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Originally Posted by August
Well maybe it'd be more accurate to say that SOME founders envisioned a party-less system, and they were probably considered as ideological fools by the more realistic ones.
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I can't argue with that. On the other hand I don't know that I'd call the opposition "realistic" in that case, but having a strong agenda. And I'm talking about my own heroes here. Alexander Hamilton accused James Madison of creating the first real American political party as a grass-roots movement to support Jefferson's bid against John Adams. From everything I've seen the accusation was pretty close to the mark.
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Be all that as it may though it'd take nothing less than an entirely new constitution to change our form of government to one that will accommodate multiple parties.
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I don't see the Constitution as supporting a two-party system now, and I don't think a new one would change that. It might get rid of the Electoral College and change the way we elect the President, but I doubt it would change the way we go about the business of politics.
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If that happens I don't see all 50 states being willing to start from scratch. We'd splinter for sure.
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Nor do I. I once had a discussion with a college-age man who insisted that we had to have a new Constitutional Convention in order to save the country. When I asked him what he would change he didn't have an answer, but he was sure it had to be done anyway. When I pointed out that starting from scratch was exactly what they did in the first place ("We didn't come to create a new government but to amend the Articles of Confederation." - "We will amend them...right out of existence."), and that once a Convention was actually convened they could do anything they wanted - anything at all, he wasn't quite so sure if that was what he really wanted.
I see some problems with the current form of electioneering, but I'm somewhat leery of changing anything. As a friend of mine liked to say, "Never do anything you can't take back."