Transcript What did the Framers think about political parties?

What did the Framers think about
political parties?
 James Madison’s argument that the
new Constitution would control the
effects of factions was part of an
ongoing debate within Anglo-American
political thought about political parties
 Some British writers, as well as
Americans such as Alexander Hamilton,
used the words faction and party as
synonyms and viewed them as an evil
to be eradicated in the society at large
 Others, such as the Scottish political
philosopher David Hume, had argued
that parties were the inevitable result
of diverse interests
 In fact, James Madison followed this
reasoning in Federalist 10 and believed
that factions could be controlled
What did the Framers think about
political parties?
 Ireland’s Edmund Burke, another
important political thinker,
contended that open opposition
expressed through political
parties was a good thing
 Without parties, Burke believed,
opponents of the ruler would
resort to conspiracy and intrigue
 Political parties motivated by
self-defined guiding principles
proved a crucial service to the
body politic by fostering open
debate
What did the Framers think about political parties?
 No major eighteenth-century
American leaders echoed Burke’s
arguments
 However, Americans were
accustomed to factional politics
in their colonial and new state
governments, often because of
differing regional and economic
concerns
 Some of the Framers recognized the
potential value of political parties
 For example, Alexander Hamilton
argued in Federalist 70 that parties
within a legislature could “promote
deliberation and circumspection, and
serve to check excesses in the
majority”
 But once a decision was made,
Hamilton continued, opposition
should cease
What did the Framers think about
political parties?
 Hamilton, Madison, and
the other delegates to the
Constitutional Convention
had no experience with an
ongoing party system,
that is, a system of
organized relatively durable
political parties that accept
one another’s right to exist
and to compete in elections
and within government
What ideas and events led to the development
of political parties in the 1790s?
 Political parties developed
within a decade of the
ratification of the Constitution
 Ironically Madison and
Hamilton became leaders
within those parties—on
opposite sides
 Several issues contributed to
divisions within the national
government and the nation
as a whole
 Those divisions became the
basis for the first parties
 Following are four key issues:
What ideas and events led to the development
of political parties in the 1790s?
 The power of the national
government
 Alexander Hamilton, who became
secretary of the Treasury in
George Washington’s presidential
administration, argued that the
Constitution created a government
designed to take on national
problems
 The national government could
address any national issue, whether
or not the issue was specifically
mentioned in the Constitution
 Because the Constitution stipulated
certain delegated powers to the
national government, those powers
could be reduced or eliminated by
amending the Constitution
What ideas and events led to the
development of political parties in the 1790s?
 The power of the national
government
 Thomas Jefferson,
Washington’s first secretary
of state, disagreed
 He argued that the
Constitution’s description of
national powers was so vague
that the government would be
able to do whatever it wanted
 The “energetic” use of the
national government’s power
was exactly what Jefferson
feared
What ideas and events led to the
development of political parties in the 1790s?
 Economic vision
 To demonstrate the power of the national
government and to strengthen the new
nation’s commercial economy, Hamilton in
his treasury role made a number of
recommendations to Congress
 One was that it pass a law establishing a
national bank
 Hamilton said that using a national bank
was a “necessary and proper” method of
carrying out the responsibilities given to
Congress by the Constitution, such as
collecting taxes and regulating trade
 Jefferson, who believed in the virtue of an
agrarian society of independent farmers,
replied that the necessary and proper
clause should be interpreted as if it read:
“absolutely and indispensably necessary”
What ideas and events led to the
development of political parties in the 1790s?
 Foreign policy
 More than any domestic issue, the
Napoleonic Wars between France and
Great Britain mobilized American
citizens on opposite sides
 Jefferson and many of his supporters
wanted the United States to help
France, which had supported America
during the war for independence
 Hamilton and his supporters wanted
the United States to ally with Britain
because Americans had more trade
and cultural connection with the British
than with the French
 Hoping to prevent people from
dividing into opposing camps,
President Washington declared
American neutrality
What ideas and events led to the
development of political parties in the 1790s?
 Foreign policy
 However, American supporters
of a French alliance created
Democratic-Republican Clubs,
which held rallies and meeting to
oppose the administration’s policy
 Jefferson, Madison, and other
leaders subsidized newspapers that
had editors who supported those
views
 Uniting under the name
Republicans, these citizens and
leaders forged America’s first
national political party
 In response, Hamilton and his
followers took the name Federalists
What ideas and events led to the
development of political parties in the 1790s?
 Foreign policy
 Federalists and Republicans did
not yet constitute a party system
 Each party believed that the other
was a threat to the new nation’s
very existence
 Neither accepted the idea of a
long-term, durable “loyal
opposition”
 In the election of 1796 Federalist
John Adams became president
 But Republican Jefferson received
the second-highest number of
electoral votes and thus became
vice president
What ideas and events led to the
development of political parties in the 1790s?
 The Alien and Sedition Acts
 Many in the early republic were
concerned about foreigners, called
aliens, and others who might incite
sedition, or rebellion, against the
authority of the national
government
 In 1798 President John Adams
signed the Alien Act, which gave
him the power to force foreigners
to leave the country if he
considered them dangerous,
and the Sedition Act, which made
it a crime for editors, writers, or
speakers to attack the government
What ideas and events led to the
development of political parties in the 1790s?
 The Alien and Sedition Acts
 These laws outraged Republicans,
especially after Federalist judges
fined and jailed several Republican
newspaper editors and a member
of Congress under the Sedition Act
 Madison and Jefferson wrote the
Kentucky and Virginia resolutions,
which claimed that the states had
a right to decide if the national
government had exceeded its powers
 These resolutions claimed that the
state legislatures had the power to
declare acts of Congress null and void
 Other states did not accept these
resolutions
 But the Alien and Sedition Acts
helped mobilize Republicans for
the presidential election of 1800
What was the “Revolution of 1800”
and what was its aftermath?
 The presidential election of 1800
was the first to feature candidates
for president and vice president who
were openly supported by political
parties
 Federalists supported the reelection
of John Adams
 Republicans supported Thomas
Jefferson
 The candidates themselves did not
campaign because it was considered
undignified for presidential
candidates to seek the office actively
 But the election heightened the
bitter party disagreements
What was the “Revolution of 1800”
and what was its aftermath?
 The election of 1800 was
important to the new government
 Federalists and Republicans
accused each other of wishing to
destroy the Constitution, yet both
parties accepted the results of the
election
 On March 4, 1801, the Federalists
turned over control of the national
government to the Republicans
 For the first time in recent history
control of government was given
to new leaders as the result of an
electoral “revolution,” rather than
by hereditary succession or
violent overthrow
What was the “Revolution of 1800”
and what was its aftermath?
 However, the election of 1800 also
exposed a problem in the Constitution
 According to Article II, Section III, each
member of the Electoral College was
supposed to vote for two candidates
 The one receiving the highest number
of votes became president, and the one
with the second-highest total became
vice president
 In 1800 every Republican elector voted
for Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr,
resulting in a tie vote
 The electors knew that Jefferson was
supposed to be the president and Burr
the vice president, but the Constitution
did not allow electors to specify which
candidate belonged in which office
 Therefore the tied election had to be
decided by the House of Representatives
What was the “Revolution of 1800”
and what was its aftermath?
 By the next presidential election
the Twelfth Amendment to the
Constitution had been ratified,
stipulating that each elector cast
one ballot for president and one
for vice president
 This amendment gave political
parties an ongoing role in
American politics
 Candidates for president and vice
president would be a “ticket” in
the modern sense and would run
against the candidates of the
opposing party
What was the “Revolution of 1800”
and what was its aftermath?
 Nonetheless, Thomas Jefferson never
believed that opposing political parties
should be a permanent feature of the
American system
 In his inaugural address he noted,
“We are all republicans—we are all
federalist”
 Beneath this message of unity was
another idea—that the Federalists
as a political party should with away
because Jefferson’s Republicans
represented the true common good
 Over time, Jefferson hoped, there
would be no clash of parties, but
instead a national consensus around
Republican principles would emerge
How did political parties grow, and
what functions did they serve?
 Only in the next generation did
American political leaders promote
a positive vision of political parties
 As supporters of Andrew Jackson
mobilized in the 1820s, New York
politician Martin Van Buren who
would follow Jackson to become
America’s eighth president, explained
how a new party could serve the
public good
 Echoing Edmund Burke, Van Buren
argued that a political party with
clear principles offered voters a clear
choice
 Van Buren played an important role
both in electing Jackson in 1828 and
in creating the Democratic Party in
the modern sense, which has existed
since the 1830s
How did political parties grow,
and what functions did they serve?
 Van Buren believed that political parties
could serve as a kind of glue within the
American constitutional system
 Although checks and balances and
federalism could prevent tyrants from
usurping power, these elements also
discouraged the branches of
government from working together
 There was no mechanism for presidents
to amass support for their goals in
Congress
 In addition, there were great distances
between national elected officials and
ordinary citizens
 Neither senators nor presidents were
elected directly by people, and the
national government in Washington
also was physically distant from most
Americans’ lives
How did political parties grow,
and what functions did they serve?
 Political parties helped bridge these
distances
 A President would have allies in
Congress, the members of his own
party who shared a political vision
 Through the patronage system of
appointing members of his own party
to political offices, including local
postmaster jobs, the president could
build connections between national
and local levels of government
 Local and state party committees
staged elaborate entertainments,
such as parades and rallies, to boost
support for their candidates and to
give citizens a sense of belonging to
the party
How did political parties grow,
and what functions did they serve?
 Just as revolutionary was Van Buren’s
idea of party system in which two
parties regularly vied for citizens’
allegiance
 Unlike Jefferson or Hamilton,
who believed that opposition should
evaporate once it recognized the true
common good, Van Buren and other
argued that there were valid,
competing notions of the common good
 Once a party was elected to power, it
installed its supporters in public office
and pursued its agenda
 The opposing party continued to
challenge those in power, holding
them accountable
 Political parties thus became an
additional set of checks and balances
alongside the ones that the Constitution
had created
What part do political parties
play in today’s political system?
 Today political parties play an
essential role in the American
political system
 Since the 1860s, the
Democratic Party and the
Republican Party (founded
in 1854) have been the two
major parties in the United
States
 However, their agendas and
constituencies have changed
dramatically over the years as
new issues have created new
coalitions and new divisions
What part do political parties play in today’s
political system?
 Political parties serve several
important purposes:
 They mobilize popular participation in the
nomination and election of candidates for
public office
 They connect the executive and
legislative branches of government
 Presidents generally work most closely
with members of their own party in
Congress, and governors do the same
with those in their state legislatures
 Political parties connect the national
government with state governments
 However, each major party has
enough internal variation to remain
viable in states with very different
political climates
 By joining a political party people indicate
their support for a particular platform,
the label given to the priorities and
policies of that party
What part do political parties play in today’s
political system?
 Political parties serve several important
purposes:
 Political parties provide forums for deliberating
about public policies
 In a sense they work in a way that is
opposite from what Madison suggested about
factions
 Rather than fracture the citizenry and
promote passion and interest over reason
and the common good, parties can help
organize and channel passions and interests
into the system
 Each major party is like a large tent, under
which a variety of interests and issues can
coexist
 Like the “large republic” that Madison
envisioned, political parties actually can work
against the most divisive tendencies of
faction and passion
 In times of rapid political change political parties
can provide a way of ensuring that people
demand a change of government, not a change
of constitution
 Parties can be an agent of stability
What part do political parties play
in today’s political system?
 Less favorable aspects of the
political party system:
 The longstanding dominance of the
Democratic and Republican parties,
entrenched through campaign finance
laws and other structures, makes it
difficult for parties espousing truly
alternative views and agendas to gain
lasting political support
 In most other nations, especially those
with parliamentary systems, there
usually are many more parties, each
representing a particular set of policies
and values
 Voters in such systems may feel as
though they have a wider range of
choices
What part do political parties play
in today’s political system?
 Less favorable aspects of the
political party system:
 American “third parties,” such as the
Green, Libertarian, or Reform parties,
tend to be expressions of discontent
with the two major parties
 They are generally small and oriented
toward a narrow set of issues or are
local or state based
 They have little chance of becoming
new major parties that are longlasting and competitive nationally with
the Republican and Democratic parties
 If a single set of interests or a
particularly passionate interest gains
dominant power within a party, then
the party is subject to the same threat
of majority tyranny that Madison and
other Framers feared in small
republics and from political factions