, the opposition to Vietnam had brought the abolition of the draft. "The question necessarily arises, however, whether if a new threat to security should materialize in the future [as it inevitably will at some point] , the government will command the resources, as well as the sacrifices, which are necessary to meet that threat." 

Huntington saw the possible end of that quarter century when "the United States was the hegemonic power in a system of world order." His conclusion was that there had developed "an excess of democracy," and he suggested "desirable limits to the extension of political democracy." 

{YES, I'VE ALREADY TALKED ABOUT THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION, BUT I'M GOING TO REPEAT A LITTLE OF WHAT'S BEEN PREVIOUSLY SAID} 


Huntington was reporting all this to an organization that was very IMPORTANT TO THE FUTURE OF THE UNITED STATES. The Trilateral Commission was organized in early 1973 by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Rockefeller was an official of the Chase Manhattan Bank and a powerful financial figure in the Unite States and the world ; Brzezinski, a Columbia University professor, specialized in international relations and was a consultant to the State Department. 

    DETAILS OF THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION TO FOLLOW.