America: The Two-Party Failure

I grew up in America, specifically in Southeastern PA, an hour outside of Philadelphia.  For this, I consider myself lucky to have been born in a country where the ideas of freedom and liberty have been valued above all else for so long.  I knew this growing up, too.  But then, as every autobiography goes, college ruined everything.  I grew up more in college, at Widener University, and began to realize a few things.

1. Politics is just a game to most of those involved.
2. The Declaration of Independence is one of the most important written documents of history.

Let's take these two realizations and really think about them.  As my father always told me, your mind is your final sanctuary.  Nobody can change who you are if you don't let them.  The first, politics is just a game.  This is, as you can probably tell, the most upsetting realization I had, and thereby the most difficult to reconcile.  I think it first started when Arlen Specter (a former US Senator for PA) switched political parties to win the election.  Everybody knows the goal of politician's is to get reelected (my Public Policy teacher just gave me the thumbs up, wherever he is), but this is inherently the biggest problem we could ever have with effective governing.

In order to see this problem you must ask yourself, "Why do we elect people"? Well, the answer is somewhat ambiguous, but in America, we tend to elect people because they look good, they can speak well, or they look like a "good person".  But there is something wrong with this.  Think about the job this person will be doing.  The decisions they have to make will inevitably be difficult, and likely unpopular.  If we elected people on their "political merits", things might be different.  I put that in quotation marks mainly because nobody really knows what political merits are (including me), nor do any politician's actually advertise their political merits (it's like obscenity, I know it when I see it, right?).

So we have all of these "good" people in office, and they play this game where they try to provide constituent services, like helping old Aunt Tessie find a low-income house, and try to vote on issues they way they think the people they represent would want them to vote.  Great.

Don't we see the issue with this though?  Firstly, we're not electing people because we think they'll be an excellent policy maker.  Secondly, those elected officials can't successfully stay in office unless they cultivate that image.  We've forced ourselves (and our politicians) into a system where if they make the "right" choice, but the "unpopular" choice, they won't get reelected, therefore they won't do it.  Take an issue like healthcare.  America spends more money on healthcare each year than anything else, including defense, and the system was only getting less and less sustainable.  Something needed to be changed.  Obviously, President Obama made changes.  Whether I agree with them or not is irrelevant (I'd rather stay away from specific issues).  These changes he made, however, are one of the hinging factors of his campaign for reelection.  Can we honestly think he was able to keep an unbiased perspective during the policy-making process (I know most of it happens it Congress), if he knew the, and knows now, that his reelection will essentially depend on the success or failure of one single bill?  No.  No, we cannot expect that from any human being, who will naturally look out for him or herself.

A lot of this stems from the two-party system we have, in my opinion.  Hence, the title of this post.  First, this is not any one persons fault.  In Political Science, we have a term "Duverger's Law", that essentially states that in any electoral system based on majority rule (as in, 51% = you win all the votes), a two-party system will eventually emerge.  Why? It's simple logic.  If you want the most votes, you want the most people, and if you're a political party you're essentially going to want to absorb and recruit as many other parties as possible.  This process will create two very large groups which are both very heterogeneous.  These two groups will, as expected, diametrically oppose each other on all fronts.  But, again, let's stop and think about this.  Is this the way to go?

If I asked to you to take a group of people and group them into two categories, you could probably do that. Male/female, short/tall, etc.  However, if I asked you to then come up with a "platform" that described them all and represented each person's individual opinions, beliefs, and experiences fairly, you'd probably scoff at me.  But isn't this what we're doing with our political system?  By giving such favoritism to Democrats and Republicans, we group ourselves into two overarching paradigms of thought which almost nobody would agree with completely.  This leaves the voter not to vote for whom he or she thinks will make the right decisions in office, but for whom she thinks will make less wrong decisions.  The lesser of two evils cliche.

Do I have a solution to this?  No.  Not really.  It's a philosophical question unfortunately, and as those questions go, the answer may elude us for quite some time.  I don't think the answer is a representative system (as in, each member gets the votes they won, like Brazil's parliamentary system), because then the parties simply form coalitions to get as much power as possible and it results in effectively, the same thing.  Or very similar.  I want nothing more than to see the end of the two-party system in America.  I think it's damaged the legitimacy of our government, and impeded our nations growth.  It worked for a time, but it's run its course.

2.  Let's talk about history a little bit here.  One thing I've always been fascinated by is the ability of a few good men (people) to leave their mark on history.  When you take a history class, you generally start off by learning influential people and their ideas, not influential ideas and their people... if that makes sense.  These people are often categorized into the different areas of thought they align themselves with.  The authors of the Declaration of Independence, mainly Thomas Jefferson, fall into what is known as the "Enlightenment" Age.  Now, I put this in quotes, because it was only Enlightenment for the white property owner, but it was a baby step.  History loves baby steps.

So why am I even talking about the DoI?  Well, even though it is not a formal policy or ratified charter of the U.S., it holds a lot of our core beliefs, and politicians and speakers often refer to it as if it were an official law.  The DoI is essentially the culmination of enlightenment thought, it eloquently speaks to the rights of man, and the roles of government.  It also lists a huge chain of grievances which sounds a lot like the authors complaining about King George.  These complaints, however, were necessary because they needed to justify the American Revolution, and so they did.

The DoI also makes an interesting comment, "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."  This, to me, is an amazing observation.  Thomas Jefferson looks at the world he lives in and sees the exorbitant amount of suffering among people around the world.  He also sees the seeming lack of action to change that suffering.  Because, as he says, man is much more likely to suffer something he is accustomed to than to revolt and change the system.  This is humanity's greatest flaw.

This flaw is what let atrocities like slavery, segregation, the holocaust, and the "ethnic cleansing" that takes place or has taken place, like in Russia under Stalin, happen.  Why is it that we are so much more inclined to simply sit by and watch pain, and even experience pain, than we are to stand up and fight for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"?  Or more accurately, to stand up and change a government that no longer protects its people and provides for them the opportunities that make those fundamental unalienable rights achievable.  I cannot understand this.  Of course, there have been times in history where man has stood up.

Look at the civil rights movement here in America.  But this brings the question, does it have to get that bad before we'll stand up?  Why does it take such abuse to unite us against a common cause for good?  Why is it not the better human nature to simply stand up and say "enough is enough"?  I think this is where I will leave this off for now.  This will likely be a recurring theme in my thoughts throughout this semester.  I want to find out why man is so much more inclined to sit by and watch evil than he is to stand up and fight it.  Maybe together we can find this answer, I think the human race would be better off if we could figure out why we're so subservient at times.

P.S.  I've allowed comments for a reason, use them if you want!  And thanks for reading.  Really.