Table Of ContentWhat Happened to the Vital Center?
What Happened to the
Vital Center?
Presidentialism, Populist Revolt, and the
Fracturing of America
NICHOLAS F. JACOBS AND SIDNEY M. MILKIS
1
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress
ISBN 978– 0– 19– 760352– 9 (pbk.)
ISBN 978– 0– 19– 760351– 2 (hbk.)
DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197603512.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by LSC Communications, United States of America
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
Contents
Preface vii
1. Populism and American Democracy 1
2. The American Party System and Populist Upheaval: Mediating
Anger and Discontent, 1800–1 945 37
3. Origins of Executive-C entered Partisanship and the Quest for
Responsible Party Government 95
4. Liberalism Transformed: The Democratic Party Since 1960 131
5. Conservatism Transformed: The Republican Party Since 1960 179
6. Culminating Developments: Presidential Power, Liberalism,
and Conservatism in the 21st Century 228
7. Conclusion: Executive-C entered Partisanship and the Future
of American Democracy 262
Notes 295
Index 341
Preface
The book grew out of a relationship formed at the University of Virginia,
where the professional ties between mentor and student evolved into warm
friendship and fruitful collaboration. We began to collaborate when Nick was
working on his PhD under Sid’s supervision. But we quickly learned that we
shared strong philosophical and empirical interests in presidents and polit-
ical parties— a curiosity that focused on the convergence of executive power
and partisanship from the 1930s to the present. Our determination to parse
executive- centered partisanship rose to near desperation when an icono-
clastic reality television star captured the Republican Party—a dangerous
culmination of political developments that had been wending through po-
litical life in the United States for almost a century. We wrote the final words
of this book in the aftermath of the post- election assault on the Capitol— the
first time a president had sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
Our academic arguments had come perilously close to realization.
Donald Trump’s right- wing populism confirmed antinomian strains that
Sid had been warning about for three decades; but his alliance with Nick
opened exciting new avenues of inquiry into the critical and fraught relation-
ship between populism and party politics that added historical depth and
institutional nuance to the story of how the vital center fell apart. The tension
between mediating institutions like parties and populist uprisings is a haz-
ardous but inevitable feature of a democracy. But the combustible interac-
tion between gatekeepers and insurgents has changed dramatically over the
past six decades. Our core argument is that the expansion of executive power
since the 1930s combined with the rise of movement politics during the tur-
bulent sixties to unleash an unmediated form of populism that denigrated
political parties as collective organizations with a past and a future. The re-
sult is a disruptive form of executive- centered partisanship— animated by
the unlikely joining of presidential prerogative and social activism— that has
fractured the nation and weakened national resolve. As scholars of American
political development, we argue that the righteous demands for racial jus-
tice and the hazardous infatuation with right- wing authoritarianism that
currently roil American democracy are best understood when placed in this
viii Preface
broad historical context. There is little hope of remedying the pathologies of
what many of our colleagues have identified as a “Cold Civil War” without
understanding how we got to this stage of development in the first place.
We are deeply grateful to all the friends and colleagues who helped and in-
spired us to complete this project. The seeds for the book were planted when
Sid gave a talk on the 2016 election at his alma mater, Muhlenberg College.
The warm welcome he received from his host Chris Borick, his former
teacher Lud Schlecht, and the political science faculty and students was truly
memorable— and motivation to keep seeking the answer to the core ques-
tion of this lecture, which became the title of this book: What Happened to
the Vital Center? To Nick goes the credit of offering incisive comments on
the “draft” of this talk—a nd having the vision for a book-l ength treatment of
Sid’s very preliminary thoughts. Sid had the opportunity to further test these
ideas in delivering various iterations of the “What Happened to the Vital
Center?” talk at Trinity College, where he was hosted by a former student
Kevin McMahon, and the Tocqueville Forum, which gave him the opportu-
nity to share ideas over a sumptuous dinner with several of the distinguished
faculty from Georgetown University’s Government Department. Nick had
the good fortune to present many of the ideas on party and governmental
centralization at a symposium on the political economy of Vincent and
Elinor Ostrom at George Mason University. He is especially grateful for the
incisive comments from Bobbi Hertzberg, Brian Kogelmann, Peter Boettke,
and Jan Volger.
The ideas and evidence that were essential to fleshing out these thoughts
were marinated in stimulating and productive collaboration with our
colleagues and friends: Laura Blessing, Sean Beienburg, Jordan Cash, Emily
Charnock, Connor Ewing, Boris Heersink, Jeffery Jenkins, Desmond King,
Michael Nelson, Jesse Rhodes, James Savage, and Daniel Tichenor. Our
interlocuters at the University of Virginia and Colby College also helped
us confront the thorny issues that emerge in the process of writing: Lawrie
Balfour, James Ceaser, George Klosko, Rachel Potter, Barbara Perry, Guian
McKee, Mark Selverstone, Russel Riley; Tony Corrado, Carrie LeVan, Sandy
Maisel, Joe Reisert, and Dan Shea. Special thanks go to William Antholis,
the CEO and president of the Miller Center, who gave our research stead-
fast support and, with the able assistance of communications director
Howard Witt, projected our work on executive-c entered partisanship into
the public sphere. Sidney Tarrow, a great friend and generous colleague,
read the manuscript in draft form and gave several chapters the “Tarrow
Preface ix
Treatment”: detailed comments that were unflinchingly honest and unfail-
ingly perceptive. The broader contours of this work owe to conversations
over the years with generous and brilliant friends: Marie Gottschalk, Cathie
Martin, Bruce Miroff, Jim Morone, Stephen Skowronek; Emile Lester, Kal
Munis, and Anthony Sparacino.
It has been a great pleasure to work with Dave McBride, senior editor at
Oxford University Press. Dave expressed an interest in this project from the
beginning, solicited very helpful reviews at the critical incubating stage of
our journey, and waited patiently for us to reach a destination. It is no mean
feat to navigate an ambitious manuscript through a peer review process in
the middle of the pandemic, and we are very grateful that Dave managed
the task with panache. We are also very appreciative of the highly construc-
tive reviews provided by the anonymous readers Dave enlisted. At Oxford
University Press, we are thankful that Patterson Lamb, Emily Benitez, and
Jeremy Toynbee were there to guide our work to final publication.
Finally, we are deeply thankful for the constant love and support of our
families, even as they occasionally tired of the countless hours that we
spent laboring on this book. It is only fitting that we dedicate this work to
them: Carol, Lauren, David, and Jonathan Milkis (and the center of the
family’s attention, our beagle Iverson); and Rachel and Benjamin Jacobs.
Benji was born during the final tortuous stage of our writing— a blessing
that helped both of us put our work, no matter how devoted we are to it, in
perspective.
Nicholas F. Jacobs
Vassalboro, Maine
Sidney M. Milkis
Charlottesville, Virginia
