American Democracy
The United States has operated under
a two-party system for most of its history. For elective offices at most levels, state-administered
primary elections choose the major party nominees for subsequent general elections. Since the general election of 1856, the major parties have been
the Democratic Party, founded in 1824, and
the Republican Party, founded in 1854. Since the Civil War, only one third-party presidential candidate—former president Theodore Roosevelt, running as a Progressive in 1912—has won as much as 20% of the popular vote. The President and Vice-president are elected through the Electoral College system.
Within
American political culture, the center-right
Republican Party is considered "
conservative" and the center-left
Democratic Party is considered "
liberal". The states of the Northeast and West Coast and some of the Great Lakes states, known as "
blue states", are relatively
liberal. The "
red states" of the South and parts of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains are
relatively conservative.
The winner of the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections,
Democrat Barack Obama, is the 44th, and current, U.S. president. On November 8, 2016,
Donald Trump, representing
the Republican Party, was elected
the 45th president. Current leadership in the Senate includes
Democratic Vice President
Joseph Biden,
Republican President Pro Tempore (Pro Tem)
Orrin Hatch, Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell, and Minority Leader
Harry Reid. Leadership in the House includes Speaker of the House
Paul Ryan, Majority Leader
Kevin McCarthy, and Minority Leader
Nancy Pelosi.
In the 114th United States Congress, both
the House of Representatives and
the Senate are controlled by
the Republican Party.
The Senate currently consists of
54 Republicans, and
44 Democrats with
2 Independents who caucus with
the Democrats; the House consists of
247 Republicans and
186 Democrats, with
2 vacancies. In state governorships, there are
31 Republicans,
18 Democrats and
1 Independent. Among the DC mayor and the 5 territorial governors, there are
2 Republicans,
1 Democrat,
1 Popular Democrat), and
2 Independents.
Primary electionsA primary election is an election that narrows the field of candidates before an election for office.
Primary elections are one means by which a political party or a political alliance nominates candidates for an upcoming general election or by-election.
Primaries are common in
the United States, where their origins are traced to
the progressive movement to take the power of candidate nomination from party leaders to the people.
Other methods of selecting candidates include caucuses, conventions, and nomination meetings.
The United States is one of few countries to select candidates through popular vote in
a primary election system; most countries rely on party leaders to vote candidates, as was previously the case in the U.S. In modern politics, primary elections have been described as a significant vehicle for taking decision-making from political insiders to the voters, though this is disputed by select political science research. The selection of candidates for federal, state, and local general elections takes place in primary elections organized by the public administration for the general voting public to participate in for the purpose of nominating the respective parties' official candidates; state voters start the electoral process for governors and legislators through the primary process, as well as for many local officials from city councilors to county commissioners. The candidate who moves from the primary to be successful in the general election takes public office.
United States presidential primary
The series of presidential primary elections and caucuses held in each U.S. state and territory forms part of the nominating process of
United States presidential elections.
The United States Constitution has never specified the process; political parties have developed their own procedures over time. Some states hold only
primary elections, some hold only
caucuses, and
others use a combination of both. These
primaries and
caucuses are staggered, generally beginning in either late-January or early-February, and ending about mid-June before the general election in November. State and local governments run the primary elections, while caucuses are private events that are directly run by the political parties themselves. A state's primary election or caucus is usually an indirect election: instead of voters directly selecting a particular person running for President, they determine the number of delegates each party's national convention will receive from their respective state. These delegates then in turn select their party's presidential nominee.
Each party determines how many delegates it allocates to each state. Along with those "
pledged" delegates chosen during the primaries and caucuses, state delegations to both
the Democratic and
Republican conventions also include "
unpledged" delegates who have a vote. For
Republicans, they consist of
the three top party officials who serve At Large from each state and territory.
Democrats have a more expansive group of unpledged delegates called "
superdelegates", who are party leaders and elected officials (
PLEO). If no single candidate has secured an absolute majority of delegates (including both pledged and unpledged), then a "
brokered convention" occurs: all pledged delegates are "
released" after the first round of voting and are able to switch their allegiance to a different candidate, and then additional rounds take place until there is a winner with an absolute majority.
The staggered nature of
the presidential primary season allows candidates to concentrate their resources in each area of the country one at a time instead of campaigning in every state simultaneously. In some of the less populous states, this allows campaigning to take place on a much more personal scale. However, the overall results of the primary season may not be representative of the U.S. electorate as a whole: voters in
Iowa,
New Hampshire and other less populous states which traditionally hold their primaries and caucuses in late-January/February usually have a major impact on the races, while voters in
California and other large states which traditionally hold their primaries in June generally end up having no say because the races are usually over by then. As a result, more states vie for earlier primaries, known as "
front-loading", to claim a greater influence in the process. The national parties have used penalties and awarded bonus delegates in efforts to stagger the system over broadly a 90-day window. Where state legislatures set the primary or caucus date, sometimes the out-party in that state has endured penalties in the number of delegates it can send to
the national convention.
History
In the American colonial period before 1776, and for some time after, often only adult white male property owners could vote; enslaved Africans, most free black people and most women were not extended the franchise. On the American frontier, democracy became a way of life, with more widespread social, economic and political equality. Although not described as a democracy by the founding fathers, they shared a determination to root the American experiment in the principles of natural freedom and equality.
The American Revolution led to the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1787, the oldest surviving, still active, governmental codified constitution. The Constitution provided for an elected government and protected civil rights and liberties for some, but did not end slavery nor extend voting rights in the United States beyond white male property owners (about 6% of the population). The Bill of Rights in 1791 set limits on government power to protect personal freedoms but had little impact on judgements by the courts for the first 130 years after ratification.
In the United States, no mechanisms of direct democracy exists at the federal level, but over half of the states and many localities provide for citizen-sponsored ballot initiatives (also called "ballot measures", "ballot questions" or "propositions"), and the vast majority of states allow for referendums. Examples include the extensive use of referendums in the US state of California, which is a state that has more than 20 million voters.
Republic
The term
republic has many different meanings, but
today often refers to a representative democracy with
an elected head of state, such as
a president,
serving for a limited term, in contrast to states with a hereditary monarch as a head of state, even if these states also are
representative democracies with an elected or appointed head of government such as
a prime minister.
The Founding Fathers of the United States rarely praised and
often criticised democracy, which in their time tended to specifically mean direct democracy, often without the protection of a constitution enshrining basic rights; James Madison argued, especially in The Federalist No. 10, that what distinguished a democracy from a republic was that the former became weaker as it got larger and suffered more violently from the effects of faction, whereas a republic could get stronger as it got larger and combats faction by its very structure.
What was critical to American values,
John Adams insisted, was that the government be "
bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend." As Benjamin Franklin was exiting after writing the U.S. constitution, a woman asked him "Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?". He replied "A republic—if you can keep it."
Reforms and
revolutions helped
move most European countries towards liberal democracy.
Liberalism ceased being a fringe opinion and
joined the political mainstream. At the same time, a number of non-liberal ideologies developed that took the concept of
liberal democracy and made it their own.
The political spectrum changed;
traditional monarchy became more and more
a fringe view and
liberal democracy became
more and more mainstream. By the end of the 19th century,
liberal democracy was no longer only a "
liberal" idea, but an idea supported by many different ideologies. After
World War I and especially after
World War II,
liberal democracy achieved
a dominant position among theories of government and is now endorsed by the vast majority of the political spectrum.
Although
liberal democracy was originally put forward by
Enlightenment liberals, the relationship between
democracy and
liberalism has been controversial since the beginning, and was
problematized in the 20th century.
The ideology of liberalism—particularly in its classical form—is
highly individualistic and concerns itself with
limiting the power of the state over the individual. In contrast,
democracy is seen by some as
a collectivist ideal, concerned with empowering the masses. Thus,
liberal democracy may be seen as a compromise between
liberal individualism and
democratic collectivism.
The role of constitutionalism in the American democracyWhereas
Hobbes created his unitary sovereign through the mechanism of individual and unilateral promises and whereas
Locke prevented excessive concentration of power by requiring the cooperation of different organs of government for the accomplishment of different purposes,
Rousseau merged all individual citizens into an all-powerful sovereign whose main purpose was the expression of the general will. By definition, the general will can never be wrong; for when something contrary to the general interest is expressed, it is defined as the mere “
will of all” and cannot have emanated from the sovereign. In order to guarantee the legitimacy of government and laws, Rousseau would have enforced universal participation in order to “
force men to be free,” as he paradoxically phrased it. In common with
Hobbes and
Locke,
Rousseau required the assent of all to the original social contract. He required smaller majorities for the adoption of laws of lesser importance than the constitution itself. His main concern was to provide for legitimacy through universal participation in legislation, whereas
Locke and
Hobbes were more concerned to provide
constitutional stability through
consent. As a result,
Rousseau’s thought appears to be
more democratic than that of his English predecessors. He has even been accused of
laying the philosophical foundations of “
totalitarian democracy,” for the state he describes in
The Social Contract would be subject, at the dictates of its universal and unanimous sovereign, to sudden changes, or even transformations, of its constitution.
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Thomas Hobbes (5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679), was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established social contract theory, the foundation of most later Western political philosophy. Though on rational grounds a champion of absolutism for the sovereign, Hobbes also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid.
John Locke FRS (Fellowship of the Royal Society) (/ˈlɒk/; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism". Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence.
He was one of the founders of modern political philosophy and political science. His understanding of humans as being matter and motion, obeying the same physical laws as other matter and motion, remains influential; and his account of human nature as self-interested cooperation, and of political communities as being based upon a "social contract" remains one of the major topics of political philosophy.
Locke exercised a profound influence on political philosophy, in particular on modern liberalism. Michael Zuckert has argued that Locke launched liberalism by tempering Hobbesian absolutism and clearly separating the realms of Church and State. He had a strong influence on Voltaire who called him "le sage Locke". His arguments concerning liberty and the social contract later influenced the written works of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers of the United States. In fact, one passage from the Second Treatise is reproduced verbatim in the Declaration of Independence, the reference to a "long train of abuses". Such was Locke's influence that Thomas Jefferson wrote: "Bacon, Locke and Newton... I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical and Moral sciences".
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Francophone Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th century. His political philosophy influenced the Enlightenment in France and across Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the overall development of modern political and educational thought.Effect of Rousseau on the United States of AmericaAccording to some scholars,
Rousseau exercised minimal influence on the American founders like
Thomas Jefferson despite
the similarities between their ideas, such as shared beliefs regarding the self-evidence of the claim that "
all men are created equal," their shared conviction that citizens of a republic be educated at public expense, and the evident parallel between the U.S. constitution Framers’ concept of the "
general welfare" and Rousseau’s concept of the "
general will"; and the parallels between
Jeffersonian democracy, and
Rousseau’s praise of Switzerland and Corsica’s economies of isolated and self-sufficient independent homesteads and
his endorsement of a well-regulated citizen militia, such as
Switzerland’s.
However, Will Durant and Ariel Durant have written that Rousseau had definite political influence on America. According to Durant: The first sign of his political influence was in the wave of public sympathy that supported active French aid to the American Revolution. Jefferson derived the Declaration of Independence from Rousseau as well as from Locke and Montesquieu. As ambassador to France (1785-89) he absorbed much from both Voltaire and Rousseau...The success of the American Revolution raised the prestige of Rousseau's philosophy.One of Rousseau's most important American followers was textbook-writer Noah Webster (1758–1843), who was influenced by Rousseau's ideas on pedagogy in Emile (1762). Webster structured his Speller in accord with Rousseau’s ideas about the stages of a child’s intellectual development.
Rousseau's writings perhaps had an indirect influence on American literature through the writings of Wordsworth and Kant, whose works were important to the New England Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as on such Unitarians as theologian William Ellery Channing. American novelist James Fennimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans and other novels reflect republican and egalitarian ideals present alike in Thomas Paine and in English Romantic primitivism.In the political thought of
Hobbes,
Locke, and
Rousseau may be found theoretical consideration of the practical issues that were to confront the authors of
the American and
French constitutions.
The influence of theories of the social contract, especially as they relate to the issues of
natural rights and
the proper functions of government, pervades
the constitution making of the revolutionary era that began with
the American Revolution and is indeed enshrined in the great political manifestos of the time,
the American Declaration of Independence and
Bill of Rights, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.
AccountabilityUnder
constitutional government, those who govern are regularly accountable to at least a portion of the governed. In
a constitutional democracy, this accountability is owed to the electorate by all persons in government.
Accountability can be enforced through a great variety of regular procedures, including
elections,
systems of promotion and
discipline,
fiscal accounting,
recall, and
referendum. In
constitutional democracies, the accountability of government officials to the citizenry makes possible the citizens’ responsibility for the acts of government. The most obvious example of this two-directional flow of responsibility and accountability is
the electoral process. A member of the legislature or the head of government is elected by adult citizens and is thereby invested with authority and power in order that he may try to achieve those goals to which he committed himself in his program. At the end of his term of office, the electorate has the opportunity to judge his performance and to reelect him or dismiss him from office. The official has thus rendered his account and has been held accountable.
RepresentationThose in office must conduct themselves as the representatives of their constituents. To represent means to be present on behalf of someone else who is absent.
Elections, of course, are not the only means of securing representation or of ensuring
the representativeness of a government. Hereditary medieval kings considered themselves, and were generally considered by their subjects, to be representatives of their societies.
Of the social contract theorists only Rousseau denied the feasibility of representation for purposes of legislation. The elected status of officeholders is sometimes considered no guarantee that they will be “
existentially representative” of their constituents, unless they share with the latter certain other vital characteristics such as
race,
religion,
sex, or
age. The problems of representation are in fact more closely related to
democratic than to
constitutionalist criteria of government: a regime that would be considered quite unrepresentative by modern standards could still be regarded as
constitutional so long as it
provided procedural stability and
the accountability of officeholders to some but not all of the governed and so long as the governors were representative of the best or the most important elements in the body politic.
DescriptiveUsed descriptively, the concept of constitutionalism can refer chiefly to the historical struggle for constitutional recognition of the people's right to "consent" and certain other rights, freedoms, and privileges.
PrescriptiveThe prescriptive approach to constitutionalism addresses what a constitution should be. Two observations might be offered about its prescriptive use.
There is often confusion in equating the presence of a written constitution with the conclusion that a state or polity is one based upon constitutionalism. As noted by David Fellman constitutionalism "
should not be taken to mean that if a state has a constitution, it is necessarily committed to the idea of constitutionalism. In a very real sense... every state may be said to have a constitution, since every state has institutions which are at the very least expected to be permanent, and every state has established ways of doing things". But even with a "formal written document labelled '
constitution' which includes the provisions customarily found in such a document, it does not follow that it is committed to constitutionalism...."
Often the word "
constitutionalism" is used in a rhetorical sense, as a political argument that equates the views of the speaker or writer with a preferred view of the constitution. For instance, University of Maryland Constitutional History Professor
Herman Belz's critical assessment of expansive constitutional construction notes that "
constitutionalism... ought to be recognized as a distinctive ideology and approach to political life.... Constitutionalism not only establishes the institutional and intellectual framework, but it also supplies much of the rhetorical currency with which political transactions are carried on." Similarly, Georgetown University Law Center Professor
Louis Michael Seidman noted as well the confluence of political rhetoric with arguments supposedly rooted in
constitutionalism. In assessing the "
meaning that critical scholars attributed to constitutional law in the late twentieth century,"
Professor Seidman notes a "
new order... characterized most prominently by extremely aggressive use of legal argument and rhetoric" and as a result "
powerful legal actors are willing to advance arguments previously thought out-of-bounds. They have, in short, used legal reasoning to do exactly what crits claim legal reasoning always does—put the lipstick of disinterested constitutionalism on the pig of raw politics."
ConstitutionalismConstitutionalism is "
a complex of ideas, attitudes, and patterns of behavior elaborating the principle that the authority of government derives from and is limited by a body of fundamental law".
American constitutionalism has been defined as a complex of ideas, attitudes and patterns elaborating the principle that the authority of government derives from the people, and is limited by a body of fundamental law. These ideas, attitudes and patterns, according to one analyst, derive from "a dynamic political and historical process rather than from a static body of thought laid down in the eighteenth century".
Political organizations are constitutional to the extent that they "contain institutionalized mechanisms of power control for the protection of the interests and liberties of the citizenry, including those that may be in the minority". As described by political scientist and constitutional scholar David Fellman:
"
Constitutionalism is descriptive of a complicated concept, deeply embedded in historical experience, which subjects the officials who exercise governmental powers to the limitations of a higher law. Constitutionalism proclaims the desirability of the rule of law as opposed to rule by the arbitrary judgment or mere fiat of public officials…. Throughout the literature dealing with modern public law and the foundations of statecraft the central element of the concept of constitutionalism is that in political society government officials are not free to do anything they please in any manner they choose; they are bound to observe both the limitations on power and the procedures which are set out in the supreme, constitutional law of the community. It may therefore be said that the touchstone of constitutionalism is the concept of limited government under a higher law."
In US history,
constitutionalism, in both its descriptive and prescriptive sense,
has traditionally focused on the federal constitution. Indeed, a routine assumption of many scholars has been that understanding "
American constitutionalism" necessarily entails the thought that went into
the drafting of the federal constitution and
the American experience with that constitution since its ratification in 1789.
There is a rich tradition of
state constitutionalism that offers broader insight into
constitutionalism in the United States. While
state constitutions and
the federal constitution operate differently as
a function of federalism from the
coexistence and
interplay of governments at both
a national and
state level, they all rest on a shared assumption that
their legitimacy comes from
the sovereign authority of the people or
popular sovereignty. This underlying premise, embraced by
the American revolutionaries with
the Declaration of Independence unites
American constitutional tradition.
Both experience with state constitutions before and after the federal constitution as well as the emergence and operation of the latter reflect an ongoing struggle over the idea that all governments in
America rested on
the sovereignty of the people for their legitimacy.
CriticismsLegal scholar
Jeremy Waldron contends that constitutionalism is often undemocratic:
Constitutions are not just about retraining and limiting power; they are about the empowerment of ordinary people in a democracy and allowing them to control the sources of law and harness the apparatus of government to their aspirations. That is the democratic view of constitutions, but it is not the constitutionalist view.... Of course, it is always possible to present an alternative to constitutionalism as an alternative form of constitutionalism: scholars talk of "popular constitutionalism" or "democratic constitutionalism."... But I think it is worth setting out a stark version of the antipathy between constitutionalism and democratic or popular self-government, if only because that will help us to measure more clearly the extent to which a new and mature theory of constitutional law takes proper account of the constitutional burden of ensuring that the people are not disenfranchised by the very document that is supposed to give them their power.Constitutionalism has also been the subject of criticism by Murray Rothbard, who attacked constitutionalism as incapable of restraining governments and does not protect the rights of citizens from their governments:
It is true that, in the United States, at least, we have a constitution that imposes strict limits on some powers of government. But, as we have discovered in the past century, no constitution can interpret or enforce itself; it must be interpreted by men. And if the ultimate power to interpret a constitution is given to the government's own Supreme Court, then the inevitable tendency is for the Court to continue to place its imprimatur on ever-broader powers for its own government. Furthermore, the highly touted "checks and balances" and "separation of powers" in the American government are flimsy indeed, since in the final analysis all of these divisions are part of the same government and are governed by the same set of rulers.The Electoral collage (according the the Encyclopedia Britannica)
Electoral college, the system by which the president and vice president of the United States are chosen. It was devised by the framers of the United States Constitution to provide a method of election that was feasible, desirable, and consistent with a republican form of government. For the results of U.S. presidential elections, see the table.
History and operationDuring most of
the Constitutional Convention, presidential selection was vested in the legislature. The electoral college was proposed near the end of the convention by the Committee on Unfinished Parts, chaired by
David Brearley of
New Jersey, to provide a system that would select the most qualified president and vice president. Historians have suggested a variety of reasons for the adoption of the electoral college, including concerns about the separation of powers and the relationship between the executive and legislative branches, the balance between small and large states, slavery, and the perceived dangers of direct democracy. One supporter of the electoral college, Alexander Hamilton, argued that while it might not be perfect, it was “
at least excellent.”
Article II,
Section 1, of
the Constitution stipulated that states could select
electors in any manner they desired and in a number equal to their congressional representation (senators plus representatives). (The Twenty-Third Amendment, adopted in 1961, provided electoral college representation for Washington, D.C.) The electors would then meet and vote for two people, at least one of whom could not be an inhabitant of their state. Under the original plan, the person receiving the largest number of votes, provided it was a majority of the number of electors, would be elected president, and the person with the second largest number of votes would become vice president.
If no one received a majority, the presidency of the United States would be decided by the House of Representatives, voting by states and choosing from among the top five candidates in the electoral vote. A tie for
vice president would be broken by
the Senate. Despite the Convention’s rejection of a direct popular vote as unwise and unworkable, the initial public reaction to the electoral college system was favourable. The major issue of concern regarding the presidency during the debate over ratification of the Constitution was not the method of selection but the president’s unlimited eligibility for reelection.
The development of national political parties toward the end of the 18th century provided the new system with its first major challenge. Informal congressional caucuses, organized along party lines, selected presidential nominees.
Electors, chosen by
state legislatures mostly on the basis of
partisan inclination, were not expected to exercise independent judgment when voting. So strong were partisan loyalties in 1800 that all the Democratic-Republican electors voted for their party’s candidates,
Thomas Jefferson and
Aaron Burr. Since the framers had not anticipated party-line voting and there was no mechanism for indicating a separate choice for president and vice president, the tie had to be broken by the Federalist-controlled House of Representatives. The election of Jefferson after 36 ballots led to the adoption of
the Twelfth Amendment in
1804, which specified
separate ballots for president and
vice president and reduced the number of candidates from which the House could choose from five to three.
The development of political parties coincided with the expansion of popular choice. By
1836 all
states selected
their electors by
direct popular vote except
South Carolina, which did so only
after the American Civil War. In choosing electors, most states adopted a general-ticket system in which slates of partisan electors were selected on the basis of a statewide vote. Thus, the winner of a state’s popular vote would win its entire electoral vote. Only Maine and Nebraska have chosen to deviate from this method, instead allocating electoral votes to the victor in each House district and a two-electoral-vote bonus to the statewide winner. The winner-take-all system generally favoured major parties over minor parties, large states over small states, and cohesive voting groups concentrated in large states over those that were more diffusely dispersed across the country.
Arguments for and against the electoral collegeOne of the most troubling aspects of the electoral college system is the possibility that the winner might not be the candidate with the most popular votes. Three presidents—Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, and
George W. Bush in
2000—were
elected with fewer popular votes than their opponents, and
Andrew Jackson lost to
John Quincy Adams in
the House of Representatives after
winning a plurality of the popular and electoral vote in 1824. In 18 elections between 1824 and 2000, presidents were elected without popular majorities—including
Abraham Lincoln, who won election in 1860 with under 40 percent of the national vote. During much of the 20th century, however, the effect of the general ticket system was to exaggerate the popular vote, not reverse it. For example,
in 1980 Ronald Reagan won just over 50 percent of the popular vote and 91 percent of the electoral vote; in
1988 George Bush received 53 percent of the popular vote and 79 percent of the electoral vote; and in 1992 and 1
996 William J. Clinton won 43 and 49 percent of the popular vote, respectively, and 69 and 70 percent of the electoral vote. Third-party candidates with broad national support are generally penalized in the electoral college—as was
Ross Perot, who won 19 percent of the popular vote in 1992 and no electoral votes—though candidates with geographically concentrated support—such as
Dixiecrat candidate Strom Thurmond, who won 39 electoral votes in 1948 with just over 2 percent of the national vote—are occasionally able to win electoral votes.
The divergence between popular and electoral votes indicates some of the principal advantages and disadvantages of the electoral college system. Many who favour the system maintain that it provides presidents with a special federative majority and a broad national mandate for governing, unifying the two major parties across the country and requiring broad geographic support to win the presidency. In addition, they argue that the electoral college protects the interests of small states and sparsely populated areas, which they claim would be ignored if the president was directly elected. Opponents, however, argue that the potential for an undemocratic outcome—in which the winner of the popular vote loses the electoral vote—the bias against third parties and independent candidates, the disincentive for voter turnout in states where one of the parties is clearly dominant, and the possibility of a “faithless” elector who votes for a candidate other than the one to whom he is pledged make the electoral college outmoded and undesirable. Many opponents advocate eliminating the electoral college altogether and replacing it with a direct popular vote. Their position has been buttressed by public opinion polls, which regularly show that Americans prefer a popular vote to the electoral college system. Other possible reforms include a district plan, similar to those used in Maine and Nebraska, which would allocate electoral votes by legislative district rather than at the statewide level; and a proportional plan, which would assign electoral votes on the basis of the percentage of popular votes a candidate received. Supporters of the electoral college contend that its longevity has proven its merit and that previous attempts to reform the system have been unsuccessful.
In 2000 George W. Bush’s narrow 271–266 electoral college victory over Al Gore, who won the nationwide popular vote by more than 500,000 votes, prompted renewed calls for the abolition of the electoral college. Doing so, however, would require adopting a constitutional amendment by a two-thirds vote of both chambers of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states. Because many smaller states fear that eliminating the electoral college would reduce their electoral influence, adoption of such an amendment is considered difficult and unlikely.
Some advocates of reform, recognizing the enormous
constitutional hurdle, instead focused their efforts on passing a so-called
National Popular Vote (
NPV) bill through state legislatures. State legislatures that enacted
the NPV would agree that their state’s electoral votes would be cast for the winner of
the national popular vote—even if that person was not the winner of the state’s popular vote; language in the bill stipulated that it would not take effect until
the NPV was passed by states possessing enough electoral votes to determine the winner of the presidential election. By 2010 several states—including
Hawaii,
Illinois,
Maryland,
Massachusetts, and
New Jersey—had adopted
the NPV, and it had been passed in at least one legislative house in more than a dozen other states.
Liberal roots of the USA
In the United States,
liberalism took a strong root because it had little opposition to its ideals, whereas in Europe
liberalism was opposed by many
reactionary interests.
Thomas Jefferson adopted many of
the ideals of liberalism but, in
the Declaration of Independence, changed Locke's "
life, liberty, and property" to the more
socially liberal "
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".[4] As
America grew, industry became a larger and larger part of
American life; and, during the term of
America's first populist president, A
ndrew Jackson, economic questions came to the forefront.
The economic ideas of the Jacksonian era were almost universally the ideas of classical liberalism.
Freedom was maximised when the government took a "
hands off" attitude toward the economy. The ideas of classical liberalism remained essentially unchallenged until a series of depressions, thought to be impossible according to the tenets of classical economics, led to economic hardship from which the voters demanded relief. In the words of
William Jennings Bryan, "
You shall not crucify the American farmer on a cross of gold."
Classical liberalism remained the orthodox belief among
American businessmen until
the Great Depression.
The Great Depression saw a sea change in
liberalism, leading to the development of
modern liberalism. In the words of
Arthur Schlesinger Jr.:
When
the growing complexity of industrial conditions required
increasing government intervention in order
to assure more equal opportunities,
the liberal tradition, faithful to the goal rather than to the dogma, altered its view of the state, and "
there emerged the conception of a social welfare state, in which the national government had the express obligation to maintain high levels of employment in the economy, to supervise standards of life and labour, to regulate the methods of business competition, and to establish comprehensive patterns of social security."
Alan Wolfe summarizes the viewpoint that there is a continuous liberal understanding that includes both
Adam Smith and
John Maynard Keynes:
The idea that liberalism comes in two forms assumes that the most fundamental question facing mankind is how much government intervenes into the economy.... When instead we discuss human purpose and the meaning of life, Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes are on the same side. Both of them possessed an expansive sense of what we are put on this earth to accomplish. ... For Smith, mercantilism was the enemy of human liberty. For Keynes, monopolies were. It makes perfect sense for an eighteenth-century thinker to conclude that humanity would flourish under the market. For a twentieth century thinker committed to the same ideal, government was an essential tool to the same end.The view that
modern liberalism is a continuation of
classical liberalism is not universally shared.
James Kurth,
Robert Lerner,
John Micklethwait,
Adrian Wooldridge, and several other political scholars have argued that
classical liberalism still exists today, but
in the form of American conservatism. According to
Deepak Lal, only in
the United States does
classical liberalism, through
American conservatives,
continue to be a significant political force.
American conservatism
American Conservatism is a broad system of political beliefs in
the United States that is characterized by
respect for American traditions,
support for Judeo-Christian values,
economic liberalism,
anti-communism,
advocacy of American exceptionalism, and
a defense of Western culture from perceived threats posed by "
creeping socialism",
moral relativism,
multiculturalism, and
liberal internationalism.
Liberty is a core value, with a particular emphasis on
strengthening the free market,
limiting the size and scope of government, and
opposition to high taxes and government or labor union encroachment on the entrepreneur.
American conservatives consider
individual liberty,
within the bounds of conformity to American values, as
the fundamental trait of democracy, which
contrasts with modern American liberals, who generally
place a greater value on equality and social justice.
American Conservatism originated from
classical liberalism of
18th and
19th centuries, which advocates
civil liberties and
political freedom with
representative democracy under
the rule of law and
emphasizes economic freedom.
Historians argue that
the conservative tradition has played a major role in American politics and culture since the 1790s. However they have stressed that
an organized conservative movement has played a key role in politics
only since the 1950s. The recent movement is based in
the Republican Party, though some
Democrats were also important figures early in the movement's history.
The history of
American conservatism has been marked by
tensions and
competing ideologies.
Fiscal conservatives and libertarians favor small government,
low taxes,
limited regulation, and
free enterprise.
Social conservatives see traditional
social values as threatened by
secularism; they tend to support
voluntary school prayer and
oppose abortion and
same sex marriage. Some also want
the teaching of intelligent design or
creationism allowed, as the topics are currently judicially prohibited in public schools.
The 21st century has seen an increasingly fervent conservative support for
Second Amendment rights of private citizens to own firearms.
Neoconservatives want to
expand American ideals throughout the world.
Paleoconservatives advocate
restrictions on immigration,
non-interventionist foreign policy, and
stand in opposition to multiculturalism. Nationwide most factions, except some
libertarians, support
a unilateral foreign policy, and
a strong military. The conservative movement of the 1950s attempted to bring together these divergent strands, stressing the need for unity to prevent the spread of "
godless communism."
William F. Buckley Jr., in the first issue of his magazine National Review in 1955, explained the standards of his magazine and helped make explicit the beliefs of American conservatives:
Among our convictions:It is the job of centralized government (in peacetime) to protect its citizens' lives, liberty and property. All other activities of government tend to diminish freedom and hamper progress. The growth of government (the dominant social feature of this century) must be fought relentlessly. In this great social conflict of the era, we are, without reservations, on the libertarian side. The profound crisis of our era is, in essence, the conflict between the Social Engineers, who seek to adjust mankind to conform with scientific utopias, and the disciples of Truth, who defend the organic moral order. We believe that truth is neither arrived at nor illuminated by monitoring election results, binding though these are for other purposes, but by other means, including a study of human experience. On this point we are, without reservations, on the conservative side.Conservatism cannot be defined in terms of a "
fixed or stable essence" or an immutable "
category of belief or practice." Instead,
Neil Gross and others recommend a historical view of the concept that focuses on how "
particular meanings come to be defined as conservative within a given sociohistorical milieu," both by self-identified conservatives and by their political opponents. In this conception,
conservatism is best understood as a "
collective identity that evolves in the course of struggles and collaborations over" political meaning."
Links:www.britannica.com/topic/Founding-Fathersen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_Fathers_of_the_United_Statesen.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConstitutionalismSources: Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia and Google search (images)
