The Need for a New American Political Model

For a country which has cultivated the world’s largest economy based on free market capitalism, the United States is most assuredly not taking those principles to heart when it comes to politics.  The dominance of the two-party system is one of the biggest issues with American politics at the moment. The system and resulting parties are more than outdated, they no longer lend themselves to an effective means of governing through intelligent discourse and compromise.  Throw into the mix the current trends of increasing polarization of the American population and now we really do have something to worry about. 

This linear descriptor of one’s political affiliation is so emphatically limiting that you are forced into a zero-sum situation.  Either you are with “us” or “against us”. Essentially what this system is requiring is that you side with an inherently idealistic group on nationally relevant issues which are almost immeasurably complex. God forbid we, as a country, get to a point where the Republicans are right about some things and the Democrats are right about the others, but the correct solution needs to be instituted within one election period.  The current system guarantees failure in this case.  God forbid a Republican doesn’t flaunt his/her religion or a Democrat thinks that tax cuts are necessary.

Obviously it is ridiculous to say that all the American policy issues are a product of the two-party system, or the political structure, but it is a contributing factor.

More or less what the system looks like now:

 

Now I am just brainstorming here but what if the American political spectrum looked something like this. Vertical axis is the allocation of government funds, now TO BE CLEAR, I am not saying that this model is the best way to go or the axis are the best identifiers.  

 

Just look, you have doubled the “products” the American can chose from. To me this just seems like a better choice, because for those of us who tend to side with a party on the majority of topics but strongly disagree with some of their stances what can you do.  You bite the bullet and pick the lesser of two evils. Because what we have now really can accurately be construed as two evils.