The Problems With a Two-Party Political System
This started as an essay in conjunction with learning about Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, this essay was used in school and for this blog. Let’s see what you think.
Martin Luther’s 95 Theses was a revolutionary paper that changed the course of the christian faith and shifted the course of religion within our world as we know it. Although these thoughts on why a two-party political system are not as revolutionary and life-changing as Luther’s words he nailed to a church in Wittenberg, Germany were, hopefully it can open a discussion on why our world is so polarized today in order to bring people together in community, rather than tear people apart and out of unity.
The best way to break this thought down is to come up with a thesis for the problem presented. That problem is the issue with having a political system dominated by two parties. So, although the value our country places on discussion is invariably important in the grand scheme of democracy itself, the inherent polarization and echo-chambers that are borne out of a split-party-demographic is too big a problem to ignore.
Our country was founded on the ideals of community and conversation bringing us together and forward into a better future. But it seems our world now has become a world so outside of thoughtful conversation and deliberation that the consequences of that are intrinsically faulty in the very fiber of our society. George Washington warned of this issue in his farewell speech remarked, “ The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetuated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.” John Adams simplified this idea by saying, “ A division of the republic into two great parties… is to be dreaded as the great political evil.” The idea that our founding fathers envisioned a future and warned us of a world where two parties would be great in stature and in that happening it would lead to our country's inevitable downfall is, quite simply, bonkers. A world where we don’t honor and listen to our past flaws and thoughts is a world that falls on its own sword. It begins a reaction of “despotism” and “great political evil” in which we forget morality and creativity in the face of power and repression.
According to Gallup polling, 62% of Americans believe that a third party is needed because of a lack of trust and faith in how Republicans and Democrats are representing their constituents. This poll underscores the trouble our country is faced with. The value our country has placed on trust within the political system for centuries has seemed to erode to a point that some even question if a third party would even resolve it. As one teenager put it in conversation with me, “Would it create more competition and just another group of ignorant voters, simply voting for what party they think is best?” In terms of a creative solution to this problem, the crutch that has seemed to burden our country’s trust in the system itself is something that needs to be delved into deeper.
One of the greatest aspects of our country is the way we vote. Although voting rights for suppressed people in our country's past was something that we had to move past, the founding fathers created a doctrine to follow that allowed us to move through the hardship and into a world where everyone was equal in the eyes of law. This, however, coupled with the issues of a two-party system allowed voter division to thrive and competition to fizzle out. Whenever the idea behind a vote is to vote for what you know rather than what is the best option you create a vacuum of thought and conversation in how the competition behind a vote is done. A politician doesn’t have to counter the actual opponent, but rather against the people within their own party. This issue feeds into the next problem of having a political system dominated by two parties.
Voter Apathy. The meaning behind the phrase is so crushingly vital in our pursuit of a better country that understanding it is crucial to bridging our country's gap of understanding. Voter apathy is the idea that one group of voters hate another group without any validation or counter-argumentative thought. In our modern lens, the Republicans hate the Democrats because they are Democrats. Democrats hate Republicans because they are Republicans. The issue in front of this is so simple that it really only needs one sentence to break down. When the system doesn’t allow for freedom of thought and exchange of ideas along differing political views the chasm it creates between those ideas is so astronomical it becomes too far to bridge in a political setting. This chasm becomes more visible when the thought Lee Drutman proposed is considered, “Some Americans are involved in politics and some aren’t.” In a political system that rewards knowledge, too many people aren’t involved or care enough about the system itself. This idea is reflected in our media climate itself.
The split between conservative media and liberal media is so large that each seems to operate with its own set of rules, and yet those rules seem to mirror each other very clearly. Both push their own ideals. Both operate in a space that isolates their ideas and attempts to de-rationalize the opposing party. Each of them are so similar to each other that if you take away the actual rhetoric and analyze how they present news, they run along the exact same speech patterns and rhetorical arguments. That split is exasperated by the fact that creativity is stunted when thought is limited. The world we live in is so polarized, in part because of the media, but the symptom the media has become is just that, a symptom-of a greater issue in our country’s political system.
The media’s ideas behind what drives polarization and connectivity is something that needs to be analyzed in order to fully grasp the inherent crux of information within our world today. As social networking sites like Tiktok and Instagram gravitate towards a social climate that is swipe happy. The way our attention spans have shrunk is a microcosm of a bigger societal problem in how we communicate and how our world functions. As more and more people become connected through the internet, a loss of connectivity to the real world where real conversation happens is inevitable. This loss of connectivity can be attributed to the way our country has functioned for the past 20 or so years. In pushing for a more global economy we have opened ourselves up to the possibility that globalization will cause our own country’s creativity and functionality to suffer. As more people become silos on the internet they lose a grasp of the world around them. This siloization has caused more and more issues in how our country interprets knowledge and expression within the social sphere, economic sphere, and political sphere of our world today. As growth on the internet occurs, we need to be more watchful of how that impacts how we actually communicate with each other. Does it hinder our ability to create meaningful change in our world? Does it bring people together or tear them apart? Does the world need another world online or can we function as a society in the physical world we live in?
The issues a two-party political system has created for our country are astronomically large. The problems run deeper than a simple fix in one fell swoop, but there are some ways we can counteract the political evil present in our world today.
SOLUTIONS -
In researching the solutions to this problem I ran into something that seems wrong to know and yet so important in our modern political world. Super PAC’s. I think it would be beneficial for me to simply list out, in a bulleted list, the absolute (horsecrap)[insert other word here] that has flooded our political system with a newfound level of corruption and volatility.
No limit on spending funds towards political sources
No need to say where the money came from
No way of knowing where the money came from(Dark Money)
Individuals can give a group which then gives it to the Super PAC’s which is basically money laundering
Unlimited amount of money in and out of the PAC
I don’t know how much I can really say about this issue other than it just seems evil. It seems like if Bernie Madoff and Jeffery Epstein had a love child of ripping people off and holding blackmail over their head it would create something like this. The only way to really get rid of this is to get rid of it. Create laws that place a high sentence or fine that prohibits groups like Super Pac’s from gaining influence in the political sphere. Lobbying can be good, but using money within that lobbying in order to further your own gain with no regard for the actual well-being of the country just seems evil.
The other major solution or at least thoughtful fix to this issue is to limit politicians ability to run more than once. Or twice. In order to fully guarantee a trust in the system itself we need to push a new piece of legislation that causes the system to flip every couple of years. Instead of allowing house reps to continually run every 2 years they need to create a cap of 3 terms for house reps. In doing this you create a constant system of accountability and interaction between the government and the populous. In conjunction with this change for house reps, shortening senator sentences from 6 to 4 years makes much more sense. As well as limiting how many times they can run to two terms. This would allow people to make faster decisions as the system would most likely be more united in what they wanted to accomplish.
To wrap this idea up, creating a political system that prioritizes creativity and interactions between voters and the elected officials is something that our country has lacked for the past hundred years. For our country to be formed in a better manner and more equal society the political system needs to be cared for and thought of more in a manner that encourages vitality and variability of ideas and creativity. Instead of prioritizing a divide between groups, eliminating the need for groups entirely by creating systems that bar groups from taking funds that wreak havoc on the political landscape itself, we need to encourage a more divisive split between ideas of individuals, rather than just groups those individuals make up.
By - Titus Brown
Sources - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-two-party-system-is-wrecking-american-democracy/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/03/01/break-up-two-party-system/
https://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2018/3/26/17163960/america-two-party-system-constitutional-democracy
https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/super-pacs/2022
