American Unity From Political Parties with Joseph Postell | BRI Scholar Talks

0:00 Madison I think eventually comes to see that these parties are useful that the people’s voice in government can be best heard if they’re heard through political parties and without parties the people’s voice will not be heard by government and I think that Insight from Madison that you need parties to have the people’s voice be heard in government I think that would go a long way today

0:21 towards the same end you know the people don’t really feel like their voice is heard in government much today I think a lot of that is due to the fact that we don’t have parties that can help the people get their sentiments heard in the halls of Congress and in the halls of government [Music] hi for this episode of scholar talks The

0:42 Guiding question is how can political parties help unite Americans now Joseph Postell Our Guest is a professor of politics at Hillsdale College he teaches and writes extensively about American politics and political theory he has written and edited six books including American citizenship and constitutionalism and

1:04 principle and practice he actually also served as the scholar reviewer of Bri’s curriculum first Branch Congress and the Constitution I am Tony Williams Senior fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and I want to welcome you to another episode in the series gov Topics in government and civics

1:25 Joe I want to thank you for joining us Melanie it’s great to be with you as always I really love your book and and it really causes us to kind of reevaluate the place of parties uh in American politics and and has a a lot to uh instruct us I think about maybe why

1:45 we need actually stronger parties uh looking at some historical examples so uh you know the the book you’ve edited and and the essays you wrote In the book are are are really really important I think to our conversation about politics and culture today well thanks Tony yeah so you know I’ve struck in my teaching on parties over the last 10 years or so

2:07 how things that we think parties are are responsible for in terms of damaging American politics are actually the things that political parties could fix if we allowed them to it’s not that political parties are the problem but maybe they’re actually the solution so so that’s kind of why I wrote those essays and hopefully that’s um uh the message that I want people to take away

2:27 from those great well you know my first question uh relates to uh you know modern society you know people think that uh yeah and and we do have this uh wide ideological divide you know we’re in Wisconsin kind of the culture wars where even our burritos and our tires are up for like a constant friction uh you know

2:50 we have sort of a corrosive political debate uh we have live in Echo Chambers a lot of disunity uh yeah I don’t want to paint too too harsh a picture but you know a lot of people associate political parties and partisanship with all of those divisions uh but you argue something very different and and and

3:11 what is that how can they actually unite us yeah I I think political parties as we have had them in America over the last few centuries have been the greatest forces for compromise and for Unity rather than disunity um and that’s the theme of the essays that I wrote for this book um it’s sort of informed by this there’s

3:32 an interesting new school of political science that has merged over the last several years uh they call themselves political realists and these folks kind of span the whole Spectrum ideologically some of them are on the left some are on the right but I think what they all believe in common and uh maybe the most famous of these uh political realists is a guy named Jonathan Rausch uh who I

3:53 think has written for the Brookings institution and uh wrote a great piece in the Atlantic several years ago called how American politics went insane right around the time that American politics was going insane uh so you know these are folks across the whole Spectrum who uh ideologically who realize that we have cut out middlemen in American

4:13 politics we have cut out the role of representation of Representative institutions we’ve become a much more democratic country than we were say a century ago and that this has been a double-edged sword while democracy the reforms that made us a more democratic country uh were certainly well intentioned and they’ve had some good effects they’ve

4:34 also produced some real problems and we’re currently in the grip of those problems and the interesting thing is that the parties were these great middlemen these great intermediaries that serve this sort of Representative role and we’ve gotten rid of those parties as well as representative institutions and so we’re left with kind of the aftermath of that I think parties

4:54 actually can play a really important role in forging compromise in Building Bridges across partisan divides but we need to rethink the role of parties if we’re going to have them play that that really important function in America right great and and that leads me back to you know the founders um you know they saw parties as factions as

5:15 self-interest uh of course you know we have Fairless number 10 very uh famous uh lee addresses that but but the founders and sort of the the succeeding Generations in the 19th century that they actually soon discovered that parties political parties can play a positive role in the American

5:36 constitutional system and and facilitate sort of moderation and and compromise and and refining and enlarging publius’s words yeah this is the great Paradox of the founders and political parties is we all know the great quotes about how the founders dislike political parties they

5:57 were afraid of political parties they condemned political parties and yet the creators of the first political parties were none other than the American Founders and so here’s this great Paradox right if they hated parties so much why did they create the first parties and really not just create parties but engage in very very nasty political invective I think in some ways

6:19 the kinds of slogans the kinds of slurs that they threw at each other in say the election of 1800 are worse than the ones we use today and in spite of this right John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were like best friends and also bitter political Rivals so I think the it’s been a sort of myth that the founders were against political

6:40 parties I think part of the problem is they didn’t have a lot of experience with popular government so they really didn’t know what role parties would play in a popular form of government they were familiar with monarchies they were familiar with feudalism with other forms of government but not really a a Democratic Republic and so um they equated I mean in federal was

7:00 number 10 right Madison equates factions and parties he sort of thinks of them as the same thing but later on I think Madison changes his mind he he of course is involved in creating the first uh political party these Democratic Republicans as we call them today they call themselves Republicans not Democratic Republicans but um man that’s a talk for another time

7:21 but Madison I think eventually comes to see that these parties are useful that the people’s voice in government can be best heard if they’re heard through political parties and without parties the people’s voice will not be heard by government and I think that Insight from Madison that you need parties to have the people’s voice be heard in government I think that would go a long

7:42 way today towards the same end you know the people don’t really feel like their voice is heard in government much today I think a lot of that is due to the fact that we don’t have parties that can help the people get their sentiments heard in the halls of Congress and in the halls of government right so it seems to be actually hurting consent and and popular government uh which is uh ironic so now now the

8:05 progressive error was it was a time when presidents some members of Congress uh and and other other politicians supported popular voting reforms like the primary uh and and attempted in many ways to to eliminate parties right uh because they weren’t very efficient and they were run by machines and so forth so so why did they do this uh and what

8:27 were the effects and there’s some really great stories embedded in there too yeah um well the progressives I think were on to something which is that the the boss Machines of the late 19th century you know you think of Tammany Hall as the prototypical example they they look to our eyes uh as sort of these corrupt

8:47 institutions these unpopular undemocratic institutions and of course from a certain point of view they were undemocratic right they they didn’t just merely follow the wishes of the people they filtered and they even LED and guided the will of the people and sometimes did so through you know patronage and giving people jobs and

9:09 um even just helping them you know make rent checks things like like that uh there’s a great book Plunkett of Tammany Hall George Washington Plunkett where he sort of famously describes in purely self-interested terms what a Party Machine does right it sets up these You Know Glee clubs and softball teams and parties uh in the more conventional

9:31 sense like uh Gatherings for people to to sort of come together and so the parties played this kind of Civic role they connected people to their communities and in doing so they truly represented their communities they looked after their communities they took care of people in their communities and so um they actually I think played a much more positive role than the progressives

9:53 understood but the progressives looked at that and they saw this is just purely undemocratic we need to have the people vote directly for their candidates we need to have the people um uh vote for people who will appoint nonpartisan civil servants into these jobs rather than these patronage positions and so um the progressors really attacked

10:14 political parties as undemocratic but also contrary to the rule of experts that really experts should be carrying out all of these functions rather than party bosses and in a way again we can see in hindsight the they were right about this to an extent right that um the bosses were self-interested sometimes they were corrupt sometimes

10:34 they took graft off of the you know the money that they received from the public but at the same time they really did have a connection with their communities and I think today we really don’t see government as connecting to communities we see government as this kind of Alien Force way off in the distance I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we severed this connection between communities and their parties

10:56 which were those really critical links between citizens and the government so so I think again the progressives really were the beginning of this right with the direct primaries where the parties would no longer nominate their candidates but they would be directly nominated by voters things like the Australian ballot so here’s this fascinating thing that parties printed their own ballots in the

11:17 19th century and uh you couldn’t split your ticket when the Republican Party printed a ballot and handed it to you because the Republican Party would never put the Democratic party’s candidates on the ballot right so if you gotta you walked up and the party handed you a ballot and you know if you were a Democrat you got the ballot with the picture of Andrew Jackson at the top and it was all Democrats right you were voting straight ticket up and down the

11:38 line more same thing for the Republican Party um and there are all kinds of if you read the history of this real Shenanigans right where sometimes the Republicans would put the Democrats picture on the top and put Republican candidates uh so that people would think they’re voting straight to get Democratic but they were actually voting for the Republicans um and so there were all these sorts of

11:58 things going on the progressives were right about this kind of corruption but at the same time I think the Cure might have been worse than the disease that the progressives gave us right and and uh as a follow-up you know this uh sort of destruction of parties uh took place in Congress as well which you know really well uh and then the

12:19 dethroning of the speaker uh so so how did that affect committee appointments and the sort of the power of parties in Congress as an organizing uh tool yeah here once again I think um I think the key thing that the progressives did is they engaged in reforms that they didn’t fully understand what the consequences would be sometimes we refer to the law

12:40 of unintended consequences and the progressives I think really fell prey to that uh you know both in what we were just talking about turning to direct primaries I think the progressives thought they would get a more democratic system of government but in fact the candidate nomination system today under primaries might be considered less Democratic actually um same thing in Congress right the

13:00 progressives went after the most powerful person in Congress who at the time in the late 19th century was the Speaker of the House and you know the two great speakers I think the two greatest speakers in American history Thomas Brackett Reed and Joseph Cannon were called czars at that time I think they were more popular even or more powerful even than the presidents of the United States at that time you think of who’s the president in

13:22 the late 19th century Benjamin Harrison uh Grover Cleveland Chester Arthur Rutherford B Hayes right the presidency wasn’t really that powerful at the time but it was the speakers of the house who really cared carried enormous power and they controlled important committees they could choose which committees you were on they could con determine whether your legislation got to the floor for a

13:43 vote and so the progressives didn’t like this in part because they were a minority within the majority party the Republican party and they looked at this and they said well the Republican party isn’t putting our legislation on the floor our party leaders aren’t listening to us and so they tried to overthrow their Republican leaders in 2023 this kind of

14:04 sounds like history sort of you know not necessarily repeating but rhyming and so the progressives in this famous St Patrick’s Day Revolt in 1910 They seized the initiative while Canon’s supporters are out of the chamber out you know partying and enjoying their St Patrick’s Day uh to overthrow the speaker and over you

14:25 know a three-day fight where they’re the Canon’s people Joseph cannons people are trying to arrest members of Congress and drag them back into the chamber through this you know using the sergeant-at-arms to try to get enough votes to protect himself and his powers from the progressive Insurgency eventually the progressives win uh on March 19th after after several days and the result of

14:45 that was to take power away from the speaker and to give it to the committee chairs um and then of course if you wanted to keep parties uh from controlling what happens in Congress you can’t have the parties choose who the committee chairs are so they said well we’re going to have the committee chairs be chosen on the basis of seniority

15:06 and that means whoever’s been in Congress the longest on a committee gets to be the chair well it turns out in the 20th century uh the people who had been in Congress the longest were Southern Democrats uh and so the Democratic party essentially was the majority party but all of the senior members of the democratic party were from the south and

15:27 so the progressives turned power over to the conservative Southern Democrats who of course blocked all of the things the progressives wanted to do um and I think there was a key lesson for progressives there which is you really do need political parties and you need somebody to lead in Congress otherwise you’re going to be basically

15:49 stuck in this system of gridlock where you’re going to have to rely on people who don’t want to compromise with you to get anything done and so I think the progressives learned their lesson over a period of time that taking power away from the parties actually was contrary to their long-term interests uh it’s fascinating and so uh besides

16:11 the progressives you kind of also show the other side in in your essays and and so what what were the arguments of the Constitutional conservatives regarding the constructive role of political parties and popular government and you know as I was reading I was like they they were just so Prussian uh on the problems that that they foresaw in in

16:32 the weakening of parties yeah um I think most histories of this period the Progressive Era early 20th century take a look at the progressives overthrowing the bosses and they think that basically it was a it was a story kind of a morality tale between the public interested progressives and the self-interested bosses

16:53 and that there was no argument against what the progressives were doing other than naked self-interest on the part of the of the machines that’s actually not true that’s one of the reasons I wrote this this essay was to show the argument that the legitimate I think theoretical constitutional argument that conservatives were making in the early 20th century and the most uh I think

17:15 eloquent and Visionary of these was William Howard Taft um William Howard Taft in two books one is called Popular government the other is called Liberty under law he says if we get rid of the role of parties in nominating their candidates we’ll basically have three things three things will happen the first is money in politics is going to become a huge

17:36 problem because instead of running as a member of the party and the party is known to everybody you now have to run as an individual candidate and so you’ve got to advertise yourself to everybody um this requires that you raise a bunch of money you run a bunch of advertisements you’re basically constantly out there getting your name recognition up whereas you know in the 1840s when James

17:57 K Polk was nominated by the Democratic party everybody said who is James K Polk it didn’t matter who James K Polk was right he had the Democrat label after his name so you now have the problem of funders you have the problem of campaign donors you have the problem of media in politics uh and the attempt to try to get as much air time as you can uh secondly

18:19 I think what Taft predicted was you would have different kinds of candidates right so instead of the office seeking the person the person now has to seek the office you know the old convention system you waited for the party to come ask you to run and now of course in the modern primaries you have to run as hard as you can to get your party’s nomination you have to make tons of promises you have

18:40 to over commit to everything you’re going to do for the voters just to get the nomination and so you’re going to get people with less modesty people who are going to tout their own qualifications people who are going to um uh essentially be immodest is the term that Taft used instead of telling you the truth about their qualifications they’re going to try to really elevate

19:01 how great they are um and then third Taft said you’re going to get more extreme candidates because the party will always seek to nominate somebody who will appeal to the moderate voter so that the the they can win the general election and uh the primaries of course will give you much more extreme candidates because it’s only the people who are sort of the

19:23 core base constituency of the party voting for those candidates and so you’ll have less modest candidates you’ll have more extreme candidates and you’ll have a problem of money in politics and I think you know as your question suggests he was essentially right on all three of those things he saw this coming decades before we see it today and so I think that’s why it’s

19:43 really valuable to go back and read what he had to say about all this really excellent I I think all of us have come true for sure right so uh so our concluding uh question as we wrap up here is uh uh something you’ve alluded to in the beginning but how can political parties actually unite Americans coming back to

20:05 our original question yeah so you know everybody thinks parties divide us parties are so divisive and of course they do in some sense divide us into you know partisans on one side or the other but the political parties historically have also compromised they have not necessarily only divided us they’ve also United us um and the reason is that parties have

20:27 incentives to compromise their leaders want to appear to be responsible they want to deliver results for the people who sent them to office and most fundamentally I think we have a two-party system in this country uh that’s inevitable I think given the nature of our political system uh and so because we have a two-party system the parties are these big tents filled with

20:49 lots of different interests and so their their interest is always going to be appealing to the broadest number of interests as possible this means they’re going to try to appeal to more of the moderate voters um the party leaders we always see try to win the moderate voters because that’s how they win majorities and how they how they retain power and so when you have two parties both of which want

21:10 to appeal to the moderate voters it moves them to the middle and it forces them to compromise um in the last 10 years as we Face debt limit Showdown after debt limit Showdown the same kind of dynamic is has popped up right Party leaders try to get together and to make some sort of deal and the real threat to whatever deal they make comes from the more extreme

21:31 members of their parties and so here’s the weird thing right it’s not the parties then that are driving us apart it’s the parties that are trying to hold us together and I think that’s um it’s very counterintuitive but the more you think about it the logic of our constitution means that the parties have to play this critical role and we have to enable them to play this critical role if we’re going to survive I think as a country

21:53 hostel you’ve given us a lot to think about really appreciate you coming on uh and thank you for joining us thanks Tony it was a pleasure and thank you all for joining us on this episode of scholar talks please check out our other episodes in the topics in government and Civic series and also check out our series on the American

22:13 Founders