George Washington has some wisdom for us. As he prepared to
turn over the reigns of leadership to John Adams, he offered some suggestions,
in his Farewell Address.
Watch out for those
who would pit areas of the country against each other:
One of the expedients of party to
acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions
and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the
jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they
tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by
fraternal affection.
Work against the
human tendency toward the “spirit of party.”
I have already intimated to you the
danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of
them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive
view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the
spirit of party generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is
inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the
human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less
stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is
seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
Resist the temptation
to “pay back” the other side.
A party spirit can lead to severe pendulum swings in
governing, often accompanied by efforts to “pay back” the party recently
removed from power.
The alternate domination of one
faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party
dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most
horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to
a more formal and permanent despotism.
Don’t give too much
power to anyone.
When public policy swings to greater and greater extremes, people
can long for someone to take charge and fix everything. Such a person may be
hungry for power, and may consolidate power and threaten the liberty of
citizens.
The disorders and miseries which
result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the
absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some
prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns
this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public
liberty.
Without looking forward to an
extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of
sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are
sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and
restrain it.
