Politics and elections 95seats in the House of Representatives to the Republicans. The loss of sup-
port at mid-term is partly a reflection of the normal disillusionment with the
party in power, and partly because local issues tend to be more important at
mid-term than in presidential election years. At mid-term, therefore, the
president is faced with a difficult tactical problem; to what extent should
the president and members of the administration campaign in support of
their party in the congressional elections? There are dangers both in giving
only lukewarm support and in wholehearted involvement. If the president
is actively committed to ensuring a victory for the party, then an ensuing
defeat for them is a defeat for the president as well. The president’s prestige
will suffer a serious blow and the result will be doubly damaging to hopes
of legislative support for the administration’s policies in the last two years
of the administration. Furthermore, if the president conducts a hard-hit-
ting campaign on behalf of the congressional party it will to some extent
antagonise those members of the other party in Congress who have been
sympathetic to the president’s aims and on whose support it may be neces-
sary to depend in the future. On the other hand, if the president remains
aloof from the battles in which the members of the party are engaged, it
may endanger morale in the party and antagonise members of Congress who
feel that they have a claim to be supported. The dilemma is compounded by
the fact that some of the bitterest enemies of the president’s policies will be
found among the ranks of Senators and Congressmen of the same party, and
the president will not be keen to see them back again in the next Congress. A
possible solution to the problem is for the president to give selective support
at mid-term to those members of the party in Congress who have supported
the administration’s policies. However, this is a tricky strategy, which will
embitter the president’s opponents within the party and may well not be
particularly successful in the morass of state and local politics at mid-term.
To try to eliminate this problem and to bring Congress into closer harmony
with the presidency, President Lyndon Johnson proposed an amendment to
the Constitution that would give Congressmen a four-year term to coincide
with that of the president, but there seems little likelihood of such a change
being made.
The exact nature of the relationship between the forces affecting the elec-
tion of the president and those influencing congressional elections is not very
clear, even in presidential election years. The fortunes of a political party may
show a close relationship between the outcomes of presidential and congres-
sional elections, but how far do the character and popularity of a presidential
candidate affect the results of House and Senate elections? Does the success-
ful presidential candidate carry the members of the party into office riding
upon the presidential coat-tails? And what about the relatively uninspiring
candidate for the presidency; are the chances of election of party colleagues
damaged? In 1952 the Republicans won control of both Senate and House
together for the first time since 1928. Was this not the ‘coat-tails effect’ in
operation, in which the Republicans were swept into power by the magic