Here, from the sage and unimpeachable wisdom of Wikipedia, is an abridged history of the original political parties in The United States (plus a little bonus at the end).
The United States Constitution has never formally addressed political parties. The Founding Fathers did not originally intend for American politics to be partisan. In Federalist Papers No. 9 and 10, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote specifically about the dangers of domestic political factions. In addition, the first President of the United States, George Washington, was not a member of any political party at the time of his election or throughout his tenure as president. Furthermore, he hoped that political parties would not be formed, fearing conflict and stagnation.
The First Party System of The United States featured the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party. The Federalist Party grew from Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, who favored a strong united central government, close ties to Britain, an effective banking system, and close links between the government and men of wealth. The Democratic-Republican Party was founded by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who strongly opposed Hamilton’s agenda. Following the end of the First Party System, The Era of Good Feelings under President James Monroe (1816-24) marked a brief period in which partisanship was minimal. These good feelings inspired the first short-lived Era of Internal Improvements, which ended with The Panic of 1837.
BONUS: The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis in the United States built on a speculative fever. The end of the Second Bank of the United States had produced a period of runaway inflation, but on May 10, 1837 in New York City, every bank began to accept payment only in gold and silver coinage, forcing a dramatic, deflationary backlash. This was based on the assumption by former president Andrew Jackson that the government was selling land for state bank notes of questionable value. The Panic was followed by a five-year depression, with the failure of banks and then-record-high unemployment levels.
SOUND FAMILIAR?! I mean seriously, has anything changed at all?? I think the main difference is that we’re not as good at naming eras anymore. Despite the discovery of electricity, the industrial revolution, the end of slavery, two World Wars, the Civil Rights movement, the Cold War, and the fact that everyone in America now CARRIES A CORDLESS PHONE THAT ALSO SERVES AS A COMPUTER THAT BLASTS EVERYTHING YOU COULD EVER NEED TO KNOW DIRECTLY INTO YOUR POCKET FROM OUTER SPACE … the divided views of the role of government – and the nature of our financial meltdowns – haven’t changed one bit.
Anyway, the reason I was wikipedia-ing the origins of political parties (in case you were wondering), is because I think they’re dumb.
Let me elaborate.
In the aftermath of Occupy Wall Street (and I hate to talk about it in the past tense, but the fervor from a few months ago has undeniably given way to other issues), one of the biggest takeaways for me was the idea that politicians have too much incentive to serve constituencies other than the people who elect them. At the time I was thinking mostly about the corporations who have been given free reign to buy out these “public servants,” get them elected and keep them elected so they’ll continue to serve those corporations’ interests – but it also caused me to question the point of political parties. We live in one of the most politically polarized times in our country’s history. At the State of the Union address, Congress is completely segregated by their party affiliation, and the members of the President’s party give him a STANDING OVATION after everything he says while the other party sulks and occasionally even BOOS. It’s absurd. We wouldn’t accept that kind of behavior from freaking Kindergartners, but it happens every year in the most hallowed halls of our nation.
The thing is, the citizens of our country aren’t nearly that divided. Political opinions in this country are just as diverse as our tastes in music, food, TV shows, religions, sexual desires, and fashion sense. The idea that any two people’s beliefs could possibly fall in line about the constitutional interpretation of marriage, reproductive rights, states’ rights, taxation, immigration, foreign policy, religion, education, AND global warming is ludicrous – as ludicrous as one party somehow falling in favor of both the Right to Life and the Death Penalty (I really wanted to name an equally egregious example of liberal hypocrisy, but unfortunately the best I could find was “Al Gore’s carbon footprint”).
Circling back, the people who seemed most threatened by Occupy Wall Street (those who identify as staunchly Conservative – particularly fiscally – and people who perceive themselves as either being in “the 1%” or having access to it) dismissed the movement as class warfare, socialism, and leftist ramblings by smelly, entitled hippybabies. At the same time, there were people questioning the difference between OWS and the Tea Party. Now, there are obviously HUGE differences between these groups – too many to list – but there was also overlap, and that’s the point I’m getting at. Even this guy and this guy can agree on something.
The reason political parties have become so polarized, it seems, is to make us choose a side so we have a rooting interest. But unlike sports, where the rooting interests are usually arbitrarily based on where you come from (I mean, would anyone CHOOSE to be a Mets fan?) and even when they feel heavy, the stakes are actually pretty low … choosing a political side has significant consequences.
So why couldn’t we do away with the two-party system? We could leave the primary system alone, but instead of a party-based process it would just be a group of candidates who have as complex and diverse a set of views on how best to run the country as we do. There would be a series of debates like there are now, and as the process went along unpopular candidates would drop out until there were 2-5 left for us to choose from. If we really needed it we could replace the endorsements from political parties (not just Democrats and Republicans, but the Right to Life party, the Working Families Party, the Marijuana Legalization Party, etc.) on the ballots with a short mission statement summing up their positions on a few key issues. Hopefully – eventually – in the absence of arbitrary side-picking, we’d actually learn that the point isn’t to elect the people who are most like us, but to elect the people who best uphold our constitution in such a way that it allows both ourselves and the people completely different from us to equally enjoy the freedom of being an American.
Strongly Weekly 