Washington and Madison Warned Against Parties

Founding Fathers Warned Us About Political Parties

GEORGE WASHINGTON

George Washington in his final Farewell Address warned . . . 

“The Spirit of Party in popular governments is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.”

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension is itself a frightful despotism.”

“The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of Party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of wise People to discourage and restrain it.”

“It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another.”

Washington warned Parties . . .

“misrepresent the opinions and aims of other parties.”

“cause jealousies and heart burnings which spring from these misrepresentations.”

“tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.”

JAMES MADISON

James Madison, “Father of the Constitution” and fourth president, diagnosed the problem of parties as a republic’s most dire threat in his famous Federalist #10:  

Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of parties. 

The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice (parties).

The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils (by parties), have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.

A Better Way: Federalist #51

The Founders’ great insight was that such policies—policies that win the support of large and diverse majorities—are more likely to be wise policies than those that can only win the support of a narrow faction.

Madison articulates this conviction—the rationale for our Constitution—in Federalist #51:

In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place upon any other principles than those of justice and the general good.

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and our third president, explained that the Founders’ structural solution would require us to put the common interests that we share ahead of the narrower interests that divide us: 

We have no interests nor passions different from those of our fellow citizens. We have the same object: the success of representative government. Nor are we acting for ourselves alone, but for the whole human race…our experiment is to show whether man can be trusted with self-government. The eyes of suffering humanity are fixed on us… and on such a theatre, for such a cause, we must suppress all smaller passions and local considerations.

Parties Are The Disease

In our Founders’ view, faction was the disease.  Their cure was a government of checks and balances and separation of powers.  The Founders understood that in such a complicated system, policies that won the support of only narrow factions would be frustrated while policies that could attract support across the lines that usually divide us would be far more likely to succeed.

Today’s politics prove—in a regrettably negative sense—the soundness of the Founders’ understanding as well as the effectiveness of their structural defense.  The Founders expressly designed a government that would frustrate those who attempt to use it to serve narrow factional aims.  Our contemporary politics are rife with excessive partisanship and special interest influence and the result is the very result the Founders intended: Frustration for all.