Two Party System

Despite the earnest warnings of our first President, George Washington, against the forming of political parties, they have existed since basically the founding of our nation. There was Alexander Hamilton who commanded the Federalist and Thomas Jefferson who led his Democratic-republicans and across the aisle from each other they established the first two opposing parties in the United States of America. James Madison wrote a great deal about factions as a natural side effect of liberty, and how if left unchecked they could destroy the country. This foresight, however, did not lead the Father of the Constitution to include provisions into his document dealing with the most obvious of factions: political parties. The Framers vision of the men that would forever fill the government they had just created were both selfless and great, putting the good of the country above all else. They truly believed the system they had labored into being would and could function without the partisanship that had poisoned so many others before them. While our Founding Fathers were incredibly brilliant human beings and the world would’ve been far more sinister if they had not lived in this very time and place, we must yet remember that they were mere mortals. The truth is, all of their mighty accomplishments aside, as far as political parties go the Founding Fathers were both wrong and naive.

What the Framers overlooked or were reluctant to face, is that political parties are inevitable in a free society. Because this understanding is absent from the Constitution and we have a winner-takes-all form of elections, the two-party system is inescapable. Without some major amendments, this will never change and the American public is left with only two choices. The smaller third parties are there for votes to be wasted, but at the end of the day the winner will always be one of the Big Two. This is a hard pill to swallow, because there are not just simply two points of view, two types of beliefs, two sets of values, two lists of priorities, or two ways of thinking. Even if you find a party that more closely reflects your unique political ideals, unless you vote Democrat or Republican you might as well not even bother. Confronted with such a world, there are many possible reactions. In protest, you might not vote at all, something many have opted to do. Not beating them, you may instead decide to join them and immerse yourself into the base platform of one of the parties. You may find comfort in the seemingly black and white of the two options and define what is right by one and what is wrong by the other. Politics might not even weigh heavily upon your thoughts and with indifference you vote as your parents or friends would. Whatever your response, when parties come before the greater good, it’s the country as a whole that suffers. But you cannot pursue the greater good without the two political parties and thus the great dilemma presents itself. How does a civic-minded person make a positive difference in a two-party government? The answer is moderation.