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View Full Version : President Obama Endorses a Two-Party System for the U.S.




timosman
06-12-2016, 10:47 AM
http://ballot-access.org/2016/06/11/president-obama-endorses-a-two-party-system-for-the-u-s/



On the evening of June 9, President Obama was on the Tonight Show, hosted by Jimmy Fallon. He said, “I am worried about the Republican Party. Democracy works, this country works, when you have two parties that are serious and try to solve problems…at the end of the day, you want a healthy two-party system. You want the Republican nominee to be somebody who could do the job if he wins.”

“Two-party system” is an ambiguous term. When it was first coined, in 1906, to describe the British party system, it means a system in which two parties are much stronger than the others, but one in which there more than two parties in the national legislature. Over the years, in the United States, “two-party system” has come to mean a system in which the government actively discourages voters from participating in any but the two largest parties.

Whichever definition the President was using, he ought to reconsider. If “two-party system” means a system in which only two parties have members in the national legislature, then the United States and Nigeria are the only “two-party systems” in the world, among the 50 most populous countries. It is difficult to argue that the party system in United States is the best system. One can look at Canada, which has five parties in the national legislature; or Great Britain, which has twelve parties in the national legislature, and easily conclude that Canada and Great Britain have better systems. Whenever lists are made of the ten best countries, based on various objective criteria, the United States never appears on that list, and all the countries on that list have multi-party systems, even if in some of them, two parties are much bigger than all the others.

surf
06-12-2016, 12:08 PM
If “two-party system” means a system in which only two parties have members in the national legislature, then the United States and Nigeria are the only “two-party systems” in the world, among the 50 most populous countries. thanks for posting