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George Washington, the United States’ first and last unaffiliated president, warned that political parties, should they take root in the new republic, would make government “the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans.” Parties sprang up immediately, of course, but for many years they were short-lived, forming and collapsing according to a natural life cycle. No longer. Our current two-party system has become a shadow constitution, based largely on a system of legal bribery, that makes a mockery of the founders’ republican intentions. Increasingly it seems that the political parties themselves are among the greatest obstacles to civic renewal.
Eight years of Republican rule have led to economic chaos, ruinous war, and unprecedented despair. Every electoral indicator points to a massive defeat. Yet few believe that the Democratic Party possesses the strength of purpose to drive the Republicans into the well-deserved oblivion of the Anti-Masons and the Know-Nothings. Mindful of the Democrats’ shortcomings, Harper’s Magazine gathered together a panel of political thinkers to consider how the deed might be accomplished, and what might be the consequences of failure.
Kevin Baker is a novelist, historian, and a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine. His last article for the magazine, “A Fate Worse than Bush: Rudolph Giuliani and the Politics of Personality,” appeared in the August 2007 issue.
Scott McConnell is editor of The American Conservative.
Luke Mitchell is a senior editor of Harper’s Magazine.
Kevin Phillips is the author of many books, including The Emerging Republican Majority and, most recently, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism.
Thomas F. Schaller is an associate professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the author of Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South.
More from Kevin Baker:
Political Asylum — November 8, 2012, 6:03 pm
Can the G.O.P. genuinely change its attitude toward minorities and women?
Political Asylum — November 5, 2012, 9:42 pm
An election-eve elegy for the country???s former guardians of sanity
