An Introduction to American Studies

Lecture 4: The Political System of the United States of America

The foundation of the political system of the United States of America as we know it today
was established by the U.S. Constitution. When it was adopted, after much argument and debate,
it set the basic form of government - three separate branches, each one having powers (“checks
and balances”) over the others. The U.S. Constitution, despite being the oldest one still in force in
the world, is by no means perfect. What has worked in its favour, however, is the flexibility with
which it was made: it allowed room for development, thus justifying the claim of its chief
architect James Madison that it was “made for the ages”. It has been repeatedly amended to meet
the changing needs of the nation (it was last amended in 1992, when the 27th Amendment was
passed), but is still “the supreme law of the land”.
Designed to turn a rather loose confederation into a more tightly knit union, the United
States of America created by the Constitution adopted in Philadelphia in 1787 was based on the
principle that it is the right of the people to choose their own government. At the time, the
statement that governments should receive their powers only “from the consent of the
governed” was very radical indeed. In the often-quoted words of Abraham Lincoln, this system
of government is “of the people, by the people, for the people”. The great pride Americans have
in their Constitution, their almost religious respect for it, comes from the knowledge that the
ideals, freedoms and rights embodied by the Constitution were not given to them by a small
ruling class. Rather, they are seen as the natural “inalienable” rights of every American that have
been fought for and won. They cannot be taken away by any government, court, official or law.
It should be pointed out, however, that these “inalienable” rights were not always
enjoyed by each and every American citizen. The painful issue of slavery and the civil rights of
African Americans is a case in point. Although the word “slavery” does not appear in the U.S.
Constitution, the document gave indirect sanction to the institution: the delegates to the
Constitutional Convention provided that a slave would be counted as three fifths of a free man
when it came to determining the number of congressmen each state could elect to the House of
Representatives. (As has been ironically observed, the missing two fifths probably included a
slave’s love of citizenship and liberty.) To give but one more example, women’s right to vote was
fully guaranteed only by the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, adopted as late as 1920.
The legislative branch of the federal government, the U.S. Congress, is bicameral, that is to
say, it is made up of two houses - the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate is
made up of 100 Senators, two from each state, based on the parity principle. A Senator is elected
for a term of office lasting six years, with the proviso that one-third of the Senators are elected
every two years. The House of Representatives is made up of 435 members, who are elected for
two-year terms. They represent the population of “congressional districts” into which each state
is divided. The number of Representatives from each state is proportionate to its population.
Thus California, the state with the largest population, has 53 Representatives, while the smallest
states in terms of population - Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont
and Wyoming - have one Representative only. The number of Representatives for each state is
determined decennially on the basis of the U.S. Census.
Congress makes all laws, and each house of Congress has the power to introduce
legislation. Each can also vote against the legislation passed by the other. Because legislation
only becomes law if both houses agree, compromise between them is necessary. In accordance
with the system of checks and balances, the President has the right to veto any bill passed by
Congress, and unless two-thirds of the members of each house (a qualified majority) vote to
override the veto, the bill does not become law. Conversely, the President’s conduct of foreign
policy and all his domestic policy proposals and programmes are subject to Congressional
approval. Any treaty, for example, must first be approved by the Senate. If there is no approval,
there is no treaty. The rule is “the President proposes, but Congress disposes”. What a President
wants to do, therefore, is often a very different thing from what a President can do. As President
John Kennedy put it: “It is very easy to defeat a bill in Congress. It is much more difficult to pass
one.”
The U.S. Constitution vested executive power in a president, and that remains the case

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today. The Constitution also provides for the election of a vice president, who succeeds to the
presidency in case of the death, resignation or incapacitation of the president. The President of
the United States is elected every four years to a four-year term of office, with no more than two
full terms allowed (based on the precedent set by George Washington, legally established by the
22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951). The presidential election is held on the first Tuesday after
the first Monday in November, in years divisible evenly by four. The presidential term of four
years begins on January 20th (it was changed from March by the 20th Amendment, ratified in
1933) with an inauguration ceremony, traditionally held on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, where
Congress meets.
The national presidential elections really consist of two separate campaigns. One is for
the nomination of candidates at national party conventions, the other is to win the actual
election. The race for nomination is a competition between members of the same party. They
run in a succession of state primaries (primary elections open to all voters) and caucuses
(meetings open to all registered voters of the party in question), hoping to gain a majority of
delegate votes for their national party conventions (held in July or August). The party
convention then votes to select the party’s official candidate for the presidency. Then follow
several months of presidential campaigns by the candidates.
To become the President of the United States, it is not enough to win the majority of the
popular vote. The peculiarity of the American system is that, although the names of the
candidates appear on the ballots, the people technically do not vote directly for the President.
Instead, the voters of each state select a slate of presidential “electors”, equal to the number of
Senators and Representatives that state has in Congress. The candidate with the highest number
of votes wins all the “electoral votes” of that state. The electors of all 50 states and the District of
Columbia - a total of 538 persons - make up what is known as the electoral college.
Supporters of direct election argue that it would give everyone an equally weighted vote,
regardless of what state he or she lives in, and oppose giving disproportionately amplified voting
power to voters in states with small populations. Under the current system, the vote of an
individual living in a state with three electoral votes is proportionally more influential than the
vote of an individual living in a state with a large number of electoral votes. Essentially, the
electoral college ensures that candidates, particularly in recent elections, pay attention to key
“swing- states” (those states that are not firmly rooted in either the Republican or Democratic
party). It equally assures that voters in states that are not believed to be competitive will be
disregarded.
Proponents of the current system argue that organizing votes by regions forces a
candidate to seek popular support over a majority of the country. They also argue that the
collective opinion of even a small state merits attention at the federal level greater than that
given to a small, though numerically-equivalent, portion of a very populous state. By making the
votes of a given state an all-or-nothing affair, minority groups can provide the critical edge that
allows a candidate to win. This encourages candidates to court a wide variety of such minorities
and special interests.
The anomalies inherent in the electoral college system came to the fore in one of the most
controversial presidential elections in U.S. history - the one won by George W. Bush against Al
Gore in 2000. As it turned out, the outcome depended on the results of the Florida vote, won by
Bush by a margin of 537 votes (out of 5.8 million votes cast). Due to a complicated system of
casting votes, which many of the elderly voters failed to understand, there were a number of
misplaced votes. In addition to this, there were stories of missing ballot boxes, thousands of
African Americans who were legitimately registered being denied the right to vote by officials
overseeing the elections, voting places in locations expected to favour the winner’s opponents
mysteriously running out of ballots, closing early, etc. And on top of everything else, the
Governor of Florida was none other than Jeb Bush, the future President’s brother. Al Gore
demanded a careful by-hand inspection and recount in the most hotly disputed districts, which
was eventually denied by a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, handing Bush the presidency even
though he had lost the popular vote by a margin of more than half a million votes overall and
despite the fact that the outcome of the Florida vote was far from clear.

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The main instrument of the third, judicial branch of government, the Supreme Court,
watches the other two branches and is authorised to determine whether or not their laws or acts
are in accordance with the constitution, as can be seen from the above example. The Supreme
Court consists of a chief justice and eight associate justices, who are nominated by the President
but must be approved by the Senate. Once approved, they hold office as Supreme Court justices
for life. A decision of the Supreme Court cannot be appealed to any other court. Neither the
President nor Congress can change its decisions.
The political life of the United States is dominated by its two leading parties - the
Democrats and the Republicans. There are other parties, and foreign observers are often
surprised to find that among these there are also a Communist Party and several Socialist
parties. Minor parties have occasionally won offices at lower levels of government, but they do
not play a role in national politics.
Many of America’s Founding Fathers were deeply suspicious of political parties -
quarrelling “factions” they were sure would be more interested in contending with each other
than in working for the common good. They wanted individual citizens to vote for individual
candidates without the interference of organised groups - but this was not to be. By the 1790’s,
different views of the new country’s proper course had already developed, and those who held
these opposing views tried to win support for their cause by banding together. This led to the
first major division in American politics - into Federalists, who favoured a strong central
government that would support the interests of commerce and industry, and Republicans (also
known as Democratic-Republicans), who preferred a decentralised agrarian republic in which
the federal government had limited power. By 1828, the Federalists had disappeared as an
organisation, to be replaced by the Whigs, brought to life in opposition to the election that year
of President Andrew Jackson. The (Democratic-)Republicans gave way to Democrats, supportive
of Andrew Jackson, and the two-party system, still in existence today, was bom. The Whig Party
sank to its death in the 1850’s when it straddled the issue of slavery (i.e. refused to commit
itself), giving way to the Republican Party, whose primary policy was that slavery be excluded
from the entire territory of the United States. The new party captured the presidency when
Abraham Lincoln won the election of 1860. By then, the two leading parties were well
established as the country’s dominant political organisations, and party allegiance had become
an important part of most people’s consciousness, party loyalty being passed from fathers to
sons.
Why did the U.S. end up with only two political parties that really matter? Most officials
in America are elected from single-member districts and win office by beating out their
opponents in a system of determining winners called “first-past-the- post” - the one who gets the
most votes wins, and there is no proportional accounting. This encourages the creation of a
duopoly: one party in power, the other out. If those who are “out” band together, they stand a
better chance of beating those who are “in”.
Occasionally, third parties do come along and receive some share of the votes, for a while
at least. The most successful third party in recent years has been H. Ross Perot’s Reform Party,
which had some success in the presidential elections of 1992 and 1996. Jesse Ventura became
the first Reform Party candidate to win statewide office when he was elected Governor of
Minnesota in 1998. Third parties have a hard time surviving, though, because one of both major
parties often adopt their most popular issues - and thus their voters.
The above perhaps best explains why the traditional European terms of “right” and “left”,
or “conservative” and “liberal” do not readily apply to the American system. In practical terms, it
is often difficult to distinguish between the major parties. Traditionally, the Democrats are
thought of as associated with labour, and the Republicans with business and industry.
Republicans tend to oppose the greater involvement of the federal government in some areas of
public life that they consider to be the responsibility of the state and communities. Democrats,
on the other hand, tend to favour a more active role of the central government in social matters.
It is not uncommon, however, for someone from the “conservative right” to be against a strong
central government. A Democrat from one part of the country could be very “liberal”, and one
from another part quite “conservative”. Even when elected as Democrats and Republicans,

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Representatives or Senators are not bound to a party programme, nor are they subject to any
discipline when they disagree with their party. When U.S. parties win seats in Congress, they are
not free to fill them with party members they have chosen. Rather, both Representatives and
Senators are elected personally, to serve the interests of their “constituencies” - that is, the
people and the areas they represent. Very often, members of Congress will vote bearing in mind
the specific wishes of their constituencies, even if this goes against what their own parties might
want as national policy. It is quite common, in fact, to find Democrats in Congress voting for a
Republican President’s legislation, or quite a few Republicans voting against it.
As both Congressmen and the President are elected personally, it often happens that the
President is from one party and the majority of those in the House of Representatives or Senate
(or both) from another. Thus, although one of the parties may win a majority in the mid-term
elections (held every two years), the President remains in office even though his party (or, of
course, in the future, her party) may not have a majority in either house. Therefore, the
President can seldom count upon the automatic support of Congress, even when his own party
has a majority in both the Senate and the House, and must be prepared to bargain and
compromise on matters ranging from major foreign policy decisions to the appointment of
heads of government departments1 or Supreme Court justices (both must be approved by the
Senate).
The system of checks and balances, therefore, makes compromise a matter of necessity,
not choice, and thus guards against extremes, contributing to the stability of the political system.
New Presidents, or newly appointed Representatives and Senators, for that matter, cannot
radically change governmental policies as they wish. Given the present state of affairs, the
donkey and the elephant2 will most likely continue to dominate the American political scene in
the foreseeable future.

Literature

1. Douglas K. Stevenson: American Life and Institutions (Second edition), Ernst Klett
Schulbuchverlage GmbH u Co.KG., Stuttgart, 1998.
2. Outline of U.S. Government, United States Department of State, revised and updated edition,
2000.

1All departments are headed by a secretary, i.e. the Secretary of State or the Defense Secretary, with
the exception of the Department of Justice, which is headed by the Attorney General.
2The traditional symbols of the Democratic and the Republican Party respectively. The now-famous

Democratic donkey was first associated with Democrat Andrew Jackson’s 1828 presidential campaign.
His opponents called him a jackass (a donkey), and Jackson decided to use the image of the strong-willed
animal on his campaign posters. Later, cartoonist Thomas Nast used the Democratic donkey in newspaper
cartoons and made the symbol famous. Nast invented another famous symbol— the Republican
elephant. In a cartoon that appeared in Harper's Weekly in 1874, Nast drew a donkey clothed in lion’s
skin, scaring away all the animals at the zoo. One of those animals, the elephant, was labelled “The
Republican Vote.” That’s all it took for the elephant to become associated with the Republican Party.
Democrats today say the donkey is smart and brave, while Republicans say the elephant is strong and
dignified.