In Defense of Political Parties
With all of the talk of late about NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg's potential Independent run for President and talk of Ralph Nader considering another spoiler run for President upon realizing that he wasn't getting all of the third-party attention, there was a lot of talk about the need to abandon the two-party system or to simply abandon political parties altogether. After all, the argument goes, the Founding Fathers were worried about political parties (or "factions" as they called them) so why should we rely on them so heavily in this country?
Well, the Founding Fathers may have been worried about political parties, but that didn't stop them from forming them within five years of the adoption of the Constitution, with Thomas Jefferson founding the Democratic-Republican Party (which would eventually become the Democratic Party under Andrew Jackson) and Alexander Hamilton starting the Federalist Party (which was dismantled after five straight Presidential losses in 1816). In 1796, the first truly contested Presidential election, candidates ran as electors promising to be "Adams's men" or "Jefferson's men." One election later, in the rematch, Jefferson's men also voted for Aaron Burr, thus paving the way for the Twelfth Amendment, allowing for separate voted for President and Vice President. However, is this a bad thing? Is it a bad thing that we have two dominant political parties, or even political parties at all, for that matter? I don't think it is, and I will now explain the virtues of political parties.
The first, and most obvious, benefit of a political party is the fact that it allows people of like-minded political views to come together for a cause. Most of us don't have the money or the network to begin a political campaign, and one way to do this is through political parties. In other words, the elitist argument is the one against political parties. There are those who complain about disagreement in America and just how messy things are between the two political parties. However, the major ideologies are liberal and conservative, unlike other countries where it is socialist vs. conservative, so captialism has pretty much won the battle of ideas in this country, so we actually have less disagreement than other countries.
This brings me to my second point. People are going to disagree about the very nature of government. Should the goal be to reduce services? Increase services? How much of the budget should be spent on the military? How should the Constitution be interpreted? How willing should we be to go to war? To get into personal decisions? When does life begin? You are not going to get unviersal consensus on these issues, so there are bound to be things called political parties where people who agree on the answers to these questoins get together.
Finally, in our current system, the candidate who gets the most votes wins, except in the Electoral College where a failure to win an absolute majority sends an election to Congress, where the House elects the President and the Senate elects the Vice President. If we had a runoff, people could vote for third-party candidates without any fear of playing spoiler. However, in 2000, Ralph Nader voters were asked the question in Florida of who they would vote for if Nader wasn't in the race, and the breakdown was as follows: 37% said they would vote for Al Gore, 21% said they would vote for George W. Bush, and the rest said that they wouldn't vote at all. Based on this hypothetical question, Al Gore would have netted an additional 15,000 voters, far exceeding George W. Bush's 537-vote margin of "victory" in the state. In other words, Nader and Naderites cannot say that he didn't play the spoiler because he certainly did pay a role in getting George W. Bush into the White House for the last 6 1/2 years, so let's give them a big ol' hand right now. OK, enough sarcasm.
Except for Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996 and Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 (who, ironically, reduced the GOP to a third party for all intents and purposes in that election), virtually every third-party candidate is beyond the two major-party moninees in the political spectrum, thus making almost every one of them closer to the one of the major-party candidates and draw votes away from that nominee, thus making it more likely to get the candidate who is even farther away from them to win in a close election. Nader even admitted this after the fact, saying that his goal was to punish Democrats in close election. This included such people who would otherwise be natural allies as the late Senator Paul Wellsone (D-MN) and eventually did make the difference when former Vice President Walter Mondale lost the 2002 election to Norm Coleman 50-48, with the Green Party candidate getting the rest. So, if you want further Republican dominance as they are on the verge of destruction, by all means, vote for Ralph Nader or Mike Bloomberg, but if you want to get things done, you must realize that it is going to be done within the two major political parties, one of which can actually win.
Well, the Founding Fathers may have been worried about political parties, but that didn't stop them from forming them within five years of the adoption of the Constitution, with Thomas Jefferson founding the Democratic-Republican Party (which would eventually become the Democratic Party under Andrew Jackson) and Alexander Hamilton starting the Federalist Party (which was dismantled after five straight Presidential losses in 1816). In 1796, the first truly contested Presidential election, candidates ran as electors promising to be "Adams's men" or "Jefferson's men." One election later, in the rematch, Jefferson's men also voted for Aaron Burr, thus paving the way for the Twelfth Amendment, allowing for separate voted for President and Vice President. However, is this a bad thing? Is it a bad thing that we have two dominant political parties, or even political parties at all, for that matter? I don't think it is, and I will now explain the virtues of political parties.
The first, and most obvious, benefit of a political party is the fact that it allows people of like-minded political views to come together for a cause. Most of us don't have the money or the network to begin a political campaign, and one way to do this is through political parties. In other words, the elitist argument is the one against political parties. There are those who complain about disagreement in America and just how messy things are between the two political parties. However, the major ideologies are liberal and conservative, unlike other countries where it is socialist vs. conservative, so captialism has pretty much won the battle of ideas in this country, so we actually have less disagreement than other countries.
This brings me to my second point. People are going to disagree about the very nature of government. Should the goal be to reduce services? Increase services? How much of the budget should be spent on the military? How should the Constitution be interpreted? How willing should we be to go to war? To get into personal decisions? When does life begin? You are not going to get unviersal consensus on these issues, so there are bound to be things called political parties where people who agree on the answers to these questoins get together.
Finally, in our current system, the candidate who gets the most votes wins, except in the Electoral College where a failure to win an absolute majority sends an election to Congress, where the House elects the President and the Senate elects the Vice President. If we had a runoff, people could vote for third-party candidates without any fear of playing spoiler. However, in 2000, Ralph Nader voters were asked the question in Florida of who they would vote for if Nader wasn't in the race, and the breakdown was as follows: 37% said they would vote for Al Gore, 21% said they would vote for George W. Bush, and the rest said that they wouldn't vote at all. Based on this hypothetical question, Al Gore would have netted an additional 15,000 voters, far exceeding George W. Bush's 537-vote margin of "victory" in the state. In other words, Nader and Naderites cannot say that he didn't play the spoiler because he certainly did pay a role in getting George W. Bush into the White House for the last 6 1/2 years, so let's give them a big ol' hand right now. OK, enough sarcasm.
Except for Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996 and Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 (who, ironically, reduced the GOP to a third party for all intents and purposes in that election), virtually every third-party candidate is beyond the two major-party moninees in the political spectrum, thus making almost every one of them closer to the one of the major-party candidates and draw votes away from that nominee, thus making it more likely to get the candidate who is even farther away from them to win in a close election. Nader even admitted this after the fact, saying that his goal was to punish Democrats in close election. This included such people who would otherwise be natural allies as the late Senator Paul Wellsone (D-MN) and eventually did make the difference when former Vice President Walter Mondale lost the 2002 election to Norm Coleman 50-48, with the Green Party candidate getting the rest. So, if you want further Republican dominance as they are on the verge of destruction, by all means, vote for Ralph Nader or Mike Bloomberg, but if you want to get things done, you must realize that it is going to be done within the two major political parties, one of which can actually win.
posted by Albert McStephenson at 2:17 PM
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