Mickey Edwards, credit Gia Regan

Election season brings, as always, a contentious bout between “sides.” In the American two-party system, this concept is facilely reduced to a contest between Republicans and Democrats, but the oversimplification is revealing of how Americans gain access to the democratic process. If party leaders have created a deadlock of partisan politics, then voters are the ones who are severed from the very essence of government. The dysfunction has been long recognized but rarely addressed at its causes; effecting change requires a further investigation of the polarizing factors that stymie political philosophy and action.

Between interviews with Terri Gross on Fresh Air and Melissa Harris-Perry on her eponymous MSNBC show, we caught up with former congressman Mickey Edwards, author of The Parties Versus the People: How to Turn Republicans and Democrats into Americans, to get the basics of his analysis of the dysfunction of America’s federal government, how partisanship is undermining our democracy, and what steps we must take so that the people, not parties, control our government. As Edwards writes in the book’s preface, “My aim is to open up the process to give American voters more choice and more voice, and to eliminate the partisan forces that limit options and dilute representation. I wish to restore democracy to our democracy.”

Yale University Press: Why this book?

Mickey Edwards: Americans have become all too familiar with a government that seems perpetually deadlocked over partisan differences. Democracy depends on competition between alternative visions and energetic debate over proposed policies, but in the end, the sides have to be able to make the compromises that will enable the government to meet its constitutional responsibilities. Instead we have a constant battle between private clubs for advantage in the next election.

After sixteen years as a member of Congress and twenty years of studying government from the outside, I came to realize that we’ve been wrong about the root of the problem: it’s not that we elect the wrong people, we expect them to govern, in a political system that rewards intransigence and considers compromise a sellout. The problem is systemic—closed primaries that narrow voter choices, partisan redistricting, and a Congress of competing teams—and there’s no way to fix it except by changing the system itself.

YUP: What can we do about it?

ME: Ultimately, the people decide. Large numbers of voters no longer feel loyalty to a political party. They have it in their hands to force change through referenda and citizen initiatives, and through direct confrontation with elected officials. We can demand that our government officials serve us not primarily as Republicans or Democrats but as Americans.

YUP: Is that realistic?

ME: Absolutely: Washington State and California have already changed their systems. Hundreds of thousands of citizens support reform organizations that are working to break down partisan control. More than four in ten voters have rejected the party system. The revolution is already under way.

Mickey Edwards, a congressman for sixteen years and a faculty member at Harvard and Princeton for the subsequent sixteen years, is a vice president of the Aspen Institute. He has been a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and other newspapers, and he broadcasts a weekly commentary on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. He writes an online column for the Atlantic.