In The Daily Sentinel’s Feb. 8 opinion page, Kent Oldham states that our two-party system is broken. I must disagree and find the fiery partisanship as a sign of a healthy competition of ideas for our country’s future — although I could use less personal attacking and more issue discussing. Our two-party system is not part of our Constitution but developed as a necessary part of our republican form of government. If you read our history, you will find a great deal of conflict during Washington’s and Adam’s presidencies as the embryonic federalist and the Democratic-Republican political parties were being formed.
Maybe the quality of our candidates, rather than the two-party system, is at faulty for Oldham’s concern. It was the concern of Alexander Hamilton that sufficient numbers of honest men would not rise to serve in our government. History has shown that our system has produced adequate numbers of great leaders when we have needed them, otherwise it is unlikely that a tiny country clinging to the coast of a distant continent could rise to the greatest country in the world in less than 200 years.
Our advanced technology has allowed us to witness strengths and weaknesses of candidates and details of government policy as we have never been able before, which makes our decision making much more complex and difficult. Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the others.” I agree. Joseph de Maistre, 18th century French diplomat/philosopher has said, “Every country has the government it deserves.” Let us work to deserve the best government possible and enjoy the great theater of our election process.
HANS CROEBER
Montrose

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 11:05 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.