The Party-Line Confederacy

A fact not surprising to anyone who has followed the healthcare reform battle in the last year is that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, now signed into law, managed to pass through both chambers of Congress without a single Republican voting “Yea.” In comparison, another landmark bill passed 75 years ago, the Social Security Act of 1935, passed the House 372 votes to 33, with 81 Republicans voting in support. Thirty years later in 1965, the Medicaid and Medicare amendments were added with a House margin of 307-to-116, with 70 Republicans voting in favor.

What is remarkable, however, is that when first proposed, healthcare reform would have in fact most benefitted the predominantly Republican states, where disparities in healthcare are the greatest as reported by UnitedHealth Foundation’s annual rankings. Of the 10 unhealthiest states in 2009, nine voted for John McCain in 2008. In 2004, all of the 15 worst ranking states backed George W. Bush.

But increasingly it seems that the needs of constituents have fallen on deaf ears to Washington leaders as party-line commitment now trumps the duty to hometown voters. Representation in Congress is no longer vested in pushing constituency interests, which are now being marginalized by national party politics. In fact, the ill-fated “Cornhusker Kickback” represents the rare hat tip to a congressman’s constituents in the last year. Kudos, Senator Ben Nelson, for trying.

Today, the party usurps all. Congressional campaigns are increasingly being conducted and synchronized by party leadership, with national figures frequently campaigning for local candidates. The special senatorial election in Massachusetts drew in the entire nation’s attention such that it almost made sense to enfranchise the country to vote. The election was foremost a matter of national importance, preserving the Senate majority, over what was truly at stake: electing a representative from Massachusetts.

This growing cephalization of legislative independence into the hands of a few party leaders is also evident in the growing reducibility of Election Day results to single-tally chamber majorities. Anemic third parties and the fixation on factionalized agendas have merely relegated elections to an oscillation between party majorities—the stifling polarization and “factions” that George Washington warned against in his farewell address. Even insiders, like retiring Ind. Senator Evan Bayh, contest the growing inefficiencies of rampant party-line voting, confirmed by the apex of legislative inefficiency in 2009.

The challenge we now face is a longer-term polarization of our political system into a confrontational boxing match, each party unrelenting when the other is in power. Recourse from the current route requisites systemic change; anything less will spiral to dystopic ends. As apart as the North and South seemed when the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter 150 years ago, party lines divide America today. The war we face comes with its costs of progress and efficiency, as each side fights to preserve its vision of America. The pivot of this “new secession” is not the Mason-Dixon, but a far shorter aisle separating the legislatures of America by way of our two-party system.

Abandoning party affiliations in our government and instead assessing issues point-by-point is the only solution to reviving the complexities and beauty of our pluralistic political system, shortchanged by the outlandish desire to paint the nation blue or red. Should we not abolish our two-party system with the utmost urgency, then it will instead threaten to destroy the faithful representation of the people and the unity of our republic. We cannot continue to gerrymander America into ideological boundaries—a distinct Democratic States of America and Republican Confederacy. That is the inevitable outcome of our current two-party system: “E pluribus duo”.

We must instead renew the hope of progress promised to a nation and repair the divisions that threaten its realization. This is our Civil War to fight and America’s two-party system, our “peculiar institution” to overcome.

Ashin D. Shah ’12, a Crimson photography editor, is an applied mathematics concentrator in Pforzheimer House.