Patronage, Principles, and Political Parties

When they teach American government and the history of the early American republic, political scientists and historians have a puzzle to explain. There is, within the American constitution, no mention of political parties. And yet it is impossible to make sense of American politics in and after the early republic without reference to parties. Moreover, the parties that did emerge in the United States bear only a faint resemblance to the parties that existed in England and on the European continent prior to the American civil war and even less to the parties that exist on the other side of the Atlantic today.

The two puzzles are related. It is true that the Framers of the Constitution had no liking and made no provision for organized political parties, and it is also true that all of the early Presidents made at least a half-hearted attempt to transcend partisanship. It was not until Andrew Jackson that we got our first unequivocally partisan President. It is also true that the partisan divide that emerged in the 1790s was viewed by both sides as something temporary and regrettable. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison formed a party, which in time they called the Republican Party, to counter what they considered a conspiracy on the part of George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, and in response he formed a party to counter what he considered a conspiracy on their part. Absent the conspiracy, or in the eventuality of its defeat and disappearance, the American republic’s first partisans expected the parties to wither away.

In this presumption, as Martin van Buren came to realize, they were wrong. Given the separation of powers, it was virtually impossible to govern in the absence of partisan alliances. But the very structure of American government – in which Congressmen are elected by particular constituencies located in particular places and look to that locality for re-election, and in which Senators represent particular states and are no less sensitive to local concerns – subverts partisanship and promotes a species of moderation as well. Only the President sees the Union from the perspective of the whole. When Tip O’Neill remarked that all politics is local, he spoke in a fashion perfectly appropriate to his situation as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

We must, then, view political parties from a double perspective.

(more…)