Amy Jones

Ryan Perkins

American History

November 20, 2009

Political Parties

While I think that America should have political parties, I dont necessarily believe that
we should have a two-party system. The reason I believe this is because with a two party system,
voters are limited to extreme choices and they do not have an effective way of voting their actual
beliefs to the extent that their beliefs may conflict with the two extremes of the parties. As a
practical matter, independent candidates have no chance of winning an election, so the two-party
system effectively eliminates the people who would be best to serve if they do not conform
completely to the beliefs of either the Republicans or the Democrats.
In George Washingtons farewell speech, he states that political parties open the door to
foreign influence and corruption. Washington elaborates on his warning and also speaks of the
dangers of political parties to the government and country as a whole. At the time, Thomas
Jefferson had recently created the Democratic-Republican Part for the purposes of combating
Hamilton's Federalist Party, created a year earlier. In many ways, Jeffersons party promoted the
interest of certain regions and groups of Americans over others.
Even more importantly to Washington, and something that he mentions in this section of
the farewell address, was the effort being put out by the Democratic-Republican part to align
with France and the Federalist efforts. In a conflict brought about the by French Revolution that
still continued at that time, the Democratic-Republican party sought out an alliance with the
nation and Great Britain. No doubt this is what Washington referred to when he mentioned
foreign influence.
In addition, if a person only has to decide whether to vote Republican or Democrat, that
only serves to spread ignorance. If a person has their mind set on voting for whichever candidate
is a part of their favored political party, why bother learning about the person who is running for
that party? Representatives used to be just that, but these days, when you can check on every
vote that your representative makes, there is no reason to not be fully aware of which candidate
most supports your views. But it seems that these days most people take the attitude that they
only need to focus on who is running in their party, which is part of the reason why I believe
even if a perfect candidate were to run for president, they would be totally overlooked if they ran
for any other political party. Ignorance is one of Americans more prominent traits,
unfortunately, and this is just another way in which it is seen every four years.
However, Thomas Jefferson didnt share Washingtons scathing view of political parties.
Rather, he stated that In every free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man,
be opposite parties, and violent dissensions and discords; and one of these, for the most part,
must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time. That is true, especially in a vote for
president in which it is a winner-takes-all situation. One person will win and everyone else will
lose, so its natural for people to band together to try as hard as possible to get who they want in
the White House.
Political parties can actually be better in some ways because of many Americans
ignorance of the working of politics in that without a political party that can serve as a basic
summary of what the candidate stands for, people would just be voting for whoever looks the
nicest or makes the most empty promises. In this manner, parties can benefit the people in that
they only need to agree with the very basic principles to know the bottom line of what theyre
voting for. If there is no candidate they especially like, there is at least one that they can agree
with on some level.
There are some pros to the system of political parties, and the two-party system seems
inevitable for the time being. While I dont believe that political parties could be wiped out
altogether, I wouldnt mind it if they were, or even if we just expanded our system to include
more than just two flawed parties.