How Did We Get Here? Part Two

This was a trick question of sorts. To be sure, it isn't debatable that both parties must at some point stop being ideologues and start compromising to put the good of our country first but our political system became extremely partisan by the end of President George Washington's first term. Most of the key -i.e. most written about- founders loathed the partisan politicks but many, indeed almost all of them ended up contributing to it.

When you go back and read the news articles that have lasted from the infancy of this country, one can see that in fact our media was more partisan and politically aligned than they are today (especially with ever increasing news/information/opinion sites cropping up all over the internet). Everyone knew which newspaper was Federalist and which one was Republican. The scathing opinion pieces and politically damning fact finding by newspapers of the time were incessant and far more unforgiving then today.

The point made that it would be nice to have more elected officials understand the hopes and fears of our Founders was actually because our political parties are still having some of the same arguments. It isn't to rehash political arguments from the 1790's but rather to stop having them. Over 200 years and we're having many of the same arguments about the role of government. Worse yet, many of the things most of our Founders feared would happen have happened yet we're still standing and did become the Super Power some of them hoped we'd one day become. We even changed the political landscape of the world as they had hoped. That process has taken longer and often been done in ways that most likely wouldn't have been approved of but one can only wonder if the end result would've mattered more.