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Writer's pictureTom Mast

Tale of Two Parties I

Updated: Nov 2, 2022

Tom Mast, founder Solve American Gridlock



Drutman writes in Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop about the views of Madison, Washington, and John Adams regarding political parties. Madison said “different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power…have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity.” Crisis comes when the state is “violently heated and distracted by the rage of party.” Washington in his famous farewell address warned America about “the alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities.” President Adams spoke “a division of the republic into two great parties…is to be dreaded as the great political evil.” Adapted from Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop, The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America, by Lee Drutman.


It is incredible that these three great men were so prescient! They articulated our woes of today two-and-a-third centuries ago.


“ Political parties are essential to democratic governance…America’s system was designed to operate in an environment where most factions would be ephemeral, developing over issues and then dissolving when those issues faded or were somehow resolved.”


Adapted from The Role of Political Parties in Preventing Congress from Functioning, Dennis R. Bullock, Real Clear Policy. https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2019/02/01/the_role_of_political_parties_in_preventing_congress_from_functioning_111025.html#!


A system with more than two parties is required to make the above concept work well.

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