The recent hearings conducted by the House of Representatives brought to light the very essence of our representative form of government. When watching the televised proceedings, two opposing forces were much in evidence as they jawed, insulted, and discredited witnesses as well as each other. With a gleam in their eye they seemed to relish catching someone stumbling over a point or in a perceived lie. It’s enough to make a person throw a shoe at the screen if your inclination is not in agreement with the questions or the answers.
Whether or not a quid pro quo existed regarding Ukraine’s desire for U. S. dollars to buy defensive javelin anti-tank missiles is the question before them. At the least, we’ve learned the meaning of a Latin phrase which translates as “something for something.” I like to say it means “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”
As perturbing as the whole affair seems, it needs to play out because the success of democracy “rests in large part on both the opposition and the government.” I wanted a reminder of how this political party arrangement came about, because after all, it’s been almost 60 years since I studied political science at the university.
The story goes all the way back to the presidency of George Washington who was a shoo-in as the first U. S. president. Many actually Washington wanted to be king, but he wouldn’t hear of it. How well he read the classics isn’t known by me, but his terms in office parallel a Roman leader named Cincinnatus who left his farm to lead the Roman army and then, victorious, serve briefly as dictator. Shortly after, he relinquished his power and returned to the farm. So it was with Washington who begrudgingly served a second term and refused a third term to return home after two terms of office.
Political parties began developing under him. He soon recognized that this government was too big to run without assistance and surrounded himself with cabinet members he could trust. Alexander Hamilton received the nod as secretary of the treasury and Thomas Jefferson became secretary of state. As it turned out, these two men did not play well together. Hamilton led a group known as Federalists who supported strong federal power while Jefferson with Democratic-Republicans supported states’ rights and limited federal power.
Right there are the seeds for countless disagreements which occurred through the following centuries. Washington understood the need for a stable economy and supported the ideas of Hamilton more so than Jefferson’s. So the battle had been joined.
George Washington couldn’t help but see the fighting going on between the two factions and in his farewell address in 1796 warned that the creation of political factions, “sharpened by the spirit of revenge,” would most certainly lead to continual fighting for the public’s favor. This not unheard of, though. On occasion I’ve run across videos of the British Parliament and the way they sit in rows of benches facing each other and shout and bellow at each other while their speaker bangs his gavel yelling, “Order, order!”
As I wrote at the outset I needed a refresher about the creation of political parties, and this is what I’ve found. Given all of its rough edges and weaknesses, it is what we have. If there were no opposing political parties fighting it out, one option would give us a dictator wielding favors and squelching dissatisfaction. Pure democracy would be another option, the old one man, one vote concept. Imagine trying to pass legislation under such a system. Our system survives on representative democracy and if we don’t like our representatives, we can just “throw the bums out!”
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