po: Are Traditional Parties in Decline?

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July 20, 2006

Are Traditional Parties in Decline?

Peggy Noonan had an interesting column a few weeks back in the Wall Street Journal entitled, Third time: America may be ready for a new political party. She wrote:

I have a feeling we’re at some new beginning, that a big breakup’s coming, and that though it isn’t and will not be immediately apparent, we’ll someday look back on this era as the time when a shift began... people have been saying that the two-party system is ending, that the Democrats’ and Republicans’ control of political power in America is winding down. According to the traditional critique, the two parties no longer offer the people the choice they want and deserve. Sometimes it’s said they are too much alike—Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Sometimes it’s said they’re too polarizing—too red and too blue for a nation in which many see things through purple glasses."

She goes on to say that we are on the verge of a new politics where the two parties are put aside and extreme partisanship is affecting America because the major parties use wedge issues to push those of us in the center back and forth across an imaginary line for political gain.

Partisanship is fine when it's an expression of the high animal spirits produced by real political contention based on true political belief. But the current partisanship seems sour, not joyous....The problem is not that the two parties are polarized. In many ways they're closer than ever. The problem is that the parties in Washington, and the people on the ground in America, are polarized. There is an increasing and profound distance between the rulers of both parties and the people--between the elites and the grunts, between those in power and those who put them there.

Are there some dramatic differences? Yes. But both parties act as if they see them not as important questions (gay marriage, for instance) but as wedge issues. Which is, actually, abusive of people on both sides of the question. If it's a serious issue, face it. Don't play with it.

I don't see any potential party, or potential candidate, on the scene right now who can harness the disaffection of growing portions of the electorate. But a new group or entity that could define the problem correctly--that sees the big divide not as something between the parties but between America's ruling elite and its people--would be making long strides in putting third party ideas in play in America again.

Here in Oregon, we have the candidacy of Ben Westlund who left the Republican party to run as an independent becuase, as he says, "extreme partisan politics is keeping us from solving Oregon's problems."

Are "real problems for real Oregonians" going unaddressed as the parties play their games for control of the chambers? If what Noonan asserts is true, that we are on the edge of a new era in politics, is Westlund a political entreprenuer and is Oregon once again on the forefront of national politics.

Are the parties too alike to get along? Or too different? Does it even really matter which of the monopoly parties are in control if they are so paralyzed anyway?

Last session, the democrats, supposedly the progressive party, controlled the Senate and the Governor's mansion and yet didn't have the power or political will to address tax reform, to pass prescription pooling, to get a biofuels package, to get even a smidgen of of equality for gays and lesbians. They are the perfect examples of how having power is not equivalent to knowing how to use it.

The House Republicans, more efficient at controlling their majority, didn't know how to lead them towards anything and they spent most of their time keeping any political gains away from the D's.

Yes Oregon, our two party system is working real well... for the extreme partisans.

Posted by Violet Grey on July 20, 2006 | Permalink

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Are Traditional Parties in Decline?

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