Partisanship Is the Problem

Washington, warning against parties in his Farewell Address.

I'm a partisan, and it's an election year so I'm mentally inclined to be uber-partisan this year - but I can still see that partisanship over patriotism is the one of the biggest problems with America today.



Partisanship works against good governance, because instead of focusing on the best solution to a problem, when you are partisan first you are way more interested in assigning blame for that problem to the other side than you are in fixing the problem. And you aren't imagining it, partisanship has many distinct advantages. But what interests me the most are the structural advantages that partisanship enjoys in three areas:

1. Our political system,

2. Our current news structure, and

3. Human nature.


1. Our Political System - 

Our political system was not designed with permanent political parties in mind. (See e.g.: Hamilton in Federalist 9 and Madison in Federalist 10.)

That seems ridiculous to a modern eye, but it's true. The Founders did not anticipate long-term, mostly-binary political parties. They thought coalitions might form over individual issues, but they didn't anticipate our current party system - and viewed the Constitution as a check on factionalism. President Washington spent a lot of his farewell address exhorting people about the need to view oneself as an American first and about the dangers of factionalism and partisanship.

In failing to account for the likelihood of long-term political partisanship, the Framers constructed a system that didn't build in partisan checks and balances the way they built in many other forms of checks and balances.

In fact, most of the partisan systems we have in place today were created by people deeply entrenched in their party and interested in maximizing their own party's power over promoting the good of the people, generally. You know, Members of Congress.

That's how one party in one branch of Congress (Republicans in the House) has been incredibly effective at preventing most bills from coming to a vote in recent years and in shutting down the government.  On the other side of the Capitol building, it's how individual senators have been able to block huge numbers of bills from coming to a vote - often for partisan reasons - in the Senate. These mechanisms are House Rules (primarily the enormous, partisan strength of the ruling party within the Rules Committee and thereby over House Floor action), and Senate Rules (primarily the modern, terrible, no-sunlight filibuster) - which were not contemplated as partisan within the constitution. And these rules are doing damage to our country's ability to function well in 2 significant ways: they are making it harder to know as a voter what each representative is doing/believes because without a recorded vote, representatives can say whatever they want to any given audience without fear of contradiction; and they cheapen the votes of everyone who disagrees with the ruling party (in the House) and the filibustering senator (in the Senate) by undermining majority rule.


2. Our Current News Structure -

Our current news structure is terrible for our long-term ability to govern well.

24-hour TV news cycles - run largely by businesses with their own political and economic agendas - translate to a tremendous amount of focus on little (in the little-minded, pejorative sense of that word), au courant scandals over long-term investigative journalism and long-term stories.

They also employ people based far more on looks and voice than they do on substantive knowledge, and that impacts every part of the news gathering and dissemination process.  How can you ask relevant questions about policy if you do not understand and have not studied policy?  How can you possibly navigate and verify information coming from partisan sources if you do not know when they are partisan and not factual?  Why would you try if your employer is partisan itself?

The prevalence of choose-your-own-viewpoint TV news means that rather than receiving information that is aiming to be objective, we are choosing to have our underlying emotional assumptions constantly confirmed (which, of course, reinforces our partisanship).

When people are not watching TV, they seek out the news they want to read, or receive "news" based on social media or Internet sources that do not follow journalistic standards, and are thus often publishing incorrect and/or unverified information.


3. Human Nature - 

Finally, people are built to be partisan. We love to categorize things, and part of the evolutionary process has been to build brains that naturally want to find an "us" and a "them" to protect us by building a larger familial unit.

But when we live in a large, diverse democracy, factionalism means we don't make rational decisions for the whole of our country, because we are too busy reinforcing our own tribes within our country. It's called confirmation bias.  And it makes us likely to continue thinking the things that make us feel good about ourselves and our inclinations, even if they are factually untrue.



So what do we do to fix this rampant partisanship and the ill effects it is having on our country?

First, we should examine House and Senate rules and determine the best long-term standards to set in these institutions. Then we should amend the Constitution to set rules that are less partisan and more inherently democratic (note the little "d").  Yes, that's not going to be easy.  But these rules are anti-democratic and in the way of our representatives going on record and voting to be accountable for what they think is best for our country.

Next, we should demand our news be factual, not partisan. We should read and watch and listen to multiple news sources, we should check the source of information before sharing it or believing it. And we should listen and read more critically, with an eye towards larger, long-term perspective instead of smaller, attention-grabbing daily garbage presented as news. Changing our own patterns should - if news corporations truly do care about our eyeballs and where they go - have an impact on what kind of news is presented.

Finally, we should routinely do a mental tribe check - to think about what's good for the whole community - the whole country (baby steps, people, we'll get to the world next). Who are the people I don't consider my people, and why? If X person/type-of-person were in my tribe, what would I think and how would I feel?  Yeah, this seems elementary, but it is actually a bias check we are doing to counter our own biological biases. The least we can do is to try to check our own biases.  You want to think clearly, right?