1455) The United States has been divided into two parties since George Washington's day. The Hamiltonian party - variously known throughout history as the Federalists, the Whigs and most recently the Republicans - was the party of a strong national Government in alliance with big business. The Jeffersonian party, known for most of its history as the Democrats, supported states' rights, hated the cultural elite and thought that the major banks and businesses were in unholy league with foreigners to undermine the living standards of the average American family.

[...] Ever since Abraham Lincoln debated Stephen Douglas, the G.O.P. has been a Hamiltonian party. Its founders were in the tradition of the Federalists, America's first governing party, which was crushed by the Jeffersonians in 1800. The Whigs replaced the Federalists and themselves broke up in a welter of third and fourth parties in the 1840's and 50's. Lincoln got the formula right and the Republicans stuck with it until the Depression.

The Republican Party fought the Civil War against Democrats who believed in states' rights. Like the Federalists and Whigs, the classic G.O.P was not only pro-big-business and big-government but also anti-populist. On racial issues especially, the Republicans prided themselves on their enlightened views. [...]

Teddy Roosevelt was one of the most vigorous exponents of Republican Hamiltonianism. While he tried to disentangle the G.O.P. from an uncritical embrace of everything big business, his faith in big government remained strong. "There was a time," Roosevelt said, "when the limitation of governmental power meant increasing liberty for the people. In the present day, the limitation of governmental power, of governmental action, means the enslavement of the people by the great corporations."

[...] Republican domination of the Presidency and Congress broke down in the Depression, when their traditional policies no longer worked; Herbert Hoover's refusal to use the full power of the Government gave Franklin Roosevelt the chance to look Hamiltonian, using the national government to bolster the national economy. With the success of the New Deal, Democrats broke out of their Southern ghetto to rule for two generations. On those occasions where Republicans took power, they did so only with the help of men like Eisenhower and Nixon, whose views placed them squarely in the Hamiltonian tradition.

The current upheaval in American politics has come about because neither the Democrats nor the Republicans adequately represent either the underlying Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian parties. Ron Brown's Commerce Department and Bill Clinton's trade policy are sure enough big government, big business approaches, but the Democrats' ties to labor and the left make them suspect to the business establishment.

The Republicans, on the other hand, are increasingly split between their historic Hamiltonianism and the yahoo Jeffersonianism of their new Southern allies. Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond have little in common with Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower. Pat Robertson thinks that the world's bankers are the lackeys of Satan, while traditional Republicans revere them as the custodians of the faith. This split can only widen. Christ and Antichrist cannot run on the same ticket.

In fact, the Democrats are all that hold the Republicans together now. Big business wants to get rid of the remaining shackles and government-imposed costs of the New Deal era. With the exception of farm subsidies, this is fine with the white South. The yahoo Jeffersonians for very different reasons also want to trim back the Government.

But once this has been accomplished there will be a struggle between the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian wings. The winners will consolidate their hold on the Republican name; the losers will ultimately form a new party. Both sides will bid for the support of the remaining Democrats. Most conservative and liberal centrists in the Democratic Party - people like Senators Sam Nunn and Bill Bradley - will move towards the Hamiltonians. So will most African-Americans. Labor will be torn between the anti-business stance of the Jeffersonians and the Hamiltonian sympathy for reasonable regulation of business in the national interest.

In the end, the United States will once again have a strong two-party system, with the Republicans of 2010 possibly the rough equivalent of the Democrats of of 1896. The new G.O.P. will be strong in the white South, anti-elitist and anti-big business. It will be pro-military but isolationist. It will stand for states' rights against Federal intrusions. It will be a party of protest, for those left behind by economic and social change. It will be a stormy party, combining genuine heartfelt cries for economic justice with demagogic rhetoric on subjects like immigration, culture, religion and trade. In retrospect, the 1994 election may ultimately be seen not as the triumph of the Republicans' Southern strategy, but as the triumph of the white South's Republican strategy.

The other party will be internationalist, pro-business and moderately progressive. Looking more to Theodore Roosevelt than to his cousin Franklin, it will favor a relatively strong Federal Government and a basic social security safety net, but will not attempt to recreate the network of subsidies and social programs of the New Deal era. It will be moderately conservative on social and cultural issues, but it will also be tolerant.

The next historic movement in American politics is likely to be the emergence of such a moderately progressive Hamiltonian party - a party that might reach from Jack Kemp on the right through Colin Powell and William Weld in the center to Bill Bradley and Daniel Patrick Moynihan on the left. Jesse Jackson might not like it, but a new generation of African-American leaders will find it their least bad choice.

Walter Russell Mead
"Newt's Real Target: The Other Roosevelt"
New York Times Magazine (10/15/1995)

1456) An America where people can get rich, but nobody is poor. An America where entrepreneurship is rewarded, but wage work is respected as well. An America that trades fully with the world but empowers its labor force to compete. An America that esteems traditional values but looks with live-and-let-live tolerance upon those with their own codes. An America where choice in the bedroom is paired with choice in schoolroom. An America where the vital idea of community is adaptive and evolutionary, not static or backward-looking.

James P. Pinkerton
What Comes Next: The End of Big Government
and the New Paradigm Ahead (1995)
quoted by Norman Ornstein in
"Big Idea Man"
New York Times Book Review (10/15/1995)