Approaching politics as a vehicle for achieving goals, rather than party-building
Scott lays out his interpretation of the two kinds of political careers, one in the party machinery and the other in personal leadership. Scott never had much interest in the former, and saw his campaign, and his office, as a personal organization that sought to use the party machinery to advance his own goals, rather than use his position to strengthen his party.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Robert W. (Bob) Scott, February 4, 1998. Interview C-0336-1. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JACK FLEER:
-
…in 1968 did you see your campaign as primarily a personal
organization success?
- ROBERT W. (BOB) SCOTT:
-
Well, of course, in the primary, it was personal organization. It was my
organization and Mel Broughton's organization. Dan Moore had
a lot to do with bringing those two together, to help heal the wounds.
And so it was a party organization in the fall, although I had my own.
As was true during that period of time and I guess still is, the
candidate for governor of necessity has his own organization in the
primary. Well, you can't just discard that and go with the
party organization; you run in parallel. And depending on
who's running on the national ticket, and perhaps in the
local races, determines whether you're going to pair up with
a Democratic party organization or you want to distance yourself from
it. And there've been governor's campaigns who
didn't choose to get too close to the party organization. And
here in 1998, in Alamance County, I see people maneuvering around with
respect to state offices, state appointments and all like that, with the
governor's office and so forth, and not going through the
party organization. Party organization, about the time I was running for
governor, was becoming less and less important because
there's really, other than the office of governor,
there's really nothing anybody can do for it, other than the
satisfaction of being on the winning side. The patronage system was
beginning to weaken considerably.
Now, personally I've always had two views—Politics
has two tracks. One track is the party mechanism. If you want to be
involved in politics and you want to start at the ground level, you run
for precinct chair. And then you may be a county chairperson. And then
you may be on the state executive committee, you know. And you move up,
and you participate in politics in the party organization, be it
Democrat or Republican. The other track is running for office as a
candidate, be it county commissioner, or state legislature, governor,
what have you. I chose to go the route—and this
wasn't a conscious choice; in fact, it was well on into my
political career before I began to think about these things. But I ran
for lieutenant governor and governor, and I was running down this track,
and the party organization's over here on this other track,
and we were staying in touch and all like that, but really they were
separate. I've been isolated. To this day I have never read a
party platform. And didn't really care what was in it, so
long as it wasn't counter to what I was interested in.
Now, the governor and his political supporters get involved in the
Democratic convention, or the Republican convention, as it may be,
mainly to be sure that there's not anything in there that the
governor can't live with, and to try to avoid there being any
embarrassing kinds of things. And to try to get the
governor's main points in the party platform. Well, sometimes
I think it's not so much trying to get the
governor's campaign agenda incorporated into the party
platform as it is simply a power struggle.
Who's gonna run the show? And the governor's staff
people, you know, they're going to say,
"We're it, we're going to run the show,
and we're going to say who's going to be the party
executive director", or the national committee woman, national
committee man, all that kind of stuff. That was true back in my
father's day—he had a rift with the Democratic
party organization at that time, and refused to sit on the stage with
the state party people, but sat down with his Alamance County
delegation.
Well, to some extent I was that way. I just really didn't care
for the intricacies of the party mechanism. I understood it, and
appreciated it. The party, to me, was a mechanism by which I could run
for office. In our democratic society, that's the way
it's done. So I took advantage of that, obviously; had to.
But it wasn't so much that I was on—I
didn't get all bent out of shape too much one way or the
other about the national party, except as it reflected the tenor of
liberal versus moderate versus conservative and it made it difficult for
me to run my own race if I was tabbed as a big-spending Democratic
liberal.
- JACK FLEER:
-
But you did mention, for example, that Governor Moore, you felt, helped
bring the various divisions within the party together, and that
benefited you some. And presumably he didn't do that from a
personal motivation, but from a party motivation. Is that fair?
- ROBERT W. (BOB) SCOTT:
-
I'd say that's a fair assessment. You'd
have to ask—well, you can't ask him now, you could
ask some of his people about that. Wayne Corpening
in Winston-Salem was close to him. But who knows? The fact that he did
this, and that he raised some money for me, and he urged the business
community to support me, and says, you know, "He's
not as bad as he looks,"—all that weighed in to my
being willing to support him for the Supreme Court. He may have had an
ulterior motive. But I think Dan Moore was a loyal party man, I really
think he believed in that, and regardless of what the future held for
him with respect to a court appointment, I think he would have done that
anyway.
Incidentally, for the fact that we were not politically close to begin
with, we became very good personal friends, and I still stay in touch
with Mrs. Moore. She's in extremely poor health right
now.