The Anti-Partisan Address

An excerpt from The Anti-Partisan Manifesto

Photo by Dyana Wing So on Unsplash

My fellow Americans, we have an unprecedented opportunity to restitch our tattered nation. For this to happen, we must rediscover the common thread of national identity that is meant to be interlaced through us all, weaving us into a single tapestry.

Historically, America’s identity–what it means to be an American–has lain in her embrace of a common set of principles. Our shared values transcended politics, ideology, ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality and any other subcategorization of Americans that demographers can concoct.

But, sometime in the last several decades, that stopped being the case. The confluence of rising partisan anger and leaps forward in the development of technology and mass media made political sides begin to perceive each other not as fellow Americans with whom they disagree, but as “others.” The activist class on each side has always seen the other side that way, but now those views have infected average party members, courtesy of the 24-hour news cycle, the Internet and social media. Even worse, this hyper-partisan contagion has spread to the officials in each party who run governments at all levels and make policies for all of us. 

Anti-partisanism offers the opportunity for a national reset. It gives us the chance to rediscover the humanity in those who disagree with us–and in ourselves…. 

The state of our severed nation has some yearning for an inspirational figure (from their party, naturally) to arise, a giant among heads of state. They await the appearance of another Lincoln or F.D.R.

But, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delanor Roosevelt aren’t walking through that door. It’s not that people today don’t have it within themselves to rise to the challenges of national leadership and become great and inspirational leaders, like revered figures from the past. It’s that our partisan political climate makes the emergence of such a leader impossible.

This kind of unifying figure can never emerge from a political party because trust between the two sides has been demolished. The best parties that can offer are leaders who conceal the partisan red meat they want to feed us with a glaze of eloquence. Their stirring words elicit swoons from media commentators who already support them, creating the impression that these figures transcend partisanship. Meanwhile, the opposition rightly assumes that these leaders’ moving turns of phrase are merely meant to distract from the partisan pills they mean to stuff down everyone’s throats. 

No, if there is to be a reawakening of civility and goodwill in the U.S., it must be driven by a source that comes from outside the traditional political system. You can’t restore a nation when you automatically lose half the people’s trust before you even take office. 

President Obama famously promised “change we can believe in.” But, with all due respect to the 44th president, the only change he was offering was a reversal of eight years of having a Republican administration, which was, itself, a reversal of the previous eight years of a Democratic administration.

The kind of change necessary to heal the country isn’t a political reversal. It’s a political remaking.

Anti-partisanism offers ideas that can unite the masses to recreate our political system. A platform based on the values of unity, neutrality, objectivity, problem-solving and stakeholder-centrism has the potential to attract enough support so that it’s possible to rewrite our laws and remove the structural causes of conflict, the things that feed partisanism.

Building support for the movement will obviously take time. Partisans will kick and scream and claw and bite on the way out, as they are slowly exorcized from power. However, the ascendance of an alternative model of governance based on common sense, cooperation and the rediscovery of our humanity is inexorable.

Or, at least it should be. If America is not too far gone down the road toward disunion, if the unending exposure to vitriolic conflict hasn’t taken our civic hearts and souls, if our political and cultural wars haven’t exhausted the exhausted majority to the point that they finally succumb to the partisan currents that engulf them, then, yes, an idea based on faith in the innate goodness of people and the fact that everyone’s concerns matter—that idea should inevitably triumph, with contrary views vanquished and vanished.   

But, whatever the result, can we at least try? Can we at least try to do something different than prop up the same toxic political system that has torn apart families, friendships, communities and the whole country? Can we examine the possibility that these divisions stem from the fact that we divide our nation into two opposing political forces that then naturally perceive their conflict as existential? Can we consider the prospect that one way to de-escalate the cultural and political wars is for entities within our culture to stop choosing sides and for society to stop politicizing everything? And can we experiment with the notion that better policy can be made when we seek practical solutions that serve all stakeholders instead of pursuing partisan victories that serve only partisan stakeholders?     

And so we conclude with a final appeal to Americans’ humanity. In the famous words of President Lincoln, in his First Inaugural Address, “We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break the bonds of our affection.”

The “passion” Lincoln was referencing was the disagreement between the northern and southern states over slavery and the right of secession. He would soon conclude that these were issues over which it was worth fighting a civil war, notwithstanding what he said about “the bonds of our affection.”

But, none of our partisan arguments are like the ones Lincoln had to handle. Lincoln had to contend with the fact that half the nation found nothing objectionable about owning human beings of a different skin color and believed that, if this right were challenged, they had the right to break away and start their own country. Yet, partisans today may hold greater levels of animus for the other side than their counterparts from Lincoln’s era.

As Lincoln declared in his address, we can only trust “that the mystic chords of memories” will contain loud enough echoes of nation and community to restore our civic bonds, once our political quarrels are quashed. In the end, all we have is the hope that the unifying power of “the better angels of our nature” is stronger than the fragmenting effects of decades of sustained partisanism. 

The alternative may be the same one that Lincoln faced.

The above is a lightly edited excerpt from my book, The Anti-Partisan Manifesto: How Parties and Partisanism Divide America and How to Shut Them Down. Buy the book here. For the time being, it is only available digitally. To read, download the Kindle app to your phone, your iPad or tablet, or your computer.

Follow me on X at @JeffGebeau