Political Parties

7 Pages 1868 Words

ies would undermine the unity of a country; to have parties is to divide a country into parts. Different parties would inevitably lead to disputes. And according to this view, “parties divided by important differences of principle create a potentially revolutionary situation” (Wilson, 48) A second theory on the strong opposition is “[parties] undermine the prudence necessary for wise political leadership. To be politically prudent means to do the right thing at the right time for the good of the country. If parties are simply collection of men seeking their own advantage rather than the country’s then they constitute organized opposition to prudent action for the common good” (Wilson, 48) Even with all these potential dangers, political parties established themselves and have been around ever since. So, were the founding fathers wrong? While the founders were not wrong in thinking that democracy will fail if there is no sense of a national interest, they were “certainly wrong in underestimating the value of parties as ‘the tie that binds, the glue that fastens’”(Reichley,30)
So when and why were the first political parties formed ? During the 1780s, sharp conflicts marked American politics. Since the establishment of the Constitution in 1789, the unanimous election of George Washington, and recommendation for a Bill of Rights, conflicts soon arose over the new policies to be developed in the government. While George Washington, a federalist, won all the electoral votes in the first presidential election, quarrels within congress began to separate the legislative branch. The political system was moving away from George Washington’s ideal one party system into a two party system. “Ideological divide began t...