The two-party system 55
This simple fact immediately tends to polarise the political spectrum. The
method of election prescribed by the Constitution, and the conventions that
have grown up around it, powerfully reinforce this polarising influence of the
presidency. As we shall see later, the campaign manager of a presidential
aspirant has to think in terms of gaining an absolute majority of votes in the
Electoral College, which in law chooses the president; a simple majority of
Electoral College votes will not do. The only successful strategy for the cap-
ture of the presidency is to create a great coalition behind one candidate,
and the only potentially successful riposte is the creation of a second similar
coalition. To create or encourage splinter groups is to lose all hope of con-
trolling this vital position. The ability of a party to master the technique of
coalition-building is the measure of its ability to command the presidency.
Once in that position, the advantage that it has gained is to a considerable
extent self-perpetuating. Thus, much of American political history is the
history of long periods of domination of the presidency by one party, with
lasting changes of control occurring only in circumstances that bring about a
revolutionary change in the assumptions upon which the coalition was built.
The ‘swing of the pendulum’ in American presidential politics is, therefore,
generally a long, slow, ponderous swing.
This is an explanation of two-party politics at the presidential level, but
not at the congressional level. In a sense, as we shall see when we come to
look at congressional politics, the two-party system in Congress is often more
apparent than real. Congress tends to dissolve into voting blocs in which party
allegiance is a factor, but only one among many. Nevertheless, Congressmen
and Senators do divide into Democrats and Republicans. One contributory
factor, no doubt, is the well-known tendency of single-member simple major-
ity electoral systems of the Anglo-American variety to discourage the election
of third-party candidates. However, although this system discourages minor
parties in each separate constituency, it does not necessarily discourage the
emergence of three or more parties at the national level, particularly where
there are strong regional forces at work, as there are in the United States.
The electoral system would not of itself prevent the emergence of a Southern
States’ Rights party, a party representing Western farmers, an urban work-
ers’ party of the North and East, and so on. Because America does not have a
system of responsible parliamentary government on the English model, the
impulse to vote only for a candidate of a party that seems likely to be able
to form a majority in Congress does not have the same force as it does in
parliamentary systems.
Within Congress, however, there are organisational reasons for the main-
tenance of two parties: in particular, the organisation of the committees of
Congress, and the desire to control the chairmanships of committees and the
office of Speaker. Perhaps the most important factor tending to maintain two
and only two parties in Congress is the very existence of the presidency, and
the consequent relationships that have developed between presidential and
congressional politics. We shall look later at the ways in which both president
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(Ron)
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