The United States is a federal constitutional republic with a Presidential system. Three separate branches share powers. The U.S. Congress forms the legislative branch. It is a bicameral legislative body, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. The President heads the executive branch as head of state. The Judicial branch comprises the Supreme Court and lower federal courts. The state governments have the power to make laws within their jurisdictions. Each state has a constitution following the pattern of the federal Constitution. Each state has three branches: an executive branch headed by a Governor, a legislative body, and a judicial branch. Counties, municipalities, townships, and school districts also have elected officials. Officials are popularly elected at the federal, state, and local levels.
Initially, the founding fathers distrusted political parties. Those who favored a strong central government and a national financial system became known as Federalists. Thomas Jefferson favored a more limited government. His supporters called themselves Republicans or Jeffersonian Republicans but later became known as Democratic-Republicans. The Federalists dissolved after the War of 1812.
By the 1830s, the Democratic-Republicans had evolved into the Democratic party. By the 1840s, Democrats and Whigs were the country’s two main political coalitions.
Two political parties, The Democrats and the Republicans, have been in place since the Civil War. Party labels were very fluid before the Civil War. The Democratic Party was formed in 1828. The Republican Party was officially founded in 1854. Both parties can be traced back to the Founding Fathers. The Libertarian and Green parties also have a small presence. The Whig party was formed in 1834 to oppose Andrew Jackson. Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison were Whigs before switching to the Republican Party. Millard Fillmore and Zachery Taylor were Whig presidents. Daniel Webster and Henry Clay were Whigs. Slavery fractured the Whig Party. The Know-Nothings Party, 1849-1860. was a short-lived populist party. Anti-slavery Whigs spun off to found the Republican party. In the 1860 election, a split between Southern and Northern Democrats over slavery propelled the Republican candidate Abe Lincoln to victory, though he won only 40 percent of the popular vote.
The Republican reconstruction policies would solidify white Southerners’ loyalty to the Democratic Party for many decades. During Reconstruction, Republicans would become increasingly associated with big business and financial interests in the more industrialized North. The Republican Party’s association with business interests caused it to be seen as the party of the upper-class elite. The federal government had expanded during the war; the first income tax was implemented. Northern financiers and industrialists greatly benefited from the increased spending. White resistance to Reconstruction solidified in the South. By the mid-1870s Democratic Southern state legislatures had wiped out most of Reconstruction’s changes.
The rise of Progressive movements sought to improve life for working-class Americans and encourage Protestant values. Republicans championed progressive social, economic, and labor reforms. Republicans benefited from the prosperity of the 1920s. In 1929, the stock market crashed because of rampant speculation. The Great Depression would follow that crash. FDR, in 1932 beat the Republican Herbert Hoover in a landslide. The Republicans were blamed for the Great Depression.
The relief programs included in FDR’s New Deal earned widespread approval. The New Deal brought an era of Democratic dominance that would last for 50 years. Between 1932 and 1980, Republicans won only four presidential elections and had a Congressional majority for only four years. IKE was the Republican President from 1953 to 1961. He supported equal rights for women and African Americans. Nixon had significant accomplishments, but he was flawed. The conservative Republican Ronald Reagan brought America back to where it once belonged.
In the 1940s, Southern voters began migrating to the GOP. They opposed big government, labor unions, Democrat support for civil rights, and abortions. Also, many black voters, who had remained loyal to the Republican Party since the Civil War, began voting Democratic after the Depression and the New Deal. After running on a platform based on reducing the size of the federal government, Reagan increased military spending, spearheaded substantial tax cuts, and championed the free market with policies known as Reaganomics. In foreign policy, the United States emerged victorious in its long-running Cold War with the Soviet Union.
The GOP recaptured the White House in 2000 with the highly contested victory of George W.Bush. The 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks on the Trade Towers in NYC put us on a war footing. The economy fell into a deep recession in the mid-1980s. Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected U.S. president in 2008. The populist Tea Party movement opposed Obama’s economic and social reform policies.
President Trump. In the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton was defeated by Republican Donald Trump. Joe Biden replaced Trump in 2020.
