In praise of partisanship

Beware the alternative

Americans complain about political partisanship as habitually as they practice it. This is not quite hypocrisy, for what they complain about is partisanship in others, and what they practice is, in their own minds, principle.

It was always so. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton were the rankest of partisans, each creating a political party—Jefferson’s Republicans, Hamilton’s Federalists—to promote his political views. Jefferson called Hamilton an Anglomane monarchist, while Hamilton damned Jefferson as a Francophile Jacobin. Henry Clay organized the Whigs against Andrew Jackson, whom Clay dubbed a military chieftain. Jackson, the first Democratic president, went to his grave muttering that he should have shot Clay. The new Republicans of Abraham Lincoln accused the Democrats of sacrificing the Union to their party ambitions. The Democrats long held the Civil War and Reconstruction against the Republicans.

Two lessons can be drawn from this history of American partisanship. The first is that because it has always been with us, it isn’t likely to go away. The second is that since it hasn’t destroyed the republic yet, it’s not likely to.

We could treat our partisanship as a chronic illness. Millions of Americans in the nineteenth century suffered from malaria. If it didn't kill them at first, and it usually didn't, it stuck with them for the rest of their lives. Sometimes the fever and chills would flare up and lay them out for a few days. In general they felt suboptimal. But that was that and they got on with their business.

Another approach is to ask what positive functions partisanship serves. The first is that it makes possible democracy on a large scale. I voted in Travis County, Texas, in the most recent election cycle. There were dozens of races being contested. I knew enough about the high profile races to make reasoned choices on them. But down the ballot I couldn't have told one candidate from the other, except for their party labels. This didn’t capture everything about them, but it captured something. It told me about their general philosophy of government.

Related to this is the organizational purpose party affiliation lends to the operation of Congress and state legislatures. Elected representatives can't be thoroughly educated on every measure which they're expected to vote on. They often take their cues from the party leadership. If the party has staked out particular positions on taxes, immigration, foreign policy, and so on, the party members tend to go along. Voters chose them with particular expectations, and party organization helps the elected officials meet those expectations.

All this can be taken too far. Party organization can be party coercion, with members punished by party leaders or primary voters for acting independently. Partisanship contributes to gerrymandering, which turns the principle of democracy on its head. Instead of voters choosing their representatives, the representatives choose the voters. Partisanship should be a means to the end of good government. Excessive partisanship becomes an impediment to good government as members put the interest of the party ahead of that of the state or the nation.

But on the whole, partisanship is simply self-organization in competitive politics. Political decisions typically come down to a yes or no choice: do we pass this bill or reject it? Those in favor, for whatever reasons, have an incentive to rally together for passage of the measure. Those opposed rally against.

This was the origin of the first national parties in America, for and against ratification of the Constitution. Each side realized it shared a basic philosophy of government. The pro-Constitution Federalists wanted a strong central government. The anti-Constitution Antifederalists opposed a strong central government.

These positions have characterized American parties ever since. At any given time, one party was more comfortable with big government than the other was. In their eras, the Federalists, the Whigs, and the Lincoln Republicans were the party of big government. The Jefferson Republicans and the Jackson Democrats were the party of small government. The Civil War and industrialization tangled the lines of descent. By the 1930s the Democrats embraced bigger government and the Republicans opposed it.

There have been exceptions for favored causes, especially on social issues like prohibition, abortion, and prayer in schools, where Republicans have taken a more coercive line than Democrats. But the general tendency remained.

If you don't like partisanship—and plenty of Americans profess not to—consider the alternatives. One would be a free-for-all, in which voters wouldn't know what to expect from their elected officials on most issues, and elected officials wouldn't know what voters expected of them.

The more obvious alternative would be a one-party system. There was no partisanship in the Soviet Union. There is no partisanship in China.

Critics of partisanship today lament that America is more divided than ever. The comparative aspect of this statement is part of the presentist myopia that afflicts every generation. We're not more divided than Americans were in the early republic, when the vice president of the United States shot and killed the leader of the opposition party in a duel. Or than we were in the 1850s and 1860s, when the rise of a new party prompted eleven states controlled by the other party to bolt the Union, leading to a civil war that killed several hundred thousand.

But we are divided. We disagree. This is inevitable. And it’s good. If we all agreed on everything, there would certainly be occasions when we were all wrong. This way half of us are bound to be right.

Moreover—and this is the crucial part—we’re free to act on our disagreements. Should we lose our freedom, the disagreement won't go away, but the ability to act on it will.

The partisan voices will fall silent then.