DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE

1928 Democratic Presidential Nominee Al Smith with Relation To Different Theories

1928 Democratic Presidential Nominee Al Smith with Relation To Different Theories

Introduction

Alfred E. Smith, better known as Al Smith, is one of the essential figures of twentieth-century Irish-American cultural history (Walch 2007). By 1918, Smith was one of the most popular New York Democrats, and with support from both Tammany politicians and independent reform groups.

Discussion

By 1928, Smith's four terms as governor had made him the principal Democrat in public office. This, combined with his four years of planning and publicity, made Smith the outright candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. However, opposition to him was still strong from certain sectors of the Democratic Party, particularly in the South (Sweeney 2005). This opposition based on three grounds: his Roman Catholicism, his assumed association with Tammany Hall, and his opposition to prohibition. Smith's religious affiliations immediately challenged by Charles C. Marshall, a lawyer and prominent Episcopalian, in a letter published in the Atlantic Monthly, which questioned whether Smith's Catholicism, in view of the historical policy of that the church, did not effectively disbar him from being elected president. Smith's reply, published in the Atlantic Monthly, was seen to capture the American Catholic viewpoint: he emphasized his belief in the total separation of church and state, and pronounced that thus he could see no conflict of duties between his role as a Catholic and any potential future role as president (Rutland 2006). Smith's early Tammany associations, his wet, anti-prohibition leanings, and his Catholicism would deny him unanimous endorsement as Democratic candidate, four southern states refusing to vote for him.

Pareto Elite Theory

The observation of small groups of people at the top of society is the basis of the theory of elites, which generalizes this theory, empirical evidence in the domain of minority majorities. Both G. Elements of political science in Moscow (1896), the V. Pareto in the Treaty of General Sociology (1916) placed at the center of their analysis of the power of the political class, considered strategic because the power in any society declines primarily as a political power, then in the hands of well-defined political elites (or oligarchical, for use the terminology of R. Michels). From this original formulation, of the debate on elite moved to the United States after World War II, giving rise to a decades-long controversy within the matrix of behavioral, political science (Rulli 2005). The focus of discussion about whether or not the unity of the ruling elite, whose definition, in the end, seems to be more the result of survey instruments and their theoretical background that is not the result of empirical observation. More specifically, the reputational approach to identify the existence of a single homogeneous elite, which controls the company relying primarily on its economic power. The approach that emphasizes the study of collective decisions instead puts in evidence the structural conflicts between groups operating in a different arena's of elite decision-making, conflict justified by the mere existence of multiple locations for a decision (with specifications ...