When I talk to Idahoans about our government, the most common responses I hear are expressions of frustration. Idahoans are frustrated with government leaders who have forgotten the guiding principles of our founding and fail to deliver common sense solutions.
I feel this frustration deeply. I’ve spent my career helping individuals, businesses, and governments identify and implement practical solutions. When I see our politicians turn away from such solutions—either because they aren’t willing to work across party lines or because they’re working harder for a special interest than for the common interest—I feel more than frustrated. In addition to regretting the loss of smart solutions, I’m deeply disappointed by our failure to live up to the promise of the most extraordinary government ever established.
On July 4, 1776, our Founding Fathers broke with the most powerful monarchy in the world to declare the independence of a fledgling republic. It’s difficult for us today—over two centuries later—to fully appreciate the boldness of what they did. In 1776, the record of successful popular government was dismal. For the 3,000 years before the founding of the United States, experiments in self government had consistently failed.
If our Founders’ declaration had been bold, but unrealistic, we wouldn’t still be celebrating it today. Instead, they initiated the most enduring and successful republic in human history. They did this by matching the boldness of their vision with a clear-eyed, practical understanding of popular governments’ past failures. They knew that to found a republic that would endure, they had to address the causes of repeated failure.
What were those causes? The Founders called them the “problem of faction” and the “spirit of party.” Today, we talk about excessive partisanship and special interest influence. Whatever the words, our Founders’ study of earlier popular governments’ failures revealed over and over a story of divisions so contentious as to topple entire republics.
James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution” and our fourth president, diagnosed the problem of faction as a republic’s most dire threat in his famous
Federalist #10:
Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice…The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.
And our first president, George Washington, dedicated his Farewell Address to warn us of the perils of partisanship. He observed that:
The Spirit of Party…exists under different shapes in all governments …but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy. The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension …is itself a frightful despotism. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another.
In our Founders’ view, faction was the disease. Their cure was a government of checks and balances and separation of powers. The Founders understood that in such a complicated system, policies that won the support of only narrow factions would be frustrated while policies that could attract support across the lines that usually divide us would be far more likely to succeed.
Today’s politics prove—in a regrettably negative sense—the soundness of the Founders’ understanding as well as the effectiveness of their structural defense. The Founders expressly designed a government that would frustrate those who attempt to use it to serve narrow factional aims. Our contemporary politics are rife with excessive partisanship and special interest influence and the result is the very result the Founders intended: Frustration for all.
There is a better way. It is the way the Founders’ themselves recommended. We can pursue policies that attract large and diverse majority support. The Founders’ great insight was that such policies—policies that win the support of large and diverse majorities—are more likely to be wise policies than those that can only win the support of a narrow faction.
Madison articulates this conviction—the rationale for our Constitution—in
Federalist #51:
In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place upon any other principles than those of justice and the general good.
Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and our third president, explained that the Founders’ structural solution would require us to put the common interests that we share ahead of the narrower interests that divide us:
We have no interests nor passions different from those of our fellow citizens. We have the same object: the success of representative government. Nor are we acting for ourselves alone, but for the whole human race…our experiment is to show whether man can be trusted with self-government. The eyes of suffering humanity are fixed on us… and on such a theatre, for such a cause, we must suppress all smaller passions and local considerations.
George Washington warned in his Farewell Address that for the system the Founders deeded to us to realize its full promise, we would need to recognize and resist the typical ploys of faction.
One of the expedients of Party to acquire influence…is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other [parties]. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart burnings which spring from these misrepresentations. They tend to render Alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.
Washington went on to explain the responsibility we have as citizens to defend against this threat to self government:
[T]he common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of Party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of wise People to discourage and restrain it.
Their words resonated with me when I first studied them carefully as an American History major in college. In fact, their words have shaped my entire professional life, leading me to get a Ph.D. and specialize in conflict resolution. Five years ago, this passion for the Founders’ wisdom led me to found a non-partisan, non-profit called The Common Interest. This group brought together everyday Idahoans—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents—who shared the single conviction that we could put practical solutions that are in the common interest ahead of partisanship and special interest influence. We’ve had an extraordinary record for doing just that in the Idaho legislature.
Now, I’m running for governor because of this same passion for realizing the full promise of American self government. Together, we can find and embrace those common sense solutions that attract support across the partisan and special interest lines that often divide us.