American political scientists in the 1890s were deeply divided on the central question they had chosen to address: Where to place government in the United States in the larger scheme of Western political development. The “idealists,” led by John Burgess of Columbia University, argued that the American Constitution had “perfected the Aryan genius for political civilization” by “emancipating it from the remaining prejudices of European Teutonism.” Late-century America was, in their view, “the cosmopolitan model for political organization in the world” (Burgess 1895, 406). By placing the U.S. in this advanced position, the idealists mounted a strong case against demands for structural reform. Burgess himself thought that the proper American response to the new governmental challenges of the industrial age was more of the same. He urged a strengthening of the separation of powers, a further bolstering of the judicial and executive branches to counter the increasingly radical impulses of the states and Congress.

In the early stages of my study of the political movements surrounding the advent of AIDS and HIV, my first concern was not maintaining, or even achieving, objectivity. Rather, I found myself exploring many of the same questions as other scholars who focused on the human side of the emerging pandemic. Many of us puzzled over why AIDS had been such a strong mobilizing force. An intriguing political science question was why certain subgroups of AIDS activists enjoyed such success once the larger affected communities mobilized. Many of the people at the forefront of AIDS activism seemed to have been remarkably successful both in having their policy demands met and in incorporating themselves into the decision-making bodies that would formulate future policies. These successes seemed all the more amazing when one considered that a majority of Americans associated the epidemic with groups of people they perceived as, at best, marginally parts of American society—the diseased (hemophiliacs), the unwelcome (Haitian immigrants), and, most especially, the morally suspect (gay men and injection drug users).

This paradox of unprecedented success for disempowered actors has spawned a vast literature spanning a variety of disciplines. Early books on the subject, beginning with Randy Shilts's unequaled classic, And the Band Played On, focused on the manifold obstacles facing early activists and government officials attempting to deal with the impending crisis.

The number of black elected officials has increased steadily since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Prior to that time, less than 150 blacks had been elected to public office. By 1993, there were over 8,000 black elected officials. Of these 8,000, over 300 were mayors (Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies 1993). By contrast, blacks have not experienced the same kind of success at the state level. The number of blacks who have been elected to statewide office is a mere one-tenth of the number elected to mayorships. The number of black high-profile statewide office holders, those being governors and U.S. senators, is even smaller. Only three blacks have been elected to these offices since Reconstruction.

Holding high-profile statewide office is important for a number of reasons. First, issues such as funding for education, health care, housing, and social services are decided at the state level and these resources have traditionally been distributed disproportionately. Second, blacks elected to high-profile statewide offices would have the ability to bring other blacks into government through appointments and hiring. Third, blacks holding these positions would serve as symbols and role models for all of a states' citizens. It is important that whites see blacks as capable of governing and making intelligent decisions that affect white people's lives. It is equally important for young blacks to see people with faces like their own in positions of power. Finally, holding a high-profile statewide office is an important step on the career path of those wishing to occupy a national office. Candidates who are fortunate enough to win their party's nomination for president are usually former governors or U.S. senators, as are many vice presidents (Schlesinger 1966, 1991).

In a recent paper (Somit and Peterson 1998), we discussed the relative successes and failures of “biopolitics” since it emerged as an identifiable subfield within political science during the mid-1960s (see also Degler 1991). Toward that end, we addressed two questions. First, we assessed the extent to which biopolitics has established itself organizationally as a field within the parent discipline. Second, and substantively surely more important, we measured the extent to which evolutionary concepts and the methods and research questions of the biological sciences have been incorporated within mainstream political science.

Although obviously interrelated, these are clearly quite distinct issues. The resulting balance sheet, we reluctantly concluded, makes at best bittersweet reading.

Henry Jones Ford published The Rise and Growth of American Politics in 1898, and in it he looked back into the eighteenth century to find meaning in the developments of the nineteenth and provide material for his forecasts of the twentieth. So, too, do we look back for meaning in our own era, and use what we find to forecast about things to come. It is worthwhile, then, to reexamine the final section of Ford's work, “Tendencies and Prospects of American Politics,” because doing so helps us to understand the opportunities and pitfalls awaiting political scientists who forecast.

Ford began his prophesying venture with the bold statement that there are no new ideas. In America, he claimed, we seem to be bound by the Whig theory of governance: with us, it is all separation of powers and checks and balances. We tinker with them, and we bind the constitutional fabric ever tighter to prevent abuses of power by vile politicos. “The belief that the Constitution could be tinkered into some sort of mechanical excellence” hampered British thinkers and ours as well (1898, 355). In the late eighteenth century, the British concentrated on institutional reforms, but nothing could help, because men entered politics in order to gain wealth and position.

The cartoon below, which I first saw printed on the cover of PS in March 1994, has unfortunately proved prophetic. Voter turnout has steadily declined from its 1960 peak of 63%, and the presidential election of 1996 was the first in the lifetime of most Americans in which a minority of the voting-age population cast ballots. Turnout dropped in every state between 1992 and 1996.

That only 49% of eligible voters went to the polls in 1996 was especially disappointing for advocates of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA). The most dramatic liberalization of voter registration procedures in American history coincided with not only the lowest level of turnout since 1924, but with the largest single four-year decline since 1920. The theory that registration barriers are the chief cause of the gap between turnout rates of the U.S. and other developed democracies suffered a devastating blow, as turnout in North Dakota—where voters aren't even required to register—was a mere 56% of the voting-age population in 1996.

Moreover, the turnout decline was heavily concentrated among “electorally disadvantaged” groups, particularly the young and residentially mobile, the very groups that reform activists expected would be the primary beneficiaries of easier registration. In fact, registration of licensed drivers—the key “motor voter” provision of NVRA—was originally conceived in 1975 by Michigan's then-secretary of state, Richard Austin, as a means of facilitating registration for the young and recent movers.

In 1960, a televised presidential debate, four of them in fact, occurred for the first time. This came to seem, despite initial expectations, a mere blip in electoral history until the debates of 1976. During the intervening era, strategic political maneuvering was limited almost solely to the question of whether to debate, the answer always being resoundingly negative. In 1964, 1968, and 1972, the front-runner declined the invitation to debate to preserve his status as such (Alexander and Margolis 1978, 19). By 1980, the simple tactical choice of whether to debate had matured into an intricate series of strategic decisions—a yes/no question had been transformed into a debate on debates and their format. Concerns ranged from the number of debates and their timing to the use of props. By 1984, debates had become a campaign staple, and, by 1996, the debate over debate format had become a “campaign ritual” (Lewis 1996a). No current commentator is surprised, as was one of the panelists in one of the 1980 debates, by “how much the format is the debate” (Golden 1980). An editorial described the situation one year (and, without context, it is difficult to tell which) as follows:

A standard was set for participation by minor candidates—and then faithlessly abandoned. The major candidates maneuvered … baldly for advantage…. There was endless bickering about format and bargaining over the questioners. All of which produced wide public cynicism. There has to be a better way. (“Repair” 1980)

I will argue that there is indeed a better way to handle this metadebate.

During the 1996 election cycle, candidates for public office began to use the Internet as a campaign tool (Browning 1996; Casey 1996; Rash 1997). As Internet use grew among the general population, it was reasonable to expect that the 1998 election cycle would see increased use of this new medium by political candidates, and new methods and techniques developed to exploit its capabilities.

In increasing numbers, House and Senate candidates campaigned along the information superhighway in 1998. While very few candidates had web sites in previous elections (Browning 1996), by October 1998 more than two-thirds of the candidates for U.S. Senate and for U.S. House open seats had established web sites. In the past, candidate web sites were little more than digital yard signs (Casey 1996). In 1998, candidates made use of their sites to solicit small-dollar contributions however better, particularly by using them.

Like it or not, the Internet is now a campaign tool that many campaigns employ. Therefore, we believe the manner in which it is used needs to be investigated. In this article we pay particular attention to candidates' solicitation of campaign contributions over the Internet. Our analysis is mostly descriptive as we try to summarize the Internet activity of candidates in a sample of Senate and House races during 1998.