goldcatt
Catch me if you can!
- Aug 4, 2009
- 10,330
- 3,039
i think that because the partisan system is older than our government and was assumed into our government in the run-up to the election of the second congress, it is a non-distinguishable and inseparable part of how our political system works.
countries with a plurality of parties have problems which i feel are directly attributable to their system of partisan participation and the fact that it does not achieve the moderation that ours does.
i argue that examples of close-margined elections in the US are subject to this system and are different than those issues raised by multi-party systems. in those set-ups, it is not uncommon for a candidate to receive the highest amount of votes, but only have 20% or 30% of the voters support with the remainder shared among other contenders. i say such a weak mandate is not acceptable on a routine basis. not in congress; not in the exec.
i think that a two party system provides more opposition and accountability than marginal parties could offer. we need not look any further than the republicans who have been reduced to a marginal party (without the capacity to throw even a filibuster). they were unable to moderate government in a way i feel is effective or characteristic of typical american politics. when they're back into their own next year, i think our government will have more balance than you propose is possible with blocs.
there's less subtlety in this for me. i see multi-party governments as chaotic. as annoying as individuals who have chosen to support policy exactly as a party has organized it may seem, it is more sensible than the fist-fights and deadlocks in southern europe.
Therein lies a fundamental difference in what we each value in government, I think. I prefer good policy rather than stable electoral politics, and would welcome more rough and tumble in order to shape that policy rather than a choice limited to two mostly unresponsive, self-serving and ideologically static private interest groups that have both failed to address fundamental policy issues - whether they had a mandate or not. Our system is fundamentally different from those of southern Europe and rather than becoming unstable, is designed to absorb vigorous debate within branches as well as between them and among the various levels of government.
The protection of those two major parties by the government basically only serves to prop up shells of private organizations that have failed, in my opinion and in the opinion of many, many others as evidenced by the increasing number of nonpartisan voters. In some States, nonpartisans disillusioned by the two parties and the system that supports them are now the largest registered group of voters. This demonstrates a problem: that the two-party system may be efficient as far as tactical politics, but is ultimately failing in creating policy and is seen as largely unresponsive to the people their members govern. Continuing to coddle them and freeze out competition for the sake of avoiding additional debate merely exacerbates the problem, IMO.
I remain convinced that tactics and electoral strategies including the political capital of a mandate and how that is to be spent are merely a means to an end - that end being well-vetted, solid policy. It's not a failure to understand the importance or workings of partisan or electoral tactics, it's merely a refusal to buy into them as defining "the system" or "the government" and accepting that we must support one of their two private ideological agendas, that nothing can or will change to shake up the system in order to shake up the kind of policies we've been getting. We need to be more than reindeer games between two private entities that are shielded from outside competition and the consequences of their own mistakes.
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