Two Parties, Three+ Parties, Uniparty, No Party?

Parties – or Their Absence – Are More Important Than We May Think

Many of Our Founders Disliked Parties

No less than George Washington warned against forming political parties, fearing a long list of evils they would bring along into national life. In more recent times, a lot of people feel the same. Common complaints are that the parties “don’t represent me,” or that they are corrupt and only interested in power.

On a somewhat different tangent, Marjorie Taylor Greene has complained about a “Uniparty.” She is saying that everyone who disagrees with her (and that is just about everyone) constitute one party, not two, a group that dares to compromise (which strikes me as a good thing in a democracy, but I digress).

The history of political parties in our country and elsewhere is not exactly as pure as the driven snow, but as discussed below, we have seen what happens when parties loose cohesion and structure, and it is not pretty. I think there is a real case to be made that we are far worse off without parties. We would do better to focus on making them better, not rejecting them.

So, What Purposes Do Parties Serve?

Parties have an outside game and an inside game.

We all know and still see the outside game. This includes recruiting candidates, raising money, doing get out the vote drives, and messaging. That still pretty much goes on today. The inside game revolves around controlling campaign money, mentoring new politicians, and developing compromises that yield legislation that is a responsibility of governance.

Traditionally, raising money for politics had at least some limits and some level of transparency in place. The high point of this was during the time McCain-Feingold was on the books. This was not much of a control, but it helped. If a would-be candidate wanted serious money, it often came through the party, either directly or by shared contacts. In return, candidates showed some self-discipline and generally worked within a party framework.

Even more important, parties could serve as mentors, helping prepare its members to legislate and to lead. Control of things like committee assignments help grow a leadership class and took the rod to those who were too self-centered and destructive. There have always been outliers, of course. Look at how long Joseph McCarthy ran rampant, but overall parties put value on teamwork.

One benefit of all that was that leaders of the two parties could talk to each other and reach compromise decisions on important matters, confident that they had the votes to get the job done.

Actually, We Lost Real Parties Some Time Ago

The Democrats still have relatively decent functionality on the inside game, but not enough. It is completely absent in the Republican party. And would be third parties lack, so far, the vision, discipline, and patience needed to build a true national party.

The crucial inside game has atrophied, thanks to that bastion of democracy, the US Supreme Court. And Newt Gingrich also helped destroy the system. The Court some years ago decreed that all money is free speech, no matter how much, no matter the source, no matter the lack of transparency.

The result has been massive amounts of money, given in secret to individual candidates and single issue groups. Because of this, politicians owe no allegiance to their party or their voters – they do their own thing. The party has greatly diminished ability to discipline or influence. This is how you get a Congress like the joke we now are bearing.

Gingrich broke up the system of assigning leadership positions in the Congress. In some ways, that sounded good – old timers had to make room for new leadership. But over time, it has become more chaotic. Leadership stability and depth is pretty well gone on the Republican side. This is how we get howlingly unqualified people running committees and rules wherein one member of the House can call for the Speaker’s dismissal. Governance is so far down the list of priorities for some of these folks that it is nonexistent.

How Many Parties?

The two party system has served us well in many ways over many years, but it is a closed system, and it is truly hard to start a third party. Should there be another formula? Perhaps so. This could be the time, once the threat of Trumpism has been disposed of and we look to our future.

We no longer have a two party system, although we still have, nominally, two parties. One is just outside the system. If the Republican party could get back to sanity, we would again have the system we have always known. I suspect creation of a functional third party that straddled center lines could do well politically and hold the feet of the other two parties to the fire. But doing that requires years of work at the local and grass roots level, building from the ground up.

The Green Party did that in Europe and they count. In America, third parties tend to show up only around national election time and are often either one issue based or are built around a single dominant personality. That simply will not, and should not, work. But a balancing third party could be useful The Liberal Democrats played that role in the UK for some years. But multi-party arrangements work best in parliamentary systems. It is not clear how well this would work in our fixed elections system. Still, one would think the option has value for the country.

More parties than that seems unworkable to me. We all know countless stories of countries paralyzed by multiple parties. Large number of parties lean toward single issue or extreme positions. Look at most of Israel’s cabinet today. Look back at Italy having to reconstitute a new government every nine months or so for decades.

What Next?

Oddly Rep. Greene sort of had it right (not a phrase I have ever uttered), although not in the way she is thinking. Having a reasonably stable set of parties that focus on governance as well as politics and can come together as needed to get things done is, in fact, what we need.

So, call me old fashioned, but I think we do better when we have at least two functioning, adult national parties. Really growing a third one could give some new level of balance and might change the dynamics in interesting ways.

Spare me the “I vote for the person, not the party” line. I understand the appeal and surely get the appeal of the opposite (I may be a lifelong Republican some say, but no way I am voting for Trump.) Fine to vote for a person, but part of our criteria should be to ask what that person is doing to build a better party. Just voting for a person is simply not good enough. We need more than that.

See you next week.

Bill Clontz

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