The Slow Death of the Democratic Party

For all but a handful of its 217 years, the United States has operated under a two-party system. The names and identities of the two parties have changed from time to time, but not that essential fact. For whatever reason – and the explanations are legion – Americans seem to prefer the two-party model.

Given that fact, it has been monumentally difficult for even the most muddleheaded incompetence to kill off one of the existing political parties. Only twice, thus far, has the death of a major party made room for the rise of something new.

But it might be happening again.

In the early 1800’s, the Federalists managed to do themselves in out of sheer, aristocratic arrogance – but only because of the untimely death of Alexander Hamilton, a genius who combined the political shrewdness of Karl Rove with the ability to – you know – govern effectively.

The demise of the Federalists led to a brief period of one-party rule – the curiously misnamed “Era of Good Feelings”. This ended in 1824, when Americans experienced the only presidential election to be conducted along the lines the Founders had imagined when they drafted the Constitution. Four candidates – John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay – divided the electoral vote, and the House of Representatives chose among the top three.

Curiously, Clay – the odd man out – was Speaker of the House, and thus in position to throw the election to one of his erstwhile rivals. He chose Adams, who had finished second to Jackson in the electoral and popular votes. Jackson, infuriated, stormed off to found the Democratic Party.

Within a decade, Jackson’s opponents had coalesced into the Whig Party, which enjoyed apparent success for some twenty years before suddenly imploding in the mid-1850's. The death of the Whigs came as a shock to many, but it made room for the emergence of the Republicans – and Abraham Lincoln.

Which brings us to the point of this brief historical review. Leaving out the haughty Federalists, who never entirely reconciled themselves to the dirty business of seeking votes among hoi polloi, the Whigs have been the only major American party – so far – to die.

The reasons for the Whigs’ collapse are complex. Serious readers will find a brilliant introduction in David M. Potter’s 1976 classic, The Impending Crisis: 1848 - 1861, but for my purposes, I will focus upon my own favorite theory – that the fatal weakness of the Whigs lay in their origins.

Having arisen in opposition to Andrew Jackson – the dominant figure of the era – the Whigs adopted the tactics of an opposition party. They imitated Democratic organizational forms, campaign methods, and – when possible – candidates. They defined themselves largely in response to Democratic initiatives – particularly Manifest Destiny – rather than setting forth an alternative vision of America’s future.

And they were flagrantly opportunistic. In 1836, having no candidate capable of defeating Martin van Buren, the proto-Whig opposition ran three regional candidates – hoping thereby to throw the election into the House of Representatives.

In 1840, the Whigs nominated an Indian fighter, William Henry Harrison, hoping to portray him as a second Andrew Jackson. To strengthen their ticket, they actually nominated an anti-Jackson Democrat, John Tyler, for Vice President – with the curious result that the first Whig administration was led, for three years and eleven months, by a member of their rival party.

In 1848 and 1852, the Whigs nominated military heroes with neither political skills nor experience. They got lucky when the tactless Zachary Taylor died, putting the politically adept Millard Fillmore in the White House just in time to play a crucial role in engineering the Compromise of 1850. They got lucky again when the bombastic Winfield Scott lost in 1852.

All in all, like many human institutions, the Whigs never succeeded in transcending their origins. They did well enough during the 1840's, under the leadership of great statesmen like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, but they never succeeded in putting one of these giants in the White House.

With the passing of the giants, the Whigs – an opposition party defined by opportunism – drifted toward their doom. They finally went to pieces when confronted by an issue which offered no room for opportunistic maneuvering – the expansion of slavery into the West.

For some time now, I have been impressed with the parallels between the long-ago Whigs and the modern Democrats. Of course, the Democrats, unlike the short-lived Whigs, have been around for nearly two centuries. However, since the rise of Ronald Reagan – a titanic figure who resembles Andrew Jackson in many ways – the Democrats have redefined themselves largely as an opposition party, with all the weaknesses such a posture implies.

In my next posting, I will explore the weaknesses, perhaps fatal, of the modern Democratic Party. In future postings, I’ll examine my reasons for thinking that the death of the Democratic Party, should it occur, might not be altogether bad for America – or the cause of American liberalism.