Earlier this week, I spent two hours arguing with a very witty libertarian and an avuncular Israeli Rush Limbaugh fan about whether the two-party system is ruining America.
No, it wasn't just another typical night around my dinner table. It was part of a debate sponsored by Intelligence Squared, held at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.
I joined David Brooks in arguing for the proposition that the two-party system is making America ungovernable. Arguing against were Zev Chafets and P.J. O'Rourke. Nightline's John Donvan moderated.
Before the debate, which will be shown next week on Bloomberg Television (starting Monday at 9pm), David and I huddled in the green room, plotting our strategy -- actually mostly making sure we weren't planning to say the same things.
We were soon ushered onto the stage in front of a great crowd. Each seat in the auditorium had an electronic device that allowed audience members to vote on which team they thought had won the debate (more on this later).
The debate itself made me nostalgic for my Cambridge Union days.
P.J. showed why he is the most quoted living author in the Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations, tossing off acerbic "a pox on both their houses" rants like, "Republicans and Democrats don't have ideologies. They just have these vague platform planks made of rotten wood of political expediency. If American party platforms were backyard tree forts, you would not let your children climb in them."
Zev adopted the mien of the exasperated outside observer: "In multi-party systems there are many people who also don't feel that they're represented by any of the parties. And I, having lived in a country that has 14 parties, can tell you that I didn't find any that represented me. That's a sort of inherent problem of democracy." He was full of self-deprecation, at one point joking that he couldn't read his own notes because they were in Hebrew, so he was reading backwards.
David made the case that most politicians are "better people than one would anticipate," but that the two-party system has become so polarized that even good people are driven to a lockstep groupthink that punishes those who have original, nonpartisan ideas. He also bemoaned the fact that members of the two parties no longer mix socially, saying: "it's just like junior high."
I focused on all the evidence that the two-party system is failing us everywhere we look:
Why are the too big to fail banks still too big to fail? Why is there still so little emphasis on jobs at a time when 26 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed? Why did our system recently fail us in three spectacular ways: the financial meltdown, the Upper Big Branch mining disaster in West Virginia where 29 miners died, and the BP oil spill in the Gulf?
Because the two-party system is hopelessly broken -- only capable of producing what Tom Friedman calls "sub-optimal solutions" to our major crises. And, as he put it, while sub-optimal is okay for ordinary times, these are not ordinary times.
On issue after issue -- education, our crumbling infrastructure, the rising costs of health care, the deficit, the steady decline of the middle class, foreign policy (where the two parties marched arm in arm into invading a country that did not after all have WMD or pose a threat to our national security) -- our current two-party system has failed us.
It has ossified to the point where it can only deliver short-term fixes. It has led to entrenched thinking, complacency, and the deification of conventional wisdom -- all conditions that have made it harder and harder to challenge a broken status quo.
And the two-party system has not just narrowed our choices, it's narrowed our thinking. It has deeply infected our political discourse, our media, and our politicians. To paraphrase Einstein, the problems we are facing today cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.
The hunger for change is evident on both sides of the political spectrum -- from the meteoric rise to power of an outsider candidate like Barack Obama to the lightning in a bottle creation of the Tea Party -- both the result of grassroots, anti-establishment movements. The American people clearly want alternatives.
On practically every level, potential nominees in each party are running away from the establishment label and desperately trying to show their independence from the establishment wings of the two parties that are held in such low esteem.
And the Internet and social media are making the shakeup of the two parties much more likely, with young people less and less aligned with large, established institutions -- and more empowered than ever to connect with each other and cut through the spin perpetrated by politicians and special interests.
In my closing statement, I summed things up by comparing the two-party system to a stale marriage. Democrats and Republicans need something to spice it up. They need to go on Craigslist and find a third party. (And if that third party isn't wearing a shirt, they really should do a background check, because he might turn out to be a member of Congress... and you don't want to go there.)
Interestingly, right from the start, the other side basically conceded the issue, admitting that the two-party system isn't working, but arguing that, to paraphrase Churchill, the two-party system is the worst political system, except for all the others that have been tried. What, they wondered, would work better?
The rules of the debate held that the winning team would be the one that changed the most minds over the course of the evening. Before the debate, 46 percent of the audience said they were for the motion (i.e. agreed that the two-party system was making us ungovernable), 24 percent were against and 30 percent were undecided. After the debate, 50 percent voted "for", 40 voted "against" and 10, despite two hours of heated argument, remained unsure where they stood. So even though the majority of the crowd agreed with David and me, P.J. and Zev were the winners. I instantly understood how Al Gore felt in 2000.
But P.J. and Zev were more than worthy victors, having kept everyone -- including David and me -- in stitches during the debate.
But, on substance, I'm still with Thomas Jefferson, who said: "I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."
Look around: It's clear our two-party system is not taking us to heaven. In fact, it's rapidly taking us in the other direction.
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"The general desire of men to live by their heads rather than their hands, and the strong allurements of great cities to those who have any turn for dissipation, threaten to make them here, as in Europe, the sinks of voluntary misery.
Let us instead use his wisdom to abolish our great cities and their cancerous pseudo-aristoi, rather than the benign institution of the so-called Two Party System (which in fact, it isn’t).
This problem is more marked in a two-party system than a multi-party one, so I would agree that our current system isn't working. The argument against multi-party states can be summed up by examining an example like Italy--less stability, and less ability to govern since PM's must rely on coalitions.
Unfortunately, it's not realistic to hope for a return of non-factional politics, so a novel solution needs to be found. I think giving more power to the head of state regarding certain situations might work.
Americans do not want to think about positions. They fear the need to justify a viewpoint. That is hard. Instead they just rely on a political team to do the thinking for them. This goes beyond just democrats and republicans too. I know lots of people from "other" parties who base their vote purely on party. If a Green party candidate then they vote for them or if a Libertarian party candidate is running then that person gets the vote. they have no idea who they are, but they share a party so they feel the need to support them.
Phase-1 of the process would take the place of primaries. An information form is submitted by the candidate along with enough signed petitions to qualify for election as it stands now. The collective information about all candidates will be published to the public and a vote is held. The top five candidates from a region that position represents, along with incumbents wishing to be considered, will continue on to phase-2. During phase-2, the campaign funds are distributed equally between all candidates. No other funding can be used and all advertisement must go through an independent fact checking authority before it can be broadcast or published. Any action group material that addresses a candidate or issues being voted on must also pass the fact check first. The fact checking will be on a flat fee paid by the candidate or group. Finally, all elections will be based on popular vote so that every persons vote has the same weight.
here is the only issue in america: corporate dominance over elected officials. Through massive donations & the revolving door between public office & lucrative corporate jobs that wait for them after holding public office... the world's corporations have turned american politicians into corporate employees. They pay them while they hold office *donations* and they pay them when they are out of office *multi-million dollar executive "jobs"*.
The 2 parties work together brilliantly to conflate minutiae into big issues... then diligently post up on either side of the issue and fight to the death over little to nothing...
...but they are united as one party when it comes to Corporations. fight over the mi
want proof... 2/3 of americas corporations pay no income tax... GE, Microsoft, Google
Many people quote our venerable forefathers for the basis of their own particular ideology and as a result we have half the country as First Amendment worshipers and the other half Second Amendment worshipers when in fact it has become a country of the rich, by the rich, for the rich. Screw the two party system. What does that have to do with anything anymore? It doesn't matter what party so-and-so belongs to.
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/01/29/taking-back-our-government-jury-duty-for-all/
that would, with ONE Constitutional Amendment, break the two-party lock on political power, provide term limits to office, increase citizen participation in their government, and end the self-perpetuating political class that also restricts the national vision. Mu sister-in-law, another Athenian appropriately NAMED Athena, considers ALL Non-Athenians to be Heelbeelies. I wish to advise both her AND Arianna that as a descendant of such Heelbeelies that my Dad characterized as,
"You had to rope 'em oit of trees to put SHOES on 'em.",
Direct citizen representation in government works just as well for us Heelbeelies as it does for the people of Wisconsin, Cairo, Tunis and many other places.
CNN just did polling on the country's fiscal ideas recently. Wide majorities don't want taxes raised, or cuts in entitlements, education, or military spending. There's almost 2-to-1 support for cuts in foreign aid, though--albeit because people think we spend WAY more on it than the actual ~1% it constitutes (25% according to a University of Maryland poll).
I think the performance of politicians is more reflective of poltical engagement and knowledge--or lack thereof--than anyone wants to admit.
They are for lots of government, but they do not want to pay for it. They want the government to have control of certain areas, but not those that have a negative influence on their own life.
The "two party system" is a problem, but it works for people because they do not want to actually think about politics. It is easier to parrot one of two alternatives.
Going back to spending, both parties have hitched their prospects to low taxes and tons of services. You'll have Dems make some token gestures towards increased revenues, but nothing near what's needed to fill the nation's fiscal hole--especially without cuts. The Republicans, meanwhile, would rather push through draconian discretionary cuts and risk the government shutting down than tackle anything substantive--i.e. the tax code itself, entitlement and defense spending, and so on.
We saw the same spurious "bipartisan" calls with healthcare, with the far left pushing single payer and the Republican's pushing tort reform and free subsidies for insurers--and then outright repeal. We got something in the middle in the end, and it's a convoluted mess.
Hyping up the middle as a panacea is just as lazy as following one side or the other blindly IMO. It's just as easy to parrot without thinking.
1. Voters avoid liberals who promise to raise taxes and improve services and conservatives who promise to cut taxes and cut services, and eagerly support moderates who make vague illusions to cutting tax and maintaining current spending by cutting "wasteful spending."
2. Voters keep backing politicians who promise to improve services without increasing funding. This generally means putting some sort of quality control agency over the service providing agency. The problem is that this agency is placed over their predecessor's quality control solution leaving agencies increasingly buried under needless paperwork and eventually nonfunctional.
3. Voters opted for outsiders with no proven record of sucess over experienced who have accomplished things. Look at haley barbour's impending run for president, the media has not discussed any of his policies as governor or of the state of his state. The media considered what he done as governor to be irrelevent compared to his public relations ability.
If voters insist on electing people who promise essentially fiscal magic, act like public agencies have no quality control, and have no record of sucess in previous offices it doesn't really matter how many parties we have.
Money has such a grip on the media, and the media has such a grip on so many who are satisfied that what they are hearing is the most relevant and factual news source; no questions.
We could solve a lot of our fiscal problems just by forcing politicians to prove their math adds up BEFORE voting for them. Instead people vote around labels or buzzwords instead--being an "outsider", or someone who wants to "shake up Washington", saying "the government is broken", and so on.
Yet we do not have to go abroad for ideas. North-East states spends twice more on healthcare (per medicare enrolee data) than Mid-West states.
NY spends the most on education compared to any state in the union; yet ranks 34th academically. And some states do much better than others on education.
Two-party or a multi-party system will not solve the problem. All that elected representatives have / can do is the power of the purse. They have been doling that generously, giving all-of-us everything; along with a bureaucracy.
Each level of "complexiÂty" and "requiremeÂnt" is another reason to add "another fee" and "middle level manager" (including accountants and lawyers); feeding-ofÂf the system; without adding anything productive to the process. This inefficieÂncy has become the hallmark of operations be it banking, education, (school and college), healthcareÂ, Wall Street, Mutual Fund Investing, etc. In all these sectors we are spinning our wheels; and some say even going backwards.
Inefficiency is paperd-over by a few uplifitng words on "American ExceptionaÂlism." Shenanigans are is not an individual problem it is a systemic problem.
Its we who over 2-3 decades want everything without working for it. A whole strata now is paid to provide those services creating a vested interest and advocacy group.