What Is Wrong With The Two Party System

This post was originally written on 1/5/2012

This is a topic of conversation that has been batted around for years and that is gaining more and more attention as we head in to the home stretch of yet another extremely contentious election cycle.  My opinion on the subject, in a nutshell, is that the two party system is obsolete and overly divisive.
       No one can discount the fact that election based politics are by nature adversarial.  Every issue has two sides, if not more.  There will always be disagreements about which prevailing opinion is right and what decision is best for our society.  We cannot and will not change that no matter how hard we try or how badly we may wish to.  At issue is the fact that our system of choosing and electing political candidates is flawed, and becoming more flawed with every day that passes.
      The purpose of a political party, whether it be Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, whatever, is to provide support to potential candidates in the form of shared resources, and to simplify the process of selecting candidates for voters by narrowing the choices to a manageable number of candidates from which to choose.  The problem with political parties is that they have taken on a life of their own and have taken it upon themselves to oversimplify a very important and complex process by limiting our choices so drastically that we are left with no real choice at all.  It's like walking into a restaurant and being given the choice between beef or chicken as soon as you get to the coat check.  No menu, and if for some reason you have an aversion to beef, you automatically better like chicken.  Then you get to your table, running through all the different types of chicken you like in your head, and are informed that the chicken cordon bleu you were hoping to order isn't an option.  You are stuck with chicken fingers.  You start to think that maybe you'd have been better off opting for the beef, maybe then you'd have at least been able to get a nice juicy cheeseburger, only to look over at one of the beef tables and seeing that they are all being served tongue.  You may make a last ditch effort to try and switch to the vegetarian menu, but all they are offering is endive salad, and you're allergic to endives.  So you're screwed, but if you don't want to starve yourself out of existence you're forced to eat what has been put in front of you.
      Sorry for the digression, but I think maybe I'm a little hungry.  Anyways, instead of being able to look at each candidate on the merits of their beliefs and stance on the myriad of different issues that we care about, and judge which candidate holds the beliefs that best reflect our own, the political parties are determining at the outset what the party position is regarding each issue, and each candidate is then scrambling to fit themselves into the party box that is most like them, or at least most likely to get them elected.
      Of course you will always have someone come along and argue that this is a free country, and anyone can campaign and win their way into an elected office if they simply follow the procedure for doing so.  That is true, but the political parties that we have holding most of the electorate have spent a very long time at the local, state, and federal level making sure that they have the advantage in the process, and they have upped the stakes time and time again until the business of getting elected to office really is big BUSINESS.  Just like general store trumps street vendor, and big box store trumps general store, they have made it very hard for someone who isn't playing their game to even get a ticket way up in the nosebleeds.
      Man, I'm just queen of the metaphor tonight, aren't I?  Again, my apologies.  That last one did however bring me to a very important point.  Politics is not a game.  It is not a sport where we are mere spectators meant to watch as the opposing teams bloody each other until one scores more points by the final bell.  Our government was designed to be a representative government, and our elected officials are supposed to represent our views and our interests at home and abroad.  I don't think very many people are left that hold the opinion that it works the way it was intended anymore.
     The worst thing that the political parties can be accused of, and should be held accountable for, is their increasing tendency to treat the public as though we are stupid.  They have stopped even serving the function of providing us with information about the candidates that they are promoting, and instead spoon feed soundbites that are intended to inflame us into hating the other guy.  They market their candidates to us, and they tailor their message so as to engender the most fear and anger as possible in the hearts of the voting public as they can by customizing the message that their candidate delivers to play on the worst fears of the group being targeted. This fearmongering has led to a populace convinced that no candidate who holds views on an issue contrary to one's own can ever be elected because they will automatically begin a crusade to destroy the thing you hold dear, and that every politician elected must automatically go to work forcing the public through law to act, believe and behave as the people who elected them do.  There is no longer any room for compromise, or any incentive to leave anything free of legislation and government control.
       Now every issue is open for discussion and must be dealt with by government, as long as it can be used to drum up support for a candidate somehow.  Every candidate must promise to go into public office with guns blazing, ready to introduce new legislation addressing every problem that the people of our nation face, even if it is not a problem that government can ever hope to fix in a way that benefits everyone, or even that benefits the majority of citizens.  In order to make sure that everyone's voices and concerns are heard and addressed, the political parties have given rise to a subset of government in the form of committees, departments, and lobbyist groups that exist outside of the political process as it was designed.  Rather than electing the people who carry out the business of our country, we are simply left with the option of electing the people who now cater and pander to those who are really doing the work.  And to make it even better, the "two party system" holds our legislators in check by requiring them to agree with the party position in order to continue receiving party support.
       Thankfully, this is one problem that there is a solution for, and it isn't a difficult one to implement or understand.  You start by getting rid of political parties all together.  By simply removing that little letter that appears behind a candidates name on the ballot, you take away the ability of the voters to simply say, I like R's better than D's.  Or L's or whatever.  This means that those of us who do vote, should we wish to ensure that we are electing the person who best represents us, will need to take the initiative and learn about those candidates that we are casting a ballot for.  Voters who choose not to inform themselves can still vote using arbitrary criteria such as snippets of gossip, whose name in print gives them a fuzzier feeling, or eenie meenie.
      Please stay tuned for our next installment, in which we explain how we can ever hope to survive without the big dog political parties to help the little dog candidates without a boatload of cash get elected to any position higher than dogcatcher.