Chance the Rapper posed a simple but widely asked question yesterday: Is the two-party system good?
Are we pro two-party system?
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) July 13, 2020
It’s popular to hate the two-party system in the United States. President George Washington’s aversion to political parties is often cited. Yet, there it is.
Because our system is not parliamentary, the incentive is for coalitions to join up into one of two large parties rather than have their own smaller groups with changing alliances. Have libertarians contributed more to the nation’s political life through their party’s endeavors or by working within the Republican coalition and electing politicians such as Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, and, until recently, Justin Amash?
The biggest complaint against the two-party system is typically polarization. People complain that they are forced to pick “red or blue” on an issue and that both parties are often more interested in fighting each other than solving problems. Yet, the closer you get to the local level, the less that is the case. That is, in part, how you can have a Democratic governor in Louisiana, Montana, and Kentucky with Republican governors in Vermont, Maryland, and Massachusetts.
The problem of polarization in politics is not the existence of the two-party system but the gradual and ongoing nationalization of power, especially in the hands of the president. When these issues are pulled out of the local legislatures and made into national questions, the localities get left behind.
Do you think any secretary of education could reasonably make rules for schools in Savannah, Georgia, or Bakersfield, California? Do you think the secretary could even tell you the names of the schools in those areas? When Democrats were working on a federal $15 minimum wage mandate, several of their own members objected. “Fifteen dollars may sound good in places like San Fran, but not back home,” said Charleston, South Carolina, Democrat Rep. Joe Cunningham.
Is it any wonder, then, that, as politicians continue to promise to rule on high through executive order, our politics continue to get worse? President Trump, Joe Biden, and Elizabeth “I have a plan for that” Warren don’t have a vested interest in the communities affected by their policies. You could trust your congressperson to know your community, but Congress is becoming more of a national brand-builder than a legislature.
It’s hard to say that a greater abundance of viable political parties would make things better if you’ve looked at what the Libertarian or Green parties have offered up in the past few years. The answer staring our politics in the face is localization, where parties and polarization matter far less than community cohesion, which would make Washington more of a national afterthought than a zero-sum battleground.
