It’s the Big Apple vs. Beantown.
The 2004 presidential election got into high gear this week with
the Democratic National Convention in Boston’s FleetCenter. New
York gets its turn in late August with the Republican’s family
reunion at Madison Square Garden.
It’s the Big Apple vs. Beantown.
The 2004 presidential election got into high gear this week with the Democratic National Convention in Boston’s FleetCenter. New York gets its turn in late August with the Republican’s family reunion at Madison Square Garden.
So as we head into the final act of the 2004 election, watch for party politics getting rather nasty in this first presidential campaign since 9/11.
I’m not a fan of party politics. As a student back at San Jose State University, I once had a lively debate with a political science major about them. She believed voters can’t know what candidates stand for unless they have an allegiance to a party. Seems to me this argument insults voters. Maybe, as she said, Americans are too lazy or too stupid to educate themselves and figure out candidates’ positions on issues. Maybe we need party affiliations to make our choice without much thought.
But politics being so vital to our future, I tend to distrust pigeon-hole systems of making decisions: if a political candidate has a “Democrat” or “Republican” label, then he or she believes in (fill in the blank).
No where in the U.S. Constitution are political parties established. But over time, they’ve evolved into the main device where Americans debate major public issues.
American parties got their start from the clash of two brilliant men on George Washington’s cabinet. In the 1790s, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were caught in a vicious feud concerning which road the newly formed United States should take regarding the strength of federal government.
In a nutshell: the conservative Hamilton wanted a central bank and a tariff and tax policy promoting the interests of manufacturers and the
wealthy, while the liberal Jefferson opposed strong government and favored policies promoting farmers and ordinary folks.
In 1792, Jefferson founded what would become known as the Democratic-Republican Party – “the party of the common man” – to oppose Hamilton’s Federalists. It later evolved into the Democratic Party.
The Republican’s philosophical lineage can be traced to Hamilton’s Federalists. (So it seems ironically sacrilegious when Republicans recently proposed replacing Hamilton’s somber face on the $20 bill with Ronald Reagan’s.) The Republican Party’s true birthday is Feb. 28, 1854.
On that date in Ripon, Wis., members of the defunct Whig organized the “Grand Old Party” to combat slavery’s possible westward expansion.
The first Republican presidential candidate has a strong connection to our own South Valley region. John C. Frémont spent time in this area in the 1840s – Fremont Peak and the city of Fremont area were named after the famous adventurer of California’s Old West. Frémont lost the election of 1856 to James Buchanan. Abraham Lincoln, however, won in 1860, thus cementing the Republicans as major players in the American political process.
Traditionally, two major parties have dominated U.S. elections, but third parties sometimes upset the apple cart. Ralph Nader and the Green Party spoiled the Democrat’s hopes for White House glory in 2000. Maybe it was payback. Theodore Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose” Party did the same in 1919, taking votes from Republican William Taft and putting Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the Oval Office.
I wonder how President Washington might view party politics in the 2004 election. I imagine he’d be aghast, swearing some choice curses at Jefferson and Hamilton for their bitter feud that caused all this.
Washington hated political parties, describing them as “factions” that subverted democracy.
In his farewell address, Washington warned Americans, “However combinations or associations of [factions] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government – destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
He’d probably be a bit peeved at how powerful parties became. With campaign costs rising astronomically, you just can’t win political office – particularly the presidency – without the big dollars. Bumper stickers and balloons and TV commercials have got to be paid for.
And political parties hold the purses. As candidates reach out to shake hands with the voter, their other hand reaches behind to grab cash offered by party head honchos.
Human beings being what they are, perhaps the rise of political parties in America was unavoidable. We’ve evolved as animals who need to form tribal units. Label yourself a member of the Republican, Democratic, Green, Libertarian or the Surprise Birthday party, and you tell the world what tribe you belong to.
There’s safety in numbers, and that’s why political parties will long be a part of how voters elect officials. Unfortunately, the high price of that safety for American democracy is an “us” versus “them” mindset. If you’re not one of “us,” then you must be one of “them.” And if you’re one of “them,” we need to war with you and your tribe because you’re a threat to “us.”
It’s that mindset that turns our political elections into a series of vicious battles. It breeds an ever-growing cynicism and disillusionment in candidates and the party system.
Perhaps one day we as a nation can let go of caustic tribal affiliations and see ourselves as we truly are – one American people who are also citizens of the world. Until then, our electoral process will be saddled with the factious burden of a political party system.
So in the meantime, whether in the Big Apple or Beantown – party hearty!
