ABSTRACT
Economists are everywhere, in government, in business, in the universities, in the labor unions. Big business is far more powerful in France or Germany, for instance, than it is in the United States. The result of the peculiar role of economic issues and economic controversy in the American political process is most paradoxical. Every American politician must, indeed, know how to use economic measures for political ends. Colonial legislatures had, indeed, no alternative if they wanted to be effective at all. The political economists of the American tradition never for one moment believed in pre-established economic harmony. The great phenomenon of the nineteenth century is not, after all, the rise of the American economy. A noneconomic issue threatens the existing political alignments. But even in less crucial and less sensitive areas, the American political system is not geared to handling the noneconomic issue. This is particularly true whenever foreign policy cannot be organized on the basis of 'consensus' and 'bipartisanship'.
