The history of the US political parties

The framers of the U.S. Constitution made no provision in the governmental structure for the functioning of political parties. George Washington, in accordance with the thinking of his fellow Founding Fathers, included in his cabinet men of diverse political philosophies and policies.

Federalist and Republican Parties

Within a short time informal parties did develop, even though their adherents still insisted they disapproved of parties as a permanent feature in American politics. One faction, commonly identified with Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Vice President John Adams, became known as the Federalist party. Federalists favored an active federal government, a Treasury that played a vital role in the nation's economic life, and a pro-British foreign policy. The other faction, whose central figures were Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and fellow Virginian James Madison, became known as the Republican party. The Republicans advocated a limited federal government, little government interference in economic affairs, and a pro-French foreign policy. They were particularly popular with debt-ridden farmers, artisans, and southerners.

The structure of government itself in the U.S. was conducive to the formation of political parties. The carefully elaborated system of checks and balances, established by the Constitution, makes executive and legislative cooperation necessary in the development of policy. Further, the division of legislative powers between the federal and state governments, as provided in the Constitution, makes it necessary for advocates of such policies as the regulation of commerce to seek representation or strength in both the federal and state legislatures. As these ends were too complex and difficult to achieve by impermanent groupings, the formation of permanent political organizations was inevitable.

The Republican party held power for 28 years following the inauguration of President Jefferson in 1801. During this period, the Federalist party became increasingly unpopular. It ceased functioning on the national level after the War of 1812, leaving the Republican party as the only national political organization.

New Political Alignments

Far-reaching changes in the U.S. economy and social structure resulted in the gradual formation of new political alignments within a one-party system. The principal changes behind these developments were the expansion of the country westward, with an accompanying development of a large class of pioneer farmers, whose frontier communities represented a type of democratic society never before seen in any country; the agricultural revolution in the southern states, and a considerable growth in the wealth and influence of manufacturers, merchants, bondholders, and land speculators of the northern states. The ideas of limited government that became known as Jeffersonian democracy appealed strongly to the sectional and class interests of the western frontier and the South, and also to the growing class of urban workers. The policies once advocated by the defunct Federalist party, however, were still popular with the minority of Americans who favored a more active economic role for the federal government.

Revived Two-Party System

The second two-party system developed gradually as Republicans began quarreling over several issues. The followers of Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams, who asserted that the federal government should actively promote economic development, became known as National Republicans. Their opponents, who eventually united behind the presidential candidacy of Andrew Jackson, were first known as Democratic-Republicans, and by 1828 as the Democratic party.

The Democrats controlled the national government for most of the years between 1828 and 1860, although they lost two presidential elections to Whig military heroes. After 1840 the Democratic party became more and more the mouthpiece of the slaveholders. Northern Democratic leaders were often called “doughfaces,” or northern men with southern principles, by their opponents. Opposed to the Democrats were the Whigs and a variety of minor parties, such as the Liberty party, the political arm of the abolitionists, and the Free-Soil party.

In 1854 the party system dominated by Whigs and Democrats collapsed due to the controversy sparked by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which made it possible to establish slavery in western territories, where it had previously been banned. This act outraged northerners and convinced many Democrats and Whigs in that region to abandon their parties. Many of these voters initially joined the Know-Nothing party, an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant organization whose antislavery reputation in the North helped it attract more than one million members.

The creation of a new Republican party was the most important result of the Kansas controversy. Organized in some places as early as July 1854, the party promised not only to prevent the admission of new slave states to the Union, but also to diminish slaveholders' influence in the federal government. The appeal of this platform quickly enabled the Republican party to overpower the Know-Nothings. Although the Republicans lost their first campaign for the presidency in 1856, they triumphed in 1860 with former Congressman Abraham Lincoln. The Republican victory resulted in part from the division of the Democratic party into northern and southern factions, each of which ran its own presidential candidate, and in part from their success at attracting Whigs and Know-Nothings who had opposed the Republicans in 1856. During the Civil War, the Republicans temporarily called themselves the Union party in an attempt to win the votes of prowar Democrats.

Post-Civil War Period

After the Civil War, as U.S. industrialization proceeded at great speed, the Republican party became the champion of the manufacturing interests, railroad builders, speculators, and financiers of the country, and to a lesser extent, of the workers of the North and West. The Democratic party was revived after the war as a party of opposition; its strength lay primarily in the South, where it was seen as the champion of the lost Confederate cause. Support also came from immigrants and those who opposed the Republicans' Reconstruction policies.

A number of minor parties emerged during the postwar period. In the long years of agricultural depression, from the conclusion of the Civil War to the end of the 19th century, discontent among farmers, particularly in the western plains but also in the South, constituted a fertile source of political activity, giving rise to the Granger and Populist movements. From these movements evolved a considerable number of organizations, constituted for the most part on a regional and state basis. In industrialized regions, a large class of wage workers developed, whose protest against poor working conditions, low pay, and discriminatory and abusive treatment induced the formation of other parties independent of and opposed to the dominant Republican and Democratic parties. One of the first was the Socialist Labor party, founded in 1877 but unimportant until it came under the leadership of Daniel De Leon. Of far more significance was the Socialist Party of America (SPA), founded in 1901 by socialists unable to accept the autocratic De Leon. The greatest leader of the SPA was Eugene V. Debs. In 1919 a split in the SPA led to the formation of the Communist party (CP), which had close ties with the Soviet Union. Although small, the CP had considerable influence at times, especially in the labor movement during the 1930s. These parties of agrarian and working-class protest frequently raised issues that were taken up in subsequent years by leaders of the major parties; their own successes in elections, however, were mostly local and minor.

Progressivism

The various movements to improve industrial working conditions and curtail the power of big business, known by the early 20th century as Progressivism, caused divisions within both parties between Progressives and conservatives. The most serious split occurred in the Republican ranks, where the renomination of President William Howard Taft in 1912 caused Progressives to bolt and form the Progressive party, which nominated former President Theodore Roosevelt. Although he lost the election, Roosevelt polled the highest percentage of the vote ever attained by a third-party candidate. The Republican split in that contest helped Woodrow Wilson become only the second Democrat to win the presidency since the Civil War. The Progressives made another strong bid for the presidency in 1924, when their candidate was Senator Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin, who won about 16 percent of the votes.

The New Deal and After

Although the Republican party regained control of the presidency during the 1920s, complex changes in political alignments were wrought by the Great Depression of the 1930s. The peacetime domestic program of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and especially to the innovative measures taken between 1933 and 1938 to counteract the effects of the Great Depression, are known as the New Deal. The Democratic party, led by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, became the sponsor of the most far-reaching social-reform legislation in the history of the U.S. Many of its policies were supported by representatives of the Republican party, as well as by those who had previously supported La Follette. The attraction of Roosevelt's party was so great that such nominally independent political organizations as the American Labor party and the Liberal party in New York State became, in effect, mere adjuncts of the Democratic party.

Roosevelt managed to break the stranglehold that Republicans had held over the presidency by drawing various new forces into the Democratic party. These included blacks, who traditionally had voted Republican because that party had ended slavery, but now supported the Democrats out of gratitude for New Deal unemployment relief. The other key addition was organized labor, which recognized that New Deal policies had helped unions achieve a status unprecedented in U.S. history.

When Roosevelt died in 1945, he was succeeded by Vice President Harry S. Truman, and the Democrats remained in power until 1952.

The Republicans returned to power that year, carried to victory by their popular candidate, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. During Eisenhower's two terms, his moderate supporters came into conflict with the more conservative Old Guard Republicans. From 1955 onward the Democrats were in control of Congress, and their leaders often cooperated with the moderate Republicans.

The Decline of Party Influence

The New Deal combination of the South and the industrial North came together again to win the presidency for Democrat John F. Kennedy in 1960 and again for Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, but widespread dissatisfaction with Johnson's military intervention in Vietnam brought the Republicans back into office under Richard M. Nixon in 1968. Although he was reelected with strong support from the South and West in 1972, Nixon was later forced to resign as a result of his involvement in the Watergate scandal - a major U.S. political scandal that began with the burglary and wiretapping of the Democratic party's campaign headquarters.

The Democrats bolstered their declining strength in the South by nominating the former governor of Georgia Jimmy Carter in 1976. Carter defeated the Republican president Gerald R. Ford in that year, but failed to win reelection against Ronald Reagan in 1980. Under Reagan's leadership, conservative Republicans were firmly in control of their party in the 1980s, and the Republicans held a majority in the U.S. Senate from 1981 through 1986, when the Democrats regained control (they had maintained their majority in the House since the mid-term election of 1954). After Carter's defeat and the apparent breakup of the New Deal coalition, the Democrats did not have the strong national leadership necessary to regain the presidency during the 1980s.

Third-party movements were significant in 1968, in 1980, and especially in 1992, when a billionaire businessman, H. Ross Perot, drew almost 19 percent of the popular vote, the highest for a third-party presidential candidate since Theodore Roosevelt's run in 1912; however, despite Perot's appeal to voters disenchanted with “politics as usual,” he gained no electoral votes, and Democrat Bill Clinton defeated President George Bush. The party system itself seemed to have been weakened, as voters became disillusioned with politicians and appeared to be influenced more by a candidate's overall message or positions on the issues than by party affiliation. Campaign techniques were changed by the increasing use of television advertisements and appearances. Media advisers became more prominent, often eclipsing traditional party leaders. In addition, the role of party conventions in selecting candidates was reduced by the growing prevalence of primary elections.

Find in the text the English equivalents for the expressions below:

список кандидатов от одной партии

"отцы-основатели" Конституции США

двухпартийная система

вмешательство во что-либо

политическая группировка, союз

потерпеть крах

военное вторжение

беспрецедентный

ELECTIONS

Anyone who is an American citizen, at least 18 years of age, and is registered to vote may vote. Each state has the right to determine registration procedures. A number of civic groups, such as the League of Women Voters, are actively trying to get more people involved in the electoral process and have drives to register as many people as possible. Voter registration and voting among minorities has dramatically increased during the last twenty years, especially as a result of the Civil Rights Movement.

There is some concern, however, about the number of citizens who could vote in national elections but do not. In the national election of 1984, for instance, only 53.3 per cent of all those who had the right to vote actually did. But then, Americans who want to vote must register, that is put down their names in register before the actual elections take place. There are 50 different registration laws in the US - one set for each state. In the South, voters often have to register not only locally but also at the county seat. In European countries, on the other hand, "permanent registration" of voters is most common. Of those voters in the United States who did register in the 1984 presidential elections, 73 per cent cast their ballots.

Another important factor is that there are many more elections in the US at the state and local levels than there are in most countries. If the number of those who vote in these elections (deciding, for example, if they should pay more taxes so a new main street bridge can be built) were included, the Percentage in fact would not be that much different from other countries.

Certainly, Americans are much more interested in local politics than in those at the federal level. Many of the most important decisions, such as those concerning education, housing, taxes, and so on, are made close to home, in the state or county.

Article II of the Constitution provides for a president and vice president chosen by a majority of voters in the Electoral College, for a fixed term of four years. The 22nd Amendment (1951) limits presidents to two terms in office. By state law, electors are chosen by a plurality of the popular vote in each state and in the District of Columbia. In almost all cases the winner of the popular vote is elected president. In the 1984 presidential election, less than 55 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots; after a decline to approximately 50 percent in 1988, turnout increased to approximately 54 percent in 1992.

The national presidential elections really consist of two separate campaigns: one is for the nomination of candidates at national party conventions. The other is to win the actual election. The nominating race is competition between members of the same party. They run in a succession of state primaries and caucuses (which take place between March and June). They hope to gain a majority of delegate votes for their national party conventions (in July or August). The party convention then votes to select the party's official candidate for the presidency. Then follow several months of presidential campaigns by the candidates.

In November of the election year (years divisible by four, e.g. 1988, 1992, 1996, etc.), the voters across the nation go to the polls. If the majority of the popular votes in a state go to the Presidential (and vice-presidential) candidate of one party, then that person is supposed to get all of that state's "electoral votes." These electoral votes are equal to the number of Senators and Representatives each state has in Congress. The candidate with the largest number of these electoral votes wins the election. Each state's electoral votes are formally reported by the "Electoral College." In January of the following year,, in a joint session of Congress, the new President and Vice-President are officially announced.