American Government

Although the American Revolution marked the end of the British rule in the thirteen colonies, the actual nation did not begin for several years. The first official American government, the Articles of Confederation, held a loose collaboration between states without any central authority. Each state functioned as a separate entity with their own form of government while the Articles of Confederation acted more like a committee than an actual government. Several situations indicated the need for an overhaul of the inherently weak Articles of Confederation and the initiation of the constitutional convention and subsequent Constitution.

* The Articles of Confederation were first established to initiate some form of unification against the European powers, predominately England during the Revolutionary War. Militarily, the thirteen colonies maintained their own militias and were provisionally unified under George Washington to face the English army. The government maintained no actual control over the army and all the power beyond the states were granted to George Washington. Scholars still marvel at the willingness for Washington to relinquish the army after the Revolution ended, nearly all individuals in history given the type of control Washington wielded over the military most likely would have set-up some type of military dictatorship.

* Also under the Articles of Confederation, there was no ability to tax or force states to grant provisions and funds. Military officials and militia essentially went unpaid during their service and after it, while the Articles of Confederation continued as the law of the land. Beyond the failure to grant promised pay and pension, the army went starving and without clothes for much of the Revolutionary War. The Continental Congress had no ability to collect or guarantee these provision and much of those received were due to the genius of Washington’s aide-de-camps.

* Power was granted under the Articles of Confederation to allow the congress to make decisions. Yet, they maintained no ability or means of force to carry out these decisions. Any measure would have to be unanimously accepted by all states under the Articles of Confederation lending to the inherent weakness of the government.

* Two examples of structural weakness illuminated the need for the creation of a stronger national government. Shay’s rebellion showed that the government under the Articles could not even protect shipping interest from domestic attacks, maintaining no army or police force. On the foreign front, the inability to challenge the Barbary pirates that attacked shipping exports underlined this weakness from any type of force levied against government interests.

The Articles of Confederation eventually folded and ceded to the constitutional convention. There was far from any guarantee that the convention would succeed and many at the time felt the American experiment would fail long before it even began.

Democracy.

Winston Churchill once said that, “Democracy is the worst form of government…except for all the other forms…” What he means by this is that democracy is flawed from the outset. It maintains a structural inability to get things done in any type of haste and harbors ill-will between officials and citizens alike. Politics confuse issues and cause strife that paralyzes nations. Dictators can get things done with one swift motion and as a government, that equals effectiveness. Yet, these decisions may be horrifically flawed and against the will of the populace. Politics in a Democracy allows people to argue about issues in a public forum, regardless of how ineffective that may be to form actual policy.

* During the early years of the American nation, Europeans gaffed at the attempt to engineer a true democracy. The democratic republic functioned on internal strife and hatred for much of its early years and it seems this sense of politics has continued now. Unlike today, however, issues of politics were fought more by individuals than groups. George Washington’s first cabinet illustrated this phenomenon. Probably the most genius ever compiled in a presidential cabinet–Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton–displayed how politics function in a democracy.

* Vice President Adams instantly grew to hate the vice presidency as he quickly learned that it maintained no actual power. Washington conferred on him in some occasions but Adams often felt jealous towards his affability; something that Adams inherently lacked. Secretary of State Jefferson became the odd-man out in the politics of the cabinet, as Washington himself leaned towards the Federalist party and Jefferson remained a stark Democratic Republican.

* The true display of internal politics came between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. They sat on the opposite fringe of belief while still both believing in democracy. Hamilton favored a monarchical democracy with a firm central figure while Jefferson favored a populist based democracy with little to no central power. A much discussed decision based on their ability to wield politics in their favor created the American financial system and the national capital in Washington, DC. Prior to their agreement, the American nation lacked the ability to incur debt and the capital remained in New York.

Politics is central in democracy. Its simply how things get done, without it, democracy would stand on stilts of ideals without a floor beneath it.