Robert Alex's The Broken Two Party System is a calm, clear-minded, unbiased analysis of the root causes of the often vicious partisan politics we see around us today in the American political landscape.
A recent Gallup Poll showed that seventy-seven percent of Americans see the country as divided. More startling yet, a quarter of all Republican parents and twenty percent of all Democrats would be upset if their child married someone who supported the other party.
Vicious partisan politics is causing the great divide in the country.
Robert Alex makes an intelligent and convincing case that our two party system itself is at the core of the political and social strife we as a nation are experiencing today. He pinpoints the exact reason a binary, two party system is doomed to failure -- an idea shared by our Founding Fathers - and traces the stranglehold domination two party politics have had on American politics since 1797, the end of George Washington's presidency.
Robert Alex reminds us that the first president himself refused to be a member of any political party. He, like most of his compatriots, railed against any two party system and worried about the ease with which it would compound those most undesirable aspects of human nature.
However, by the inauguration of the second president, John Adams, Federalist and Anti-federalist factions had formed into two political parties. We've been at the mercy of a two party system ever since.
Only one alternative party candidate has ever been elected president, Abraham Lincoln, in his second term.
With the passing of the 16th and 17th Amendments -- which switched the election of senators from state legislatures to popular vote and then gave them unlimited funding through the country's first income tax - the monopoly of the two party system was assured.
Shortly thereafter a new character was introduced onto the stage of American politics, the long term career politician.
The use of power by these career Senators and Representatives has become entrenched through their own, often corrupt personal political dynasties, and they now have a vested interest in keeping a two party system that bars any competition.
There is, in fact, more political corruption today than ever before, Alex reports. In the last forty years more federal congressmen have been officially expelled, censured or reprimanded for financial crimes than any time in our history.
The solution - just as Lincoln did during the divisive atmosphere of the Civil War - is switching to a multi-party political system.
It is what is needed, and it is what the public wants. Sixty-one percent of Americans are in favor of a third party. Half of all Millennials no longer identify as either a Democrat or Republican.
The Broken Two Party System offers the five straightforward steps we need to take to implement a multi-party system. Three would make an immediate difference. Two are more long term. Altogether they would provide higher voter turnout and a greater representation of the diverse elements in today's society.
Robert Alex understands, too, just who the first converts need to be in order to quickly bring into play these changes, changes needed to restore the country to the ideal envisioned by the Founding Fathers and the Constitution.
