Entrance Essay to GSPIA

JIFF or PETER PAN

With the Presidential election just around the corner, a lot of people (mostly the media) have been asking intriguing questions about not only America, but also the world. Candidates campaign and debate on such topics as national health care, the war on terror, illegal immigrants, and campaign finance reform. To me, this is what makes America great, the fact that a group of people vying for arguably the most powerful position in the world can contend and debate without worry about being shot or punished for their thoughts. What a lot of people do not realize is that there are a lot of countries in the world that are democracies, but they do not have the same system present in the United States. An extreme example of this difference is Iraq before Operation Iraqi Freedom. Saddam Hussein, the former dictator of Iraq, was in fact a dictator, but Iraq was a democratic country; he just happened to receive 100% of the votes when he ran for office unopposed. The difference between their democracy and ours is that ours actually is a democracy, a government for the people by the people. This leads me to what I think is a major problem in the United States today.

George Washington in his farewell address warned America of ‘political factionalism’, or in layman’s terms political parties and how they could harm democracy in America. Now, a lot of people consider President Washington to be the closest to a king Americans have ever had, so what he said was taken to heart. But even he knew that the chances of America not having political parties were slim. I agree with President Washington in suggesting that political parties do damage the integrity of democracy in this country, but I also understand and accept the fact that there will always be political parties in America. So to basically contradict myself, the problem with the United States today is that we do not have enough political parties.

There are roughly 300 million people living in America, and 64% of these people turned out to vote in the last Presidential election. So that means for the 192 million voters in the 2004 election there were only two political parties, assuming that third parties such as the Green Party didn’t carry a large percentage. To me this seems like a problem, because people do not have enough viable choices. Yes, they could have voted for Ralph Nader or whoever else ran for office, but when it really comes down to it they had two choices: Bush or Kerry. America is the most advanced country in the world socially, economically, and governmentally, but we have more choices for what kind of peanut butter to buy at the store than choices for potential Leader of the Free World. Really, when you think about it, to win the nomination for either the Democrats or the Republicans you have to be like a robot. For example, let’s say I am a Republican and I am the most qualified and brightest rising star in the party and I want to run for President. Would Republicans vote for me if I supported Pro-life issues, gun control, and same-sex marriages? No, I would lose the nomination to some good-hearted Governor that goes to church every Sunday and says all the right things, but couldn’t lead a Girl Scout troop let alone the Free World.

Basically what I am trying to say is that Americans are too eccentric to be classified into two groups, and what is needed is a bit of evolution. If you took the two current political parties and split them both in two, you could have four strong parties. For the sake of this essay we will call them the Conservative, Republican, Liberal, and Democratic Parties. Imagine a national election where you had four candidates that were simultaneously strong and able to win. The election wouldn’t come down to who won California, Texas, and New York; the election would come down to who could carry the whole nation. States like Montana and Alaska would actually matter, because their electoral votes would be more valued if the total electoral votes was dispersed among four candidates. So why hasn’t this happened yet?

To answer that question you don’t have to look very far. The people of America, the voters, are the reason why this hasn’t happened. We let the media and other big-budgeted venues construct our opinion about candidates and politics instead of actually going out on our own and finding out which candidates are the best. Will the development of four major political parties ever happen? Probably not in my lifetime, but if Americans motivate themselves there could be a government revolution. A revolution not fought with guns and fatalities, but instead with intellect and moral values. I would love to see the day when I’m at a local hangout and I ask someone “What are you, a Democrat or a Republican?” and they respond ‘No, I’m an American.”