If you asked any average American on the street to describe our government, what do you think he/she would say? It's likely they would paint a picture rife with political deadlocks, skyrocketing debt, hate-filled campaign seasons and the splitting of the entire country between conservative and liberal ideologies. Many believe that if congress isn't angering an entire half of the nation's voters with controversial laws, it's blocking the president from getting anything done!

Who's to blame? A lot of people, especially millennials, think that our political parties are to blame. If only the Democrats and Republicans could get along and hear each other out, we wouldn't have these problems. Many even believe that if we eliminated political parties from the system completely, we would be better off and look like a real democracy, like ancient Greece. The Greeks had things figured out, right? We based everything else off them anyway.

I've talked to many friends and acquaintances who are completely unaffiliated with politics, simply because they hate the parties and believe their existence is the sole reason our government can't seem to agree on anything.

Clearly the founders of our great nation wouldn't have wanted such a broken system. In fact, many people cite this famous George Washington quote:

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things...by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

-From Goodreads.com

Pretty heavy stuff. Washington wanted our fledgling nation to avoid parties altogether. Clearly, the most revered man in American history knew what he was saying. If only we had listened to Washington, we wouldn't be in this mess today, where nobody agrees on anything and the government can never get its act together!

But wait.

What if I told you that political parties are actually good for America? What if I told you that the parties we have today are only shells of their former selves, and that today's problems are actually the result of having parties that are too weak to function properly? Instead of removing political parties to clean the system, it would be better for America if we strengthened their influence.

First let's look at history, specifically that Washington quote. The political parties we have today look nothing like the parties that existed during Washington's time. Political parties in the late 1700s were not built into the government system, like ours is today. Parties only rose up as radical movements in European systems (like the British Parliament). Usually, they consisted of people who wanted to overthrow the current system of government, and replace it with a completely new one in which they alone were in charge. This was the type of political party Washington was warning against, not the modern kind that we have today, which had not yet been invented.

Here's the key point I'm trying to make: American political parties, that's right, the Republicans and the Democrats, are actually a key component of our government process that we shouldn't do away with.

The Constitution outlines the procedures that elected officials in all three branches must go through to exercise their powers. It tells congress how to make laws, it tells the president what he/she can and cannot do, and it outlines how the courts are to function. However, it says little about how we are to elect these officials. Political Parties are the "unofficial" institutions intended to fill that gap, and connect the voters with the head honchos in Washington.

If we didn't have parties, there would be no way to connect the voter with Washington, especially in a country this large. Even the founders agreed that direct democracy would never work in an area larger than a village, as too many conflicting opinions would prevent anything from getting done. It's also hard for our representatives, some representing over one million voters per district, to accurately be our voice in congress. Parties help to give us as voters the voice that would otherwise be lost in a sea of similar but diverse opinions. If we want to see something changed on the federal level, it is natural to assume that we get connected to like-minded people who want to see the same change. Parties provide that channel, and that network of voters who want to see similar change. They were so effective throughout American history that they were given a special place in the electoral process: At their respective conventions, party members were to decide and nominate candidates to run for president. This gave the American people actual power that they could wield as card-carrying party members. Parties flourished (not without corruption) throughout the 1800s and up to the turn of the Century.

During the progressive era of the early 1900s, many forward-looking Americans viewed parties as a hotbed of corruption. Progressives decided to neuter them by introducing the primary system. Rather than decide candidates at the conventions, parties were to hold primary elections, where anybody could decide to run for president, and in turn any card-carrying party member could vote for that candidate to run in the general election against the other party. This took the power away from party leadership, and placed it in the hands of the masses; it was direct democracy at its finest. Also, the progressives did away with the "spoils system" many parties employed; they would give party members positions in the new administration following electoral victory, from the secretary of state all the way down to local postal workers. The progressives changed this to a merit-based system. But it did come with consequences.

Rather than allow party leadership at the conventions to decide who would best represent the party as a candidate, the primary elections required prospective candidates to announce their campaigns far in advance. Also, they allowed anybody with enough wealth and influence to run for president, regardless of how the party leadership felt about them. This opened the field up to all sorts of demagoguery. Suddenly, only those with enough money and power could run for president. "Dark horse", or previously unknown, candidates for president are now next to impossible.

Without the power they once had, the existence of both the Democrats and the Republicans was threatened at the turn of the century. They realized that the only way they could continue to attract people to their respective banners was to focus on ideology, and lay out a moral and personal cause for people to vote for their candidates; over the decades, the conservatives fell in step with the Republicans, and the liberals fell in step with the Democrats. This has progressed so far that now, compromise in congress is the equivalent of political suicide. This emphasis on ideology over sound policy is the issue, not the existence of the parties themselves. Furthermore, it may stand to reason that the primary system is to blame for the barrage of demagogue political elites and loudmouthed billionaires who are currently running for president.

Giving the parties the power to actually nominate candidates at their conventions, rather than rubber-stamping primary winners, would certainly be a good start. A lot of people don't realize that the parties were not always built on conservative and liberal ideology, and were once merely a vehicle for policy change and voter choice. Eliminating parties would do nothing but disable people's ability to voice their concerns on a local, state and national scale; conservative and liberal viewpoints would remain the same regardless.

It's the ideology that has us deadlocked. Not the Democrats and the Republicans.