Virtually every election in recent memory—particularly the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, and even last week’s midterm elections—has been hotly contested, often being decided by little more than a handful of votes in key states. Because the results of some of these elections have been quite controversial, it often seems as if Republicans and Democrats are miles apart in terms of their political views. However, at the same time, analysts are arguing that in today’s political climate, the two major American parties are actually closer than ever before in the principles for which they stand.
In Thomas Jefferson’s day, some elections were perhaps even more controversial than some of those we’ve seen lately. The election of 1800, for example, in which Jefferson became the nation’s third president, was so close that it had to be decided by the members of the House of Representatives. Despite the hostility between the two leading parties of the time—the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Federalists—the newly elected Jefferson sought to make peace between the two sides, reminding Americans that, in essence, they all believed in the same ideals. We would do well even today to heed Jefferson’s advice:
“[E]very difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”
Maybe today we are, in a sense, all Republicans and all Democrats.
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