Two-Party Politics

I read an article this morning on Yahoo News that talked about Dick Cheney's visit to Tampa, FL yesterday. The purpose for Cheney's visit was to stump for Gus Bilirakis, some state legislator who's trying to make it at the Federal level. The article in and of itself wasn't really noteworthy, until I got to the part where Cheney started talking about the war on terror. The point Cheney was trying to make was basically that it's all about the war, and if you vote the Democrats in, they'll cut and run from Iraq. My brain took the next available tangent, and I came to the conclusion that we really need more political parties. For starters, both of the existing parties absolutely suck! They don't care about you, they don't care about me, they don't care about gas prices, they don't care about Iraqis, and they don't care about the poor. All they care about is power.

You see, the Democrats and Republicans are the political power bases in America. If someone wants to get into policical office, they need to be a Democrat or a Republican. That's how you get the power. In return, once you're in office, it's your job to toe the party line, help get others in your party elected, and increase your political party's power. This is one big cycle, and the members of both parties fail to learn from history. The majority party passes laws in an attempt to give itself even more power while the minority cries foul. The public eventually catches on throws the majority party out, and the minority becomes the majority. Repeat as necessary.

A third party coming to power would short-circuit this process. When I say "come to power," I don't mean getting enough clout to single-handedly control the government. What I mean is enough representation to ensure that neither Democrats nor Republicans have a majority anymore. The result would be a coalition-style government. A coalition government would by necessity spend more of its energy truly compromising and finding good answers, as opposed to saying "I'm in power, so you'll do things my way." The end result would be more of a meeting of the minds, instead of this tug-of-war that we've been tolerating for far too long.