Mini-Review: Parties and Politics in America

Parties and Politics in America is the political science equivalent of a throwback jersey; outdated, yes, but better than the current model. Clinton Rossiter's brief introduction to the history and function of political parties is worth more than a dozen stat-packed textbooks.

Rossiter's approach is qualitative, not quantitative; instead of calculating the inflation-adjusted median of the standard deviation from a fixed-point balance curve over a four-dimensional space time curve, he describes things in plain English.

Some of his insights are obsolete. The South is no longer firmly Democratic; isolationism still exists, but now tends to congregate on the left side of the political spectrum; the upper class is no longer a solid Republican constituency. And his statement that only a WASP can win the White House has been twice disproved--in 1960 and 2008.

But if the details are occasionally wrong, the big picture is accurate. Rossiter, after all, did not try to predict the future. He wanted to make timeless rules and not short-lived speculation.

What makes Rossiter remarkable is his admiration for our two-party system. You might argue that this appreciation arises from the fact that politics is profitable for a man like Rossiter. Yet in today's world, when "politics" is a harsher epithet than "pervert," it feels strange to read a stirring defense of political parties.

Rossiter admits that both Republican and Democratic parties are misshapen Frankenstein monsters, cobbled together from weird and conflicting constituencies. They have no real ideology; they simply try to get their man into office. But as Rossiter points out, our decentralized federal system makes ideological lumpiness a necessity. How else can you expect to unite a nation as diverse as America?

This is the lesson of Rossiter's book--no democracy without politics. Political parties act as go-betweens, connecting the individual to the faceless government. What's so bad about that?