Abandon Your Party, Not Your Country
America’s first president George Washington feared one thing which he believed threatened our republic’s integrity greater than any other.
In his 1796 farewell address, Washington ended his days in public service with a stark warning about the dangers that political parties posed to liberty and democracy:
“[Political parties] are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” — President George Washington, September 1796
The president had written a draft of this address four years earlier while he was considering retiring after one term. He opted to stay for a second term once it became clear to him that factionalism between America’s first two political parties posed a deep threat to the young republic’s stability.
Washington remained an independent through his two terms in office. Though Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson criticized parties after his departure, both of these men chose to join one, thus rejecting the early precedent of non-partisanship.
Americans in the 21st century appear to share Washington’s conviction in independence over partisanship.
For the past 13 years, a clear plurality of the American public has rejected the labels of both major parties and chosen to identify as independent. Americans feel increasingly that our leaders pledge allegiance to their party over their country.
The Democratic and Republican parties of today are driven by spite for each other. They engage their supporters not with calls to unite a fractured nation behind a shared future, but through fear and hate mongering about the other party.
The political environment today reflects the course that Washington most feared would lead to the downfall of our republic. The American people are becoming more independent, but our government is increasingly captured by partisan actors.
Andrew Yang was an unlikely figure to become a champion of preserving liberty and democracy. The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Yang jokes about the fact that his family didn’t once bring up the possibility of going into politics.
Through his years-long journey diving into American politics, however, he appears to have gained a clearer and more honest assessment of the tremendous problems in front of us and the solutions that they demand.
Each step that Yang took deeper into the political sphere uncovered to him a new layer of structural disease.
Yang described the 2016 election as a bright red flag that Americans had lost a significant amount of faith in our republic. While writing his 2018 book ‘The War on Normal People,’ he discovered a troubling phenomenon that was developing unnoticed by politicians and the media.
The automation of manufacturing jobs meant that an increasing number of rural Americans were being left behind in the 21st century economy. When a job traditionally done by a person is replaced by robotics, that job isn’t going to come back.
Among these Americans, Donald Trump’s promises to bring back manufacturing jobs struck a chord.
Yang had discovered that the disconnect between what was happening in peoples’ lives and what politicians were focusing on was more stark than many would care to admit.
He took this discovery and launched the longest-of-long-shots campaign for president motivated by his desire to bring automation to the front of Americans’ minds.
Though his campaign reached heights he could not have imagined at the outset, the one-time lawyer did not end up becoming our president.
Yang explains in his post-2020 memoir, ‘Forward,’ how he came to the conclusion that the problem with American politics isn’t that the wrong ideas are being proposed.
He argues that the system is working just as it is designed to work. The institutions of our republic have been so degraded that they work more for partisan and special interests than for the people.
The newly-formed Forward Party, led by Yang, is not seeking to run candidates that run into the same electoral wall third parties have for decades.
The Forward Party instead is pushing to re-establish the precedent of independence that President Washington sought long ago.
Implementing ranked-choice voting and open primaries are the core pillars of the party. Yang contends that these reforms will remove the most significant barriers to power erected by the two major parties.
The argument for each of these reforms is simple, and the Forward Party has a plan to pass them that does not require buy-in from the Democratic or Republican parties.
The key that holds back independents and third party candidates is a belief among Americans that voting for someone outside the two major parties is, at the very least, a waste of a vote, and at worst, could help the major-party candidate they most dislike win.
Ranked-choice voting eliminates this problem.
When voters rank each candidate rather than choosing one or the other, they have the assurance that they can vote for whomever they want and they still get a vote if their first choice loses.
Open primaries take this a step further by eliminating closed party primaries, instead having candidates of all parties run together in one primary.
These two steps will move America firmly in the direction of depolarization and independence from partisan allegiance. They also more closely reflect President Washington’s vision for the country than our system has for many years.
The final element of the Forward Party’s plan answers the question of how these goals can be accomplished given the intensity of partisan gridlock.
Since 2016, Alaska and Maine have implemented ranked-choice voting statewide after citizen-initiated ballot measures passed. Alaska passed open primaries as well.
Citizen-initiated ballot measures can pass legislation without having to rely on a gridlocked Congress. Twenty-four states allow ballot measures.
The Nevada Supreme Court ruled in June that citizen-initiated measures for ranked-choice voting and open primaries will be allowed to appear on the ballot in November, putting the state at the center of the Forward Party’s new approach.
Americans should heed President Washington’s warning that the environment we find ourselves in today is dire.
We should also heed the precedent of independence from partisan affiliations he sought to establish as the key to revitalizing our commitment to liberty and democracy.
The Forward Party’s vision for America more closely resembles President Washington’s vision than any we have seen for a long time.
The party’s focus on reforming the system towards non-partisanship without any caveat that they must gain power for themselves first reflects a true commitment to our republic above its own pursuit of power.
President Washington’s greatest shortcoming may have been his failure to erect stronger guardrails against the power of partisanship. The Forward Party’s vision proposes a realistic and hopeful future that realizes our first president’s dream more fully than America ever has.
Sources
President George Washington’s Farewell Address, 19 September 1796 — National Archives
US Political Party Preferences Shifted Greatly During 2021 — Gallup Polling
