64 The two-party system
will have little impact. The selection of party candidates at state and local
level is completely outside the control of national party leaders. Even Presi-
dent Franklin D. Roosevelt at the height of his popularity with the electorate
could not influence his party to the point of obtaining the removal or defeat
of candidates of whom he disapproved. The patronage power is perhaps the
only real weapon left to national leaders to try to obtain the cooperation of
local political leaders. However, the growth of civil service requirements at
the federal level has greatly reduced the number of jobs to be distributed,
and most of these are handed out at the beginning of the president’s term
of office.
Thus the power of national party leaders, including the power of the presi-
dent over his own party, is indeed limited. The separation of powers and the
structure of the federal system destroy the basis of any attempt by party
leaders to centralise authority in a few hands. The president cannot disci-
pline Congress by dissolving it if it displeases him, nor can he use his position
as leader of the party to undermine the power of Congressmen or Senators
in their constituencies. The powers and influence of the president will vary
according to a number of different factors, to be discussed in Chapter 7,
but these must be used in ways very different from that of a British prime
minister. Presidential politics is a very special game with rules all of its own.
National party organisation ‘floats’ upon the shifting sands of state and local
politics. The national parties are great coalitions of state and local organisa-
tions, and as such they tend to change with the tides of events rather than
attempting to direct them.
Extremism and violence
The diversity of the origins and interests of Americans has, over the whole
course of their history, given rise to severe tensions within their society. The
insistence upon conformity to the norms of the American ideology was one
means of controlling the potential conflicts in such a society, but it has also
had the result of driving those with more intense feelings into using extra-
constitutional channels to achieve their aims. Given the nature of the Ameri-
can experience, it is not surprising that many of the more extreme move-
ments have been generated by the concern of certain groups to assert an
equality of status with other Americans or to insist upon their patriotism or
‘Americanness’. Other extremist movements have represented an inability
to cope with the complexity of the modern world: a desire to opt out of for-
eign involvement or to find simple, direct solutions for the enormously com-
plex problems which face the United States. Ethnic politics provides endless
possibilities for waves of extremism to sweep over certain elements in the
population. Catholics, Jews and blacks have all been the subject of attack by
extremists who have been ready to make use of violence to give expression
to their hatred and fear of what they considered to be alien elements in the
community. Yet the groups that have themselves been the subject of violent