Political Parties in the United States. I INTRODUCTION Political Parties in the United States, in general, the two-party system that has usually prevailed in the United States. II EARLY NONPARTISANSHIP The framers of the United States Constitution made no provision in the governmental structure for the functioning of political parties because they believed that parties were a source of corruption and an impediment to the freedom of people to judge issues on their merits. James Madison argued in his The Federalist "No. 10" paper against a system in which "factions" (his word for parties) might be able to seize control of the government (see Federalist, The). George Washington, in accordance with the thinking of his fellow Founding Fathers, included in his Cabinet men of diverse political philosophies and policies, rather than narrow his choices to those of a single political outlook. III FEDERALIST AND REPUBLICAN PARTIES Within a short time informal parties did develop, even though their adherents still insisted they disapproved of parties as a permanent feature in American politics. One faction, commonly identified with Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Vice President John Adams, became known as the Federalist Party. Federalists favored an active federal government, a Treasury Department that played a vital role in the nation's economic life, and a pro-British foreign policy. It drew especially strong support from merchants, manufacturers, and residents of New England. The other faction, whose central figures were Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and fellow Virginian James Madison, was the Democratic-Republican Party, the forerunner of today's Democratic Party. The Democratic-Republicans advocated a limited federal government, little government interference in economic affairs, and a pro-French foreign policy. They were particularly popular with debt-ridden farmers, artisans, and Southerners. The structure of government itself in the United States was conducive to the formation of political parties. The carefully elaborated system of checks and balances, established by the Constitution, makes executive and legislative cooperation necessary in the development of policy. Further, the division of legislative powers between the federal and state governments, as provided in the Constitution, makes it necessary for advocates of such policies as the regulation of commerce to seek representation or strength in both the federal and state legislatures. As these ends were too complex and difficult to achieve by impermanent groupings, the formation of permanent political organizations was inevitable. The Democratic-Republican Party (whose members also referred to themselves as Republicans or Jeffersonian Republicans) held power for 28 years following the inauguration of President Jefferson in 1801. During this period, the Federalist Party became increasingly unpopular. It ceased functioning on the national level soon after the War of 1812, leaving the Democratic-Republican Party as the only national political organization. IV NEW POLITICAL ALIGNMENTS Far-reaching changes in the U.S. economy and social structure resulted in the gradual formation of new political alignments within a one-party system. The principal changes behind these developments were westward expansion, the agricultural revolution in the South, and the development of manufacturing and capital accumulation in the North. The expansion of the country westward led to the development of a large class of pioneer farmers, whose frontier communities represented a type of democratic society never before seen in any country. The agricultural revolution in the Southern states, following the invention of both the cotton gin by Eli Whitney and textile machinery, resulted in the dynamic growth of the slave system that produced cotton. Finally, the wealth and influence of manufacturers, merchants, bondholders, and land speculators in the Northern states grew considerably. The ideas of limited government that became known as Jeffersonian democracy appealed strongly to the sectional and class interests of the Western frontier and the South, and also to the growing class of urban workers. The policies once advocated by the defunct Federalist Party, however, were still popular with the minority of Americans who favored a more active economic role for the federal government. V REVIVED TWO-PARTY SYSTEM The second two-party system developed gradually as Democratic-Republicans began quarreling over several issues. The followers of Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams, who asserted that the federal government should actively promote economic development, became known as National Republicans. Their opponents, who eventually united behind the presidential candidacy of Andrew Jackson, took the Democratic-Republican name. By 1828 the Democratic-Republicans were known as the Democratic Party. During Jackson's tenure as president, his controversial policies and contentious personality prevented any reconciliation with the National Republicans. By the middle of Jackson's second term, his opponents began to call themselves the Whig Party. Leaders of the Whig Party included Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. During the 1830s a radical splinter group of the Democratic Party in New York City, the Locofocos, opposed monopolies and private bankers. The name was derived from a popular brand of matches used by the group to continue a crucial meeting in 1835, at which probank opponents turned off the gas. Later known as the Equal Rights Party, the Locofocos were conciliated and reabsorbed into the Democratic Party in 1838 with the election of Martin Van Buren. The Democrats controlled the national government for most of the years from 1828 to 1860, although they lost two presidential elections to Whig military heroes. After 1840 the Democratic Party increasingly came under the control of Southern slaveholders. Northern Democratic leaders were often called "doughfaces," or Northern men with Southern principles, by their opponents. Opposed to the Democrats were the Whigs and a variety of minor parties, such as the Liberty Party, the political arm of the abolitionists, and the Free-Soil Party. In 1854 the party system dominated by Whigs and Democrats collapsed due to the controversy sparked by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which made it possible to establish slavery in Western territories, where it had previously been banned. This act outraged Northerners and convinced many Democrats and Whigs in that region to abandon their parties. Many of these voters initially joined the Know-Nothing Party, an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant organization whose antislavery reputation in the North helped it attract more than 1 million members (see Know-Nothings). The creation of a new Republican Party was the most important result of the Kansas controversy. Organized in some places as early as July 1854, the party promised not only to prevent the admission of new slave states to the Union, but also to diminish slaveholders' influence in the federal government. The appeal of this platform quickly enabled the Republican Party to overpower the Know-Nothings. Although the Republicans lost their first campaign for the presidency in 1856, they triumphed in 1860 with former congressman Abraham Lincoln. The Republican victory resulted in part from the division of the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions, each of which ran its own presidential candidate, and in part from their success at attracting Whigs and Know-Nothings who had opposed the Republicans in 1856. During the Civil War (1861-1865), the Republicans temporarily called themselves the Union Party in an attempt to win the votes of prowar Democrats. VI POST-CIVIL WAR PERIOD After the Civil War, as U.S. industrialization proceeded at great speed, the Republican Party became the champion of the nation's manufacturing interests, railroad builders, speculators, and financiers, and to a lesser extent, of the workers of the North and West. The Democratic Party was revived after the war as a party of opposition; its strength lay primarily in the South, where it was seen as the champion of the lost Confederate cause. Support also came from immigrants and those who opposed the Republicans' Reconstruction policies. In 1872 Republicans dissatisfied with the reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant formed the short-lived Liberal Republican Party and nominated as their candidate the journalist Horace Greeley. Although the Democrats also endorsed him, Greeley was defeated, and his new party collapsed. The chief political tactic of both parties during the postwar period was "waving the bloody shirt," by which Republicans in the North and Democrats in the South charged that a vote for the opposition was unpatriotic. Serious policy issues also separated the two parties. The most significant points of disagreement included the advocacy of high tariffs by the Republicans and low customs duties by the Democrats, and the emphasis laid by the Democrats on the rights of states in contrast to Republican nationalism. A number of minor parties emerged during the postwar period. In the long years of agricultural depression, from the conclusion of the Civil War to the end of the 19th century, discontent among farmers, particularly in the Western plains but also in the South, constituted a fertile source of political activity, giving rise to the Granger and Populist movements (see Granger Movement; Populism). From these movements evolved a considerable number of organizations, constituted for the most part on a regional and state basis (see Farmers' Alliances; Greenback Party; Greenback Labor Party; People's Party). In industrialized regions, a large class of wage workers developed whose protest against poor working conditions, low pay, and discriminatory and abusive treatment induced the formation of other parties independent of and opposed to the dominant Republican and Democratic parties. One of the first was the Socialist Labor Party, founded in 1877 but unimportant until it came under the leadership of Daniel De Leon. Of far more significance was the Socialist Party of America (SPA), founded in 1901 by socialists unable to accept the autocratic De Leon (see Socialist Party). The greatest leader of the SPA was Eugene V. Debs. In 1919 a split in the SPA led to the formation of the Communist Party (CP), which had close ties with the Soviet Union. Although small, the CP had considerable influence at times, especially in the labor movement during the 1930s. These parties of agrarian and working-class protest frequently raised issues that were taken up in subsequent years by leaders of the major parties. Their own successes in elections, however, were mostly local and minor. VII PROGRESSIVISM The various movements to improve industrial working conditions and curtail the power of big business, known by the early 20th century as Progressivism, caused divisions within both parties between progressives and conservatives. The most serious split occurred in the Republican ranks, where the renomination of President William Howard Taft in 1912 caused progressives to bolt and form the Progressive Party, which nominated former president Theodore Roosevelt. Although he lost the election, Roosevelt polled the highest percentage of the vote ever attained by a third-party candidate. The Republican split in that contest helped Woodrow Wilson become only the second Democrat to win the presidency since the Civil War. The Progressives made another strong bid for the presidency in 1924, when their candidate was Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr., of Wisconsin, a veteran of the 1912 campaign, who won about 16 percent of the votes. VIII THE NEW DEAL AND AFTER Soon after Republican presidential candidate Herbert Hoover won the 1928 presidential election, the nation's economy collapsed. The Great Depression, which produced unprecedented economic hardship, stemmed from a variety of causes, but from the perspective of millions of Americans the Republican Party, also known by this time as the Grand Old Party (GOP), had not done enough to promote economic recovery. In 1932 Americans elected Democratic presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt, known as FDR, and a solidly Democratic Congress. FDR developed a program for economic recovery he dubbed the New Deal. Under the auspices of the New Deal, the size and reach of America's national government was substantially increased. The federal government took responsibility for economic management and social welfare to an extent that was unprecedented in U.S. history. Roosevelt designed many of his programs specifically to expand the political base of the Democratic Party. He rebuilt the party around a nucleus of unionized workers, upper middle class intellectuals and professionals, Southern farmers, Jews, Catholics, and African Americans that made the Democrats the nation's majority party. This so-called New Deal coalition made the Democrats the nation's majority party in Congress for most of the next 62 years. With the exception of 1946 and 1952, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress from 1932 until 1980, when they lost the Senate. At the peak of its influence in 1936, the Democratic Party held 75 of 96 seats in the Senate and 333 of 435 seats in the House. Republicans groped for a response to the New Deal and often wound up supporting popular New Deal programs, such as Social Security, in what was sometimes derided as "me too" Republicanism. When Roosevelt died in 1945, he was succeeded by Vice President Harry S. Truman. Democratic unity appeared to unravel, however, when two dissident groups opposed him in the 1948 election--the anti-Cold War Progressives under Henry A. Wallace, FDR's vice president during his third term, and the anti-civil rights Dixiecrats under Strom Thurmond. However, Truman won despite them, and the Democrats remained in control of the White House until 1952. The Republicans were returned to power that year, carried to victory by their popular candidate, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. During Eisenhower's two terms, his moderate supporters came into conflict with the more conservative old guard Republicans. From 1955 until the 1980s the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, and their leaders often cooperated with moderate Republicans. IX THE TURBULENT 1960S The New Deal coalition was severely strained during the 1960s and early 1970s by conflicts over civil rights and the Vietnam War (1959-1975). The struggle over civil rights initially divided Northern Democrats, who supported the civil rights cause, from white Southern Democrats, who defended the system of racial segregation. Subsequently, as the civil rights movement launched a Northern campaign aimed at securing access to jobs, education, and housing, Northern Democrats also split, often along income lines. The struggle over the Vietnam War further divided the Democrats, with upper-income liberal Democrats strongly opposing the decision by the administration of Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson to continue sending U.S. forces to fight in Southeast Asia. These schisms within the Democratic Party provided an opportunity for the Republican Party, which returned to power in 1968 under the leadership of Richard Nixon. X THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN PARTY SYSTEM Beginning in the 1960s, conservative Republicans argued that "me-tooism" was a recipe for continual failure and sought to reposition the Republican Party as a genuine alternative to the Democrats. In 1964, for example, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, author of The Conscience of a Conservative (1960), argued in favor of substantially reduced levels of taxation and spending, less government regulation of the economy, and the elimination of many federal social programs. Although Goldwater was defeated by Lyndon Johnson, the ideas he put forward continue to be major themes for the GOP. The Goldwater message, however, was not enough to lead Republicans to victory. It took Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy" to give the GOP the votes it needed to end Democratic dominance of the political process. In 1968 Nixon appealed strongly to disaffected white Southerners and with the help of third-party candidate and former Alabama governor George Wallace, sparked the shift of voters that eventually gave the once-hated "party of Lincoln" a strong position in all the states of the former Confederacy. In the 1980s, under the leadership of Ronald Reagan, Republicans added another important group to their coalition--religious conservatives who were offended by Democratic support for abortion and gay rights, as well as alleged Democratic disdain for traditional cultural and religious values. While Republicans built a political base around economic and social conservatives and white Southerners, the Democratic Party maintained its support among unionized workers and upper middle class intellectuals and professionals. Democrats also appealed strongly to racial minorities. The 1965 Voting Rights Act had greatly increased black voter participation in the South and helped the Democratic Party retain some congressional seats in the South. And, while the GOP appealed to social conservatives, the Democrats appealed strongly to Americans concerned with abortion rights, gay rights, feminism, environmentalism, and other progressive social causes. The result, thus far, has been a relatively even balance between the two parties. The 2000 presidential election ended in a virtual tie between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore and left the two houses of Congress almost evenly divided between the two parties. The 2004 presidential election again revealed a closely divided country, although in 2004, unlike 2000, Bush won the popular vote with 51 percent. Bush's margin in the electoral college, over Democratic rival John Kerry, was a relatively narrow 286 electoral votes to 252 for Kerry. However, the Republicans increased their majority in both the House and Senate. XI ROLE OF THIRD PARTIES Despite the dominance of the two major parties, third-party movements were significant in 1968, 1992, and especially in 2000. In 1968 the third-party candidacy of segregationist George Wallace took 14 percent of the vote and eroded support for Democrat Hubert Humphrey who was running on the platform of the Great Society. In 1992 billionaire businessman H. Ross Perot drew almost 19 percent of the popular vote, the highest percentage for a third-party presidential candidate since Theodore Roosevelt's run in 1912. Polls showed that Perot's voters were predominantly Republicans disenchanted with incumbent Republican president George H. W. Bush. Although Perot gained no electoral votes, his third-party effort helped erode the Republican's base and helped elect Democrat Bill Clinton. The third-party candidacy of Ralph Nader in 2000 probably cost the Democrats the White House. Running on the Green Party ticket, the liberal Nader captured almost 3 percent of the vote nationwide and more than 97,000 votes in the key state of Florida. Exit polls showed that most Nader supporters would have voted for Gore if Nader had not run. With those votes Gore could have captured both New Hampshire and Florida, where he lost by about 500 votes in the disputed presidential election. Nader ran again in 2004 as an independent with an endorsement by the Reform Party but was not a factor in the outcome of the election. Reviewed By: Benjamin Ginsberg Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
