Politics without power: the national party committees

A 1946 pamphlet issued by the Republican National Committee is titled "Your Staff at Republican Headquarters." On the cover is a lithograph of the building at 1337 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., which then housed the committee. The twenty-one pages of the pamphlet contain photographs, biographies, and job descriptions for the major staff members and positions. The organization of the committee would be familiar to those who know the present organization with its campaign, finance, labor, publicity, and women's divisions. But what chiefly strikes one about the pamphlet is its institutional look. It creates the impression of a durable in stitution with a past, a future, and some substance a national party headquar ters for a national party. But, despite its well-established and permanent look, as a party headquarters the Republican National Committee is incomprehensible to the foreign visitors who some times find their way to it. And, as we point out in Chapter 1, it is very much off the beaten path for the American tourist.
The origins of this book are to be traced to our service as National Committee faculty fellows at the two national committees. Hennessy served with Chairman Paul Butler at the Democratic National Committee in 1959, and Cotter with Chairmen Meade Alcorn and Thruston B. Morton at the Republican National Committee in 1959 and part of 1960. In the years that followed we have tried to keep close to de velopments at the national committees.

Our purpose is simple: to tell who and what the national commit tees are, where they are located in relation to other politically oriented organizations, what they do, and what modest steps might be taken to make better use of them. The purpose is simple, but the phenomena to be scrutinized are complex, embedded in history, evanescent, and al ways on the verge of becoming something different.