The Case for Third Party Politics
Perhaps because I’ve been known to express an opinion or two about the state of our political process, many people have been asking me for advice recently. They aren’t often asking me which of the major party nominees they should vote for. Instead, they are asking me whether they should vote for a third party candidate.
The answer is fairly straightforward – but the explanation is a little long. So, first the answer:
Yes.
Here’s why…
Contrary to what many people assume, a two party system is neither enshrined in the Constitution, nor was it ever implied or encouraged by the structural forms of our government.
Indeed, party politics at all – whether two, three or more – was the object of extreme suspicion and concern for the Founding Fathers. The reason for this concern is rather complex, and not simply because they had supernatural prophetic powers that allowed them to predict that we would end up where we are today. No – our Founding Fathers were extremely grounded observers of their own times. They applied the pragmatic lessons of their own experience at the tail end of the Enlightenment and the dawn of the Industrial Revolution to the problem of government.
One thing that is often overlooked or forgotten is that the American Revolution had nothing to do with creating a democracy or a magnificent, visionary new experiment in republicanism. It had everything to do with national self-determination and the reallocation of power from a remote central authority to a local authority. Democracy was long enshrined in the American – and the British – culture. The American forms of local democracy were almost entirely derivative of long standing practices in the United Kingdom; and Americans largely considered themselves to be British.
Great Britain was, in fact, a nominal republic (or, at least, a limited monarchy) in which the unlimited authority of the monarch had long been broken. Parliament exerted supreme authority – a Parliament that was comprised partly of elected representatives (House of Commons) and partly of hereditary local feudal authorities (House of Lords). Going back to the year 1215 and the Magna Carta, Great Britain had been the European torch bearer for broader enfranchisement – breaking down the power of monarchical authority. The King was already, by the late 1700's, more of a ceremonial figurehead than a direct or active participant in government. So what, if not the power of the King, was the despotic power from which the colonies sought freedom? It was, in fact the despotism of the British Parliament.
The despotism of a democracy.
And, by the time of the Revolution, Great Britain had become essentially a two party state – the Whigs and the Tories. Whigs were most often considered representative of the growing power of the industrial and commercial cities – the urban working and middle classes; while the Tories were most often considered representative of the traditional rural interests of titled land owners and their tenants. Whigs were, therefore, akin to our current “Liberal” Democratic Party, while the Tories were akin to our current “Conservative” Republican Party. In fact, jumping forward in time, the Tories eventually became the Conservative Party, while the Whigs became the Liberal Party. (The British have always been very good at dispensing with euphemism in their politics!)
When we look at the central problem experienced by the American Colonies, we are drawn to the famous slogan: “No taxation without representation”, which became one of the rallying cries and central justifications for the American rebellion. This is a very deceptive bit of propaganda on the part of the leaders of the Revolution. It is extremely instructive to note that the Americans never seriously sought Parliamentary participation. Surely, if that was the real problem, it could have been solved by simply allowing Americans to elect representatives to the Parliament of Great Britain. It could have been solved by bringing the two continents closer together, by a more complete integration of the British people.
Instead, the colonies chose a very different path because they recognized that, even if they achieved equal participation in Parliament through democratic enfranchisement, they would never, ever have anything like equal representation. Why? Because the interests of the colonies aligned with neither the emerging industrial centers dominated by the Whigs, nor the entrenched rural culture dominated by the Tories. Thus, neither of the established power centers could effectively represent the interest of the colonists.
Two parties… three different sets of priorities.
And this itself is an over simplification. In reality, the more urbanized Northeast and the more agricultural South would have themselves been split between the Whigs and the Tories. The plantation system of the South looked far more like the traditional baronial interests of rural Great Britain – such that the rich and powerful hereditary landowners in the South would favor the Tories; while the commercial and middle classes of the North would favor the Whigs. Two parties… four different sets of priorities. The upshot is: had the Americans lobbied for and successfully achieved “democratic equality” with the people of the mother country, they would have had even less real political power. They would have simply become pawns in the existing struggle between Whigs and Tories. They recognized that the two party state of Great Britain was little different than the oligarchical republics of Renaissance Italy... the Enlightenment version of Medici versus Borgia in which power was concentrated in the hands of a few power brokers supported by their "elected" constituencies.
The point is: the Founding Fathers did not need a crystal ball to anticipate the flaws inherent in party politics – they had real-time and contemporary examples of it right in front of them. And the path they chose to pursue was not to seek inclusion in the party-driven Parliamentary process – which they knew would only lead to a further erosion of local effective enfranchisement – but to separate themselves entirely from the politics of the mother country.
Upon achieving independence from Great Britain, the initial form of government established was a loose confederation, in which the voters had no direct participation in selecting either the President or the Congress. Congressional representatives were appointed by local elected authorities. The appointed representatives then subsequently selected their President. This fundamentally eliminated any form of coordinated national politics – and, by extension, any national political parties.
Even upon the big rethink that resulted in the second Constitution and the new Federal form of government, under which we currently operate, the Founding Fathers took steps to discourage the formation of national political parties. Originally, the President and the Vice President were simply the top two vote-getters. Winner and First Loser. This almost guaranteed that the two most powerful executive positions would be from separate parties (should they even be supported by parties).
Here we also see the presence of the now infamous and much maligned, but actually well thought out, Electoral College which becomes the object of intense criticism every election cycle. The intent of the Electoral College was to ensure that the President (and Vice President) could not be elected directly through a national electoral process. The electors were determined by local political processes, which – it was thought – would make the formation of national parties that much less likely.
Secondly, the bicameral Congress was populated through two separate processes: Senators were not elected by “The People”, but were appointed by local state authorities (governors in some cases, state legislatures in others), while Representatives were directly elected by local popular vote. Not national vote – local vote.
Note the emphasis on local. Under the Constitution as originally conceived, there was no concept at all of a national election of any kind whatsoever. When Tip O’Neil, former Speaker of the House, said, “All politics is local,” he was articulating what the framers of the Constitution intended to be the perpetual state of the American political process. No elected official in the Federal Government was ever expected or intended to serve or to represent anything other than the local interests that sent them to Washington. The national interest, it was always assumed, was the sum of the parts of the local interests. To state it another way: the Founding Fathers desired a political process driven from the ground up. From most local to national; not from the top down, from national to local.
If anything – the framers of the Constitution indirectly (perhaps intentionally, perhaps not) favored at least 13 separate political parties, each representing its home state. It was thought and desired that any potential coordination of interests on a national level would be driven by an intense process of wheeling-and-dealing; backroom quid-pro-quo deals; strange bedfellows; temporary and fragile coalitions; and endless, rancorous and unsatisfying compromise. The Founding Fathers were utterly realistic about politics. They knew it was a dirty, ugly business. They knew it was fraught with corruption and potential for abuse. They accepted this as a natural and immutable fact of life. The modern concept of “clean” politics would have been laughable to them. Their approach, therefore, was to limit the scope and scale of this corrupting, dirty and nasty exercise in human nature through processes, procedures and structures that made it as difficult as possible for politicians to conspire amongst themselves - that is, to form persistent parties as we now know them. In short, they tried to make sure that on the national level, local interests were more powerful than national – party – interests.
Needless to say, this ideal lasted about an hour. How it broke down, I’ll save for another article… for now, I would say: “The Founding Fathers would really like it if you voted for the Third (or Fourth, or Thirtieth) party that best represents your local interests, your community’s ideals, and your personal values. The more local your party and the interests of your party, the better.”
Do this if for no other reason than that was how our Federal form of democracy was originally designed.
