The 27 million people who watched President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Feb. 7, 2023, witnessed the spectacle of a family divided, with boos and cheers perfectly arranged along party lines.
Are political parties getting in the way of the nation’s well-being? For the approximately 40% of those polled in January 2023 by the Gallup Organization who say they are neither Democrats nor Republicans, but independent, as well as any viewers of the State of the Union speech, the answer is likely “yes.”
Benjamin Franklin wrote that, in public affairs, very few “act with a View to the Good of Mankind.” Library of Congress
As a historian who has spent years studying America’s early political leaders, I can say with confidence that today’s Americans are not the first to fret over the potential harm that parties can inflict. And yet, facts indicate that it wouldn’t be wise to turn away from traditional political organizations.
‘The Greatest Political Evil’
Distrust of parties has a long history.
“The great Affairs of the World, the Wars, Revolutions,” a young Benjamin Franklin wrote, “are carried on and effected by Parties.” In 1731, when Franklin wrote that sentence, the American nation hadn’t even been born and the young printer was styling himself as a proud member of an expanding British empire.
But he feared that parties’ particular agendas would eventually thwart the general interest. In public affairs, Franklin sadly concluded, very few “act with a View to the Good of Mankind.”
During the 18th century, the term “party” simply meant “faction.” It automatically conjured the specter of inner division, fragmentation and social chaos.
In his 1796 Farewell Address, President George Washington, for example, warned against “the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.” Parties, for him, were like a “fire.” While a fire can be useful, when unquenched it will burst “into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.” Finding ways to moderate “the fury of party spirit” was for Washington pivotal to the survival of the entire nation.
In 1780, the Articles of Confederation, the feeble first American