Splitting America down the middle

Why Republicans and Democrats seem so similar

2004.06.08 — Government | Voting | by Derek Jensen

A libertarian-leaning friend likes to say that there's no difference between Republicans and Democrats. They're all the same overeducated, lawyerly, money-driven, fat-cat, elitist liars, cheats, and sinners. (My words, not his; he would never call anyone a sinner.) There may be some truth to that, but there's little hope of having it any other way, and here's why.

America has a defacto two party system. Conspiracy theories aside, that's just the way it happened. As a result, in order to get elected, a candidate has to have the support of at least 50% (or very nearly) of the voting populous, because pretty much everyone who isn't voting for you is voting for the other guy.

In multiparty systems, the support doesn't have to be so big because the rest of the vote will be divided between two or more other parties. Besides, in multiparty systems, voters tend to think of themselves as voters and not party members. Americans think of themselves as members of the party and therefore vote more closely down party lines (that's right; when it comes to partisan politics, we have only ourselves to blame, comrade).

Because of this need for American candidates to pull in 50% of the vote, the parties have gradually changed their positions on various issues over the decades to maintain a solid base of about 50% each. When the majority of Americans decided that Social Security was okay, the Republican party began to support it. When Americans decided that an equal rights amendment wasn't necessary, the Democratic party dropped it like a rock.

This ploy of splitting America down the middle has the added (if not planned) advantage of squeezing out alternative parties. Europe is a melange of labor, liberal, socialist, "communist," people's, worker's, green, free, conservative, democratic parties, and combinations thereof, most of which regularly win seats in "parliament" (the European word for Congress).

The necessary consequence of the American system is that Democrats are mostly just a hair left of the American center on any given issue and Republicans are mostly just a hair right of it. Moving any further from the center would give the other party an advantage, which could tip the balance of an election.

The fact that the American center is well to the right of the European center is unrelated. Europeans are just more liberal than Americans. That's why they are beating us in vacation research and topless beach technology.

The result of all this is that many Americans, especially those in the middle who don't follow politics closely, have a hard time telling the difference between people like the bombastic John Kerry and the imperious George W Bush. It doesn't help that these two both grew up wealthy, went to Yale, and became members of the Skull & Bones society.

But our system encourages that sort of elitism and plutocracy. With only two major political parties, it is bound to be co-opted by special interest groups. Many major corporations and other groups contribute handsomely to both parties. Their influence would be less if there were several more powerful parties to court.

Is there a solution? Not any time soon. Political parties shift very slowly unless a big scandal erupts to topple them. Barring a huge corruption scandal or other catastrophic failure of the system, we are likely to trundle along with two major parties and a handful of minor ones for many decades.

It would help if we instituted some reforms that changed the requirements for president. In the UK, the prime minister has to take questions from parliament every week. It's pretty lively give-and-take; a leader has to be quick witted to do well, and Tony Blair is one of the best. I'm not sure about the details, but I think he gets double points in the lightning round and all the money goes to charity.

Candidates like Ross Perot and Ralph Nader are wildly unlikely to win a presidential election (they'd have no support in the legislative branch even if they did), but they could win seats in Congress. That could be the road to prominence for parties like the Green, Libertarian, and Reform and make politics more than just a yea or nay vote.

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