The Irrelevance of Party Platforms

Many people saw this month’s national elections, in which the Republicans took the Senate and kept control of the House, as a reflection of the American public’s decreasing support of President Barack Obama.

For the Republicans, the victory was a sign that the public prefers the Republican Party platform of lowering taxes, decreasing government regulation, breaking down the Affordable Care Act, and constructing the Keystone pipeline, among other planks, over Obama’s positions of focusing on job creation, investing in infrastructure, and  implementing the new healthcare system.

Democrats, conversely, interpreted this election as a sign that they have not adequately fulfilled all of their promises to the American people. Obama himself declared that he must take responsibility for the Democratic loss in the midterm elections.

But they are all missing the boat: The election should not be centered on party platforms at all. Platforms should only relevant insofar as an individual candidates supports aspects of the party platform. That’s not to say that candidates’ party membership is completely irrelevant, however party affiliation is important as a signpost of a candidate’s general positions—but only as a signpost. From it, we can infer how a candidate will lean on certain issues and what his or her position might be on issues not discussed during the campaign.

But the statements that candidates issue—and the topics that they concentrate on during the election—are much more important than the party positions and priorities that the candidates abstractly ascribe to. Just as not all members of one party agree, so too is voting for one member of a party not meant to be a general statement of support for the party’s national body.

This election should have been more than a vote on party platforms, and it also should have been more than a vote of confidence in Obama. Members of Congress can do so much more than pass or reject the president’s proposed or supported legislation: They craft their own bills, approve federal official appointees, and shape American foreign policy. The term “midterm elections” is consequently in many ways a misnomer. Yes, the elections fall in the middle of the president’s four-year term. But the electorate is voting on people who will begin new terms, whose elections should not be defined solely by the presidential calendar.

It is not only that Congress as a whole should be seen as separate from the executive, however. Candidates themselves must be viewed as separate and distinct from each other. Every district and state has its own specific needs based on its demographics, industrial profile, unemployment rate, and its prevailing, often idiosyncratic, ideology and outlook.

When voting, people should think about what they most want from a candidate, and what candidate would be best for their district or state. While they should also consider which candidates would do their best for the country, they should do this on a case-by-case basis, recognizing that even if they wanted a certain party-affiliated ideology to dominate Washington, voting for candidates exclusively of that party might not even fulfill this desire.

If the Republicans won because much of the country is dissatisfied with Obama, these next two years will be very long ones indeed. American citizens will have to accept legislatures whose positions they may not have actually individually supported. But if the Republicans won the majority because individually, each state and district thought that its candidate would best represent it and endorse only legislation that its electorate would support, then maybe even those who are not Republicans nevertheless have something to celebrate.

Edyt J. Dickstein ’17, a Crimson editorial writer, is a government concentrator in Adams House.