The need of party leadership and discipline.
Let us remember, however, that a political party, like an army, requires discipline and leadership for its success. If every soldier insisted on following his own inclinations rather than the advice or orders of his officers, he would never be on the winning side in any battles. So, if every voter declines to be led by anyone’s counsel but his own, there will be no unity of party effort and no real triumph of one set of principles over another. To secure any substantial improvement in government, large groups of men and women must pull together. This means that they must have a platform, an organization, and capable leaders, which is equivalent to saying that they must act as a political party.
The citizen’s duty.
Parties are What the People Make Them.—The choice of a political party is one of the means by which the citizen in a democracy exercises his sovereign power. A political party is merely what its members make it. No chain is stronger than the links which compose it; and no political party ever represents a higher grade of intelligence or patriotism than its members provide. If a political party becomes selfish or corrupt, the remedy lies in the hands of the people. Honest men and women will then desert that party; it will fail to win elections, and ultimately go to pieces. On the other hand if a political party is honest in its principles, wise in its policy, patriotic in its ideals, and progressive in its sympathies, it will draw recruits from among the thousands of men and women who reach voting age each year. It will grow in strength. The voter can best display his zeal as a citizen by joining a party and helping to make it a power for good.
Organization helps to win victories.
The Need for Party Organization.—Organization is the watchword of every political party. Without organization there is no chance to win elections and put the party’s policies into operation. Very little is ever achieved in this world without coöperation. However competent an individual may be, there are limits to what he can do. It is not the brilliant player that wins the game, but the well-trained team. Napoleon Bonaparte once said that organization and discipline counted for seventy-five per cent of victory. These things are quite as important in politics as in war.
Organization, in party politics, involves three things, leadership, coöperation, and money. No party is well-organized unless it possesses all three. For this reason every strong political party uses care in selecting its leaders, builds up a system of party conventions and party committees, and raises campaign funds to pay the necessary expenses of its work.
Local Party Organization.—Let us see how this organization is effected. Beginning at the bottom each party has its local committees. These committees are generally chosen by the voters of the party at the primary elections, and they have charge of the party interests in the town or township, county or district, as the case may be. In the large cities there is a committee for each ward and a general committee covering the whole city. These local committees arrange for political meetings in their own neighborhood and help to bring out the voters on election day. They work in harmony with the state committee.
State Party Organization.—Next come the state organizations. The party organization in the states consists of a state central committee and a state convention. |The state committee.| The members of the state committee are sometimes elected by the voters in the various congressional or state senatorial districts; sometimes they are named by the county conventions, and occasionally they are chosen by the state convention. The committee’s functions are to issue the call for conventions (or in some states for primaries), to raise and spend the campaign funds in state elections, to arrange the plans for the state campaign, and to supervise so far as practicable the work of the local committees. |The state convention.| The state convention is made up of a large body of delegates who are directly elected by the party voters or chosen by the district or county conventions. It meets a short time prior to each state election and one of its chief duties is to prepare the party’s platform.[[54]] Each political party holds its own convention.
The national convention.