Jason Opal is professor of history at McGill University.
The rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden has now been set, even though most Americans don’t want it. How could one of the world’s oldest constitutional democracies malfunction so badly?
We could, of course, talk about the vicious partisanship that prevents creative compromise in Washington while pitting Americans into hostile camps of Republicans and Democrats. Yet the more relevant factor may be the collapse of the parties themselves. Once the key vessels for gathering and channelling popular demands in American life, they have become mere tools of executive power, special interests and celebrity candidates.
Parties weren’t supposed to happen in America. Preoccupied with securing the rule of law against the popular energies unleashed by the American Revolution, the framers of the U.S. Constitution of 1787 linked political organizations with mob rule. They described themselves as “the government,” not as a party.
But a broad opposition group, the Democratic-Republicans led by Thomas Jefferson, rose to power in 1801. They celebrated the sovereignty of “the people” – meaning white men – and in their policies and rhetoric, the Democratic-Republicans empowered poor farmers as well as rich slaveholders, always pushing for more land, more markets and more voting.
While the Democrats (“-Republican” was dropped by the 1830s) predominated in the South and West, rival parties arose to represent the new social groups and cultural values created by the growth of industry, transportation and education. The Whigs of the 1830s and 1840s and then the Republicans from the 1850s rallied professionals, factory owners and well-to-do farmers in the name of national progress.
These parties did more than just mobilize popular feelings. They also translated those passions into workable solutions and made decisions on their members’ behalf, leading as well as following the crowd.
While giving voice to anti-slavery activists in the 1850s, for instance, Republican leaders also compelled those activists to make alliances with more conservative forces. For the 1860 election, such leaders – not the rank-and-file members – chose an obscure moderate named Abraham Lincoln. That was maybe the best choice in U.S. history, as Lincoln held together the fractious alliance of northerners who destroyed slavery and began the long process of national reconciliation.
Later that century, the U.S. faced another turning point as millions of Europeans poured in, transforming a mostly rural country into a majority-urban one by the 1920s. Many of these newcomers, however, were socialists or anarchists. This time it was the Democrats who brought these voters into the political sphere, representing their interests while restraining their more radical tendencies. Under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democrats steered the country left-of-centre through the Depression and Second World War.
While parties advanced democracy at large, they didn’t always practise it internally. Democratic bosses in proverbial smoke-filled rooms chose the unknown Harry Truman to serve as vice-president in 1944; fortunately, Truman did his job well after FDR’s death the following year, leading the U.S. through the perilous onset of the Cold War and into the greatest economic boom in human history.
But as the United States became a global superpower, the presidency and the federal government took on key decision-making over national policy, growing their power at the expense of the parties.
To get a piece of that federal largesse, lobbyist organizations nearly quadrupled in number between 1950 and 1990. Operating independently, they only served their clients, reducing the influence that ordinary voters had collectively found in the big parties.
With no real voice in Washington, voters increasingly turned to the names they knew, regardless of their qualifications. “As the political party declines further,” Fareed Zakaria wrote in 2003, “being rich and/or famous will become the routine path to high elected office.” Just over a decade later, Mr. Trump swept away the other GOP candidates largely because he commanded a huge legion of online supporters.
Clownish minions of Mr. Trump, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, now rule the GOP-held House of Representatives. They don’t care what party leaders say, because they only answer to online MAGA extremists.
This year, as was the case in 2020, the Republican Party hasn’t even offered a platform; the platform is whatever Mr. Trump wants it to do. Meanwhile, the Democrats’ understandable hopes for new blood are no match for the power that Mr. Biden wields as President – and so Joe it is, again.
As easy as it is to dislike political parties, we need to appreciate the role that they and other institutions, such as independent courts and agencies, have played in making popular government work. When they wither, the ugliest passions and cheapest solutions take over, leaving us with a burlesque of democracy – rather than the real, difficult, and noble thing.