America as a “Mass Society”

The one issue that seems most important this year to politicians and public alike is the President’s Health. If the apparent lack of substantive issues means that the major difference between the parties lies in the names of the candidates and not in their attitudes toward the use of government in solving social problems, then one or a combination of two conclusions must follow. The first is that the American people are so uniformly content that there simply does not exist a sufficient degree of popular disagreement to sustain a political debate between the parties. The other possibility is that all is not sweetness and light but that for a variety of reasons the existing disagreements are not being handled by the political system,...