Brooks: Neither Party Taking the Lead

With the supercommittee a super failure, David Brooks breaks down the current state of our two-party system. Since the Civil War, there have been two major parties. One was the “sun party” that set the agenda, and the other was the “moon party” that reacted to it. “During Franklin Roosevelt’s era,” Brooks writes, the “Democrats were the Sun Party. During Ronald Reagan’s, Republicans were. Then, between 1996 and 2004, the two parties were tied.” Since that time, “no party [has taken] the lead.”

The Democrat and Republican parties used to contain serious internal debates — between moderate and conservative Republicans, between New Democrats and liberals. Neither party does now . . . Independent voters are trapped in a cycle of sour rejectionism — voting against whichever of the two options they dislike most at the moment. The shift between the 2008 election, when voters rejected Republicans, and the 2010 election, when voters rejected Democrats, was as big as any shift in recent history.

Brooks concludes with a sentiment that seems to be growing among voters across the country and the political spectrum: “It’s hard to see how we get out of this, unless some third force emerges . . .”