WI:America Listens To George Washington's Warning About Political Parties?

In his Farewell adress to the nation, President George Washington included a warning to America about the dangers of Political Parties. This is a summary of what he said from Wikipedia...

Washington continues to advance his idea of the dangers of sectionalism and expands his warning to include the dangers of political parties to the government and country as a whole. His warnings took on added significance with the recent creation of the Democratic-Republican Party by Jefferson, to oppose Hamilton's Federalist Party, which had been created a year earlier in 1791, which in many ways promoted the interest of certain regions and groups of Americans over others. A more pressing concern for Washington, which he makes reference to in this portion of the address, was the Democratic-Republican efforts to align with France and the Federalist efforts to ally the nation with Great Britain in an ongoing conflict between the two European nations brought about by the French Revolution.

While Washington accepts the fact that it is natural for people to organize and operate within groups like political parties, he also argues that every government has recognized political parties as an enemy and has sought to repress them because of their tendency to seek more power than other groups and take revenge on political opponents. He argues that these parties' efforts to seize power and exact revenge upon their opponents have led to horrible atrocities and will ultimately end in despotism as people throw their support behind the most powerful faction and the faction focuses on increasing their own power instead of promoting the public liberty.

Washington goes on to acknowledge the fact that parties are sometimes beneficial in promoting liberty in monarchies, but argues that political parties must be restrained in a popularly elected government because of their tendency to distract the government from their duties, create unfounded jealousies amongst groups and regions, raise false alarms amongst the people, promote riots and insurrection, and provide foreign nations and interests access to the government where they can impose their will upon the country.

I find this interesting, since today America is so polarized by its two party system. What if America had listened to it's founding father, and took mesures to restrict or limit the powers of politcal parties? What sort of effect would this have had on America in it's early years, and how might it's political system be different down the years?
 
Well, the obvious follow up question is, what might those policies be?

One example might be changing the winner take all system, maybe adopting a runoff system...
 
Alternate voting systems have little chance at this time. Besides that, he wasn't complaining about the two party system, as it didn't exist at the time. He wasn't complaining about pluralities or voting choice issues. He wasn't complaining about the power of these parties, as at the time, they had little to none (Much of the power of centralized parties that developed did not really come along until the late 19th century)

He was complaining about the idea of competition in politics. Washington, along with many other Federalist politicians (and Washington was an affirmed Federalist, and despite romanticism, was a politician) believed in a sort of virtuous Republicanism that would bring all reasoned people to a consensus. Specifically, their consensus. If you didn't belong to their consensus, you didn't truly support republican government or you weren't a reasoned individual. This is one of the trends of Enlightenment thought that led the French Revolution astray, in search of purity in politics. It is best to think of it as a much more scary precursor to the empty promises of bipartisanism commonly eschewed by modern politicians.

If you want to see what the ultimate result of Washington's warnings against "faction" would be, look at the Terror in France. Or, less negatively, look at Liberia, so well influenced by their American roots, that had the True Whigs as their one party for nearly 100 years. If his warnings against faction had been taken, you would have seen a less open political system in the United States.
 
political parties must be restrained in a popularly elected government because of their tendency to distract the government from their duties, create unfounded jealousies amongst groups and regions, raise false alarms amongst the people, promote riots and insurrection, and provide foreign nations and interests access to the government where they can impose their will upon the country.

Sounds like Washington was dead right to me.
 
It would be harder for their to be any political elites, and the people would have to vote for individuals, not the letter in front of their name. On the other hand, political dynasties (which are only good in the case of monarchies, if you ask me, and have no place in republics) such as the Bushes and Kennedys might be more common.
 
I think that it would be hard not have political parties. People of common ideas would have to work toghether to get things done.
 
Actually, it's kind of a funny proposition, since as AngleAngel puts it- Washington was basically doing what American (and most other) politicians do today. Tricky..
 
The Alien and Sedition Acts could be "moderated" as a Political Societies and Clubs Act or, as it is styled in Federalist news organs, the Act Against Faction.

In theory, the Political Societies and Clubs Act bans the formation of all political parties, political clubs and so on. In practice, however, it is a tool for the destruction of what little organization the Democratic-Republicans had created during their short existence, and the destruction of opposed political "machines" (Don't forget that Tammany Hall was already on the rise by this point; I could easily see someone targeting the phenomenon as it was on its rise, especially with Alien portions of the bill)

The prohibitions against aliens would likely still pass, and those were the least unpopular of the OTL Acts. The problem in selling the Sedition portion of the Acts was that they sounded so wholly dissimilar to the ideals of the Revolution. This Act Against Faction suffers no such ill- the language and idea is wonderful, the actual repression meted out by it will only be felt by Democratic-Republicans, which means it won't do anything to expand their base or hurt the Federalist's support base (as was the case with OTL's Acts) and it may stymie DR efforts to expand the suffrage in the NE and Mid-Atlantic states.

This Act Against Faction could very well set the stage for an era of American politics that is, outside of name, a one party state. (What's ironic about it is that it would involve the Anglophile Federalists copying a page from the French Republic's handbook.)

The actual effects of a one-party state in America are interesting. Political competition will be kept within the party, so the scope of debate will be narrowed considerably and there will be no formalized process of competition. I imagine that over time, personalities and Federalist machine bosses will be the ones trying to wrest control of the party from the other. The chances of keeping a more limited suffrage for longer helps with this as well. Some effects are the possible leapfrogs- without the spoils system really developing, we could see an earlier civil service reform (although I imagine it would find some way to wrangle political contributions in some form or another)
 
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Which to me seems more like a period of political dominance, not a single party state.

Nice TL, BTW.


Why thank you.

Between 1864 and the 1880s, the Democratic Party pretty much owned the National scene, with over 2/3 majority in both Houses. Not until the Socialists grew in strength did that amendment guarenteed majority was broken. Oh course by the 2008 election, there were four big parties, as well as the dinky regional ones.
 
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