Upwards, Not Forwards

One thing that confounds me, when I think about it, is why US politics is dominated by two parties. It’s pretty obvious to me that there are more than two kinds of Americans, even when you take out non-voters. So why is that sacred choice of those who would govern (i.e., tell us freedom-lovers what to do, even sometimes) limited, for all practical purposes, to two alternatives? There is, of course, no law that says it must be so. I think, though, that once you get such a system started, it is pretty easy to explain how it can be perpetuated.

I don’t know enough about US history to explain why the framers split themselves into two camps (Federalists and Antifederalists), but from what I do remember, these two parties represented the two primary schools of thought on the degree to which the USA would be run by a central government, and that although the result was a compromise (including the bicameral legislature, etc.) the Federalists broadly won out. The details are unimportant; the point is that there were TWO groups then and the number of viable parties has not changed since. What I believe has happened since is that alternatives have been systematically marginalized by a “throw your vote away” mentality, and that single-party dominance has been rendered impossible by reliance on wedge issues to stimulate voters. I call an issue a wedge issue if it is divisive by two, that is, it is something that is easy to be for or against. The proposed size and power of the federal government may indeed have been the first wedge issue. Importantly, though, it is a common attribute of modern wedge issues to be of little real importance to the citizenry as a whole.

Why not three parties? Or four or five? Because once two parties crystallize themselves in our political structure by 1) appealing, collectively, to the vast majority of voters, and 2) distinguishing themselves from one another by the use of wedge issues, any third party’s attempt at winning a major election will be thwarted by the resulting voters’ decision tree. The voter tells himself, in brief: wow – third party C much more closely represents my views on how to govern a country than mainstream parties A and B. However, by 1 above, I’m generally OK with party A, and by 2 above, I am wedged into a horror of seeing my country run by party B. My vote for party C increases the chance of success for party B, and, by 1 above, will not actually put party C into power (A and B being too popular), so I will vote for party A so that I will not have thrown my vote away. Ralph Nader’s blues.

Why not one party? Because Americans aren’t monolithic enough to tolerate it. If a given party won 85% of the electoral vote, the 15% party would seize on the victors’ worst failure and become virulently anti-that. Of course, in reality, it never gets as far as 85%, and the wedge issue doesn’t, in reality, have to be a failure of the winning side. It simply needs to be something that will both get voters to the polls, and will make the opposing party uncomfortable to support.

I will now list some modern wedge issues that are unimportant to the well being of most Americans, at least when compared to some more nuanced issues: gay marriage, abortion, affirmative action, teaching evolution, personal faith (of the office-seeker), and school vouchers. The voter whose primary (or secondary, or even up to quaternary) motivation for selecting a candidate is his stance on one of these issues helps more than any other type of voter to perpetuate the two-party system. This voter also spends lots of his time worrying about an issue that has little to do with his own success in life (future blog post: That Guy: Don Quixote or Dumb Loudmouth?).

There are numerous issues that are truly nuanced but that the two mainstream parties have so oversimplified as to make them seem like wedge issues: immigration, gun control, welfare, even taxes. No one in his right mind thinks there is a simple solution to any of these issues, and yet the public seems to become a herd of sheep, bleating some canned response any time one of them is brought up. A friend of mine called a simple for-or-against standpoint on one of these issues a false dichotomy – an incorrect conclusion that these are issues to be simply either supported or opposed, and that there are two types of people in the world, separable by their support or opposition to this issue.

Imagine a candidate who is against gay marriage, abortion, affirmative action, and teaching evolution; who is for student vouchers (and closing down failing schools) and unabashedly Baptist. The reader has probably already decided whether he would support such a candidate.

But now suppose that the candidate, when asked what he would do about immigration, said, “it’s unfortunate that we can’t let in everyone who would come; I would make modest changes to increase border security, as well as streamline the immigration process for those who wish to attain citizenship.” On gun control: “our constitution guarantees the right to bear arms, and I wish to respect both the letter and spirit of that line; however, as we cannot allow any citizen who simply wants to own a nuclear warhead to do so, we must draw the line somewhere, and I will try to draw that line in a reasonable place.” On welfare: “it is the government’s responsibility to care for those who have fallen on hard times while minimizing abuse.” And on taxes: “the US must maintain our public defense and social services as well as our fiscal responsibility.” Throw in some foreign policy/diplomacy experience, some qualified judicial/Federal Reserve nominations, and just a hint of a the ability to look up at the ceiling at night wondering whether he himself is totally full of shit, and I’m on board! Suddenly my kid having to sit through a “maybe there’s a God” class doesn’t seem so horrible.

But I’d have to think about it. (Another layer of complexity is how much federal money is going to go into this God class, because then it becomes part of the budget, which is a serious issue.) All fine; the point is that this guy doesn’t exist as a successful politician because it’s too easy to take him down by wedging voters out of his camp. So Americans can’t get a diverse array of choices. They can get a guy who has serious command of the issues, but he has to be a firebrand about some meaningless shit, one way or another, or else he’ll be taken down by the opposition.

One interesting thing is the way our ideals have aligned themselves – how they’ve been wedged together. When one takes a step back, one realizes it didn’t need to be that way. Are not the gun-nut and the Christian strange bedfellows? The pot-smoker and the car-maker? These groups vote similarly because of the vagaries of historical wedging. In the US, cultural and economic authoritarians (your traditional Christian) have found they haven’t enough numbers to get a candidate elected president, so they (probably wisely) let culture trump economics and vote Republican. A classic wedge-job in our two-party system. But what if they had been wedged into the Democratic Party? This joining of forces between the working poor and the Christians may have been enough to force scientists and pot-smokers to start voting with the rich Wall Street types, giving us a choice between Libertarians and Nazis instead of Rs and Ds.

But I’ve spun my wheels enough. What we need are some new thinkers, some new ideas. Something to break us out of the same-old same-old and into a new era of informed debate, reasoned alternatives, mutual understanding. Maybe soon the Moon will enter the seventh house. . . .