The fundamental promise of partisanship is that the current election is the most important election ever. Sound familiar? Of course it does—if the opposing party wins, your fundamental freedoms and very way of life will be ripped away from you, because they hate you, specifically. Only your party can preserve the American way of life and protect us from the malicious elements of the Other Side.
If that didn’t sound hyperbolic, that’s the problem I want to address. We are constantly reminded how vital our opposition is, how important it is to resist our enemy. Oddly, one of the most consistent ways to combat the evil advances of anarcho-techno-post-communism-jihad is to give political actors your money.
Of course, if we accept the above premise, we see why every election must be an ideological battle. If each election is a no-holds-barred struggle for power between two rapidly-diverging enemy sides, then an ideologically-motivated partisan divide is a foregone conclusion. If the moment is so fraught that the other party cannot be trusted not to misuse each iota of power in its grasp, not just for its own benefit, but to the active detriment of its opponents, how could we expect anything else?1
If those are the stakes of our battle, then partisanship is a necessity. Each side has no choice but to dig its own trench deeper. We have backed ourselves into opposite corners; a game of chess where both sides have lost. Of course, I’m not the first to make these arguments. Ever heard of James Madison?
My proposition, at its most basic, is that I’d rather have an eminently-qualified State Attorney General with whom I disagree on points of policy than, say, a former football coach, even if we agree on every relevant policy platform. And you should too. But let me try to explain why.
Some issues are truly partisan. Partisan for partisanship’s own sake, a foment with no goal but to relieve the partisan troops’ boredom. These, it goes without saying, are not worth our trouble, time, or attention. They serve no purpose but to divide us: they are inherently malicious.
Some issues, however, do have ideological consequences. These are what the partisans will point towards as justification for their behavior. Abortion, perhaps. MAID. Socialism or communism. Antisemitism and Islamophobia. Russia’s war against Ukraine. These are important ideological questions that have real and varying effects on the world. Depending on your point of view, some or all of these issues have a Good Guy and a Bad Guy. Don’t we have a duty to support the Good Guys?
None of the politicians you’re voting for, not even the president, have absolute power. None of them will be able to unequivocally establish the law and/or outcomes you desire with no drawbacks. That is good. It means that it doesn’t matter quite so much who wins an election, even if it’s someone you disagree with on major questions like the ones above. Even if they wanted to do bad things to you, they can’t. And we need to keep it that way.
Sorry to be that guy, but most issues actually have a reasonable middle ground. All of them are more complicated than a simple “yes” or “no”. For example, socialism is something of a boogeyman in certain circles nowadays. But how exactly should we define it? (I’m not the only one to struggle.) Is Social Security a socialist policy? The welfare state? What is democratic socialism? Is raising taxes to pay for social policies socialism? Like a free bus system? What if we use a tariff to raise that money instead? What exactly are they doing in Norway? Please don’t interpret this as me advocating socialism. I think it’s a bad idea. But my bigger point is that Congress isn’t going to pass a bill that says,
“We did it! We’re enacting Socialism.”
(Maybe they will. At this point, would that even be uncharacteristic?) Regardless, our fellow citizens deserve better than a voter class that responds to these blunt buzzwords like a dog chasing a squirrel.We need a functioning government that allows all of us to live our lives freely and peacefully. Compromise is possible—not just possible. Necessary. Compromise, as uninspiring as it may seem, is what our form of government was designed to create and protect. The friction required to pass law through the multiple branches and levels of government wears away the sharp, radical edges. I just argued that most issues have a reasonable middle ground. Thus, we should elect officials to find that middle ground and create a functional representative society, as far as that’s possible. What is the worst possible way to do that? Only elect radicals. But what does partisanship promise us? Exactly that.
Two systemic issues contribute directly towards this effect: primary elections and gerrymandering.2 Each warrants its own article. Suffice it to say that our hyper-partisan system essentially filters for the most partisan candidates and officials, with a compounding detrimental effect on our society.
I’ve argued that a system dominated by partisan, ideological politics can only damage our government. But what should we have instead?
Remember what I said about a State Attorney General’s office? State AG is basically a state’s top law enforcement officer. When I say that, maybe you picture a really important cop. No,3 law enforcement officer meaning enforcing the law: he (or she) is in charge of investigating and bringing all criminal charges, filing civil cases on behalf of the state, and defending the state (and its laws) in cases in which it is a defendant. State AG is really important!
Wow, that’s a lot of power, you say. Sure hope that power is vested in someone of my party whom I can trust will use it for good. First, you can’t name your state AG without looking it up, which proves every point I’m trying to make in this entire article. Second, this is law enforcement. America’s laws are supposed to be blind. You don’t want a partisan hack in the office of AG. You want a really good lawyer who wants to do a really good job enforcing the state’s laws, because those are YOUR laws,4 established by the people of your state (including you) through a democratic process in order to govern as well as possible. And if you don’t like those laws? Elect people who are good at making laws. Are the people of your state making poor electoral choices? Go out there and persuade them otherwise. You live with them, after all.
Government is not a game (or a battle) to be won. It is not you and your guys versus the other half of your state. Instead, it is a job; in fact, a difficult one, and a job with large responsibilities. A job that can be performed well or poorly, just like any other. But it is in all our interests to elect5 men and women who are good at that job, and to expect a high standard of performance from them, regardless of party affiliation.
The solution to our partisan-fraught system will never be ultimate obliteration of the other side. That is tyranny of the majority: the final block ripped from our Jenga tower of a Constitution. Instead, the solution is permanently lowering the stakes. It shouldn’t matter (much) who is president. National policy shouldn’t flip-flop every four years. There is good policy out there. All we have to do is discover it. And good policy, by its nature, cannot be partisan. Evaluating our politicians on their competence, not their jersey color, is a necessary step to slowing the widening gaps in our society.
Yeah, I’d like to see an LLM generate that sentence. Good luck.
Honestly, throw the two-party system in there while we’re at it.
Well, yes.
Frankly, whether you like it or not. You can’t declare yourself a sovereign citizen while the other party’s in power. You live here, for better or for worse. We might as well try to improve things, while we’re here. If you dislike partisan power being used against you, that should illustrate why partisanship is bad. Let’s get rid of it.
and become!