# How good must a party govern to hold the U.S. presidency forever? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [February 18, 2016, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-must-a-party-govern-to-hold-the-u-s-presidency-forever/746428 "2016-02-18T08:42:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2016, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-must-a-party-govern-to-hold-the-u-s-presidency-forever/746428/21 "2016-02-19T15:50:56Z")
It’ll never happen, nor should it. No political party has an absolute corner on the market of ideas, energy and integrity. Any party holding power too long inevitably becomes complacent, tired and/or corrupt. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2016, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-must-a-party-govern-to-hold-the-u-s-presidency-forever/746428/22 "2016-02-19T16:58:43Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > How well would either the Republican or Democratic Parties have to govern, in order to have a perpetual dynasty; winning every single U.S. presidential election from now on, indefinitely, never losing again? > … > Say, 5% GDP growth, every year, with unemployment never rising above 3%, a crime rate that’s about half or one-third of where it currently is (as of the year 2016,) and an environment that’s getting better and cleaner every year? > … The rest of your post fails on the error in this part. The President \<\> the Government. The vast majority of the stuff that matters to voters’ daily lives, and all of what you posted in my snip above are the actions of Congress. Not of the President. We could theoretically have a Congress under control of one competent and effective party for many, many years accomplishing all those nice domestic things you want. And a President from the other side doing whatever it is Presidents do. In addition to the above which nobody has posted about so far … As others have said: There’s no consensus on what “good” is beyond a couple of Mom & Apple Pie issues. And even there the consensus falls apart once you get into details. And even if there was such a consensus, it isn’t stable over time. Society changes faster than politics does. The Whigs haven’t fielded a Presidential candidate in about 150 years. Nor a Congressman. But some Whig back then was working hard on what they needed to do to ensure “winning every single U.S. presidential election from now on, indefinitely, never losing again?” “Indefinitely” & “never” are a very long time in the absolute. Conversely a week is an eternity in politics. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2016, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-must-a-party-govern-to-hold-the-u-s-presidency-forever/746428/23 "2016-02-19T17:00:42Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > 1. The government should at minimum be perceived to be working as expected, as in barely acceptable. But the problem with the formulation is that continuous good governing will lead to increased expectations. "All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? " Eventually the party in charge won’t be able to match those expectations and people will wonder whether the opposing party could do better. The only way to have a permanent majority would be to have enough power so that you can rig the system to disenfranchise your opponents. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2016, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-must-a-party-govern-to-hold-the-u-s-presidency-forever/746428/24 "2016-02-19T18:10:20Z")
And even then your hegemony only lasts maybe 20 years. Look how Chavismo is falling apart in Venezuela now despite totalitarian control of the press, the legislature and the judiciary. The only truly lasting one-party systems are in places with widespread low education and a strong ethnic divide. e.g. Baathist Iraq. Party affiliation was based on ethnicity/sect, and absent a truly huge _deus ex machina_ named Bush they’d still be running the show there. Which raises the question of whether the plutocracy in this country can entrench widespread low education and a strong ethnic divide. If so they and their straphangers may last a couple generations in power. If not, not. To me this is the key question of the next 15-20 years. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2016, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-must-a-party-govern-to-hold-the-u-s-presidency-forever/746428/25 "2016-02-20T18:47:06Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > …The only truly lasting one-party systems are in places with widespread low education and a strong ethnic divide. e.g. Baathist Iraq… You need a large and merciless secret police force, too. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2016, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-must-a-party-govern-to-hold-the-u-s-presidency-forever/746428/26 "2016-02-20T19:00:39Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > The only truly lasting one-party systems are in places with widespread low education and a strong ethnic divide. e.g. Baathist Iraq. Party affiliation was based on ethnicity/sect, and absent a truly huge _deus ex machina_ named Bush they’d still be running the show there. Was Iraq under SH a place of “low education”? I never thought of it that way. Same with Syria or even China. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2016, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-must-a-party-govern-to-hold-the-u-s-presidency-forever/746428/27 "2016-02-20T19:37:00Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Was Iraq under SH a place of “low education”? I never thought of it that way. Same with Syria or even China. It’s kind of a relative thing. SH did very good things for education (at least early on), and that’s probably what you’re thinking of. If you were an Iraqi at the right age, you had a virtually 100% chance of attending school and learning to read. On the other hand, this only affected kids over a relatively short period, maybe 20 years at most and that means that only a small portion of the population had education schools available for a complete western-style 13-year education. To put some numbers on this, here’s what [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Iraq)says about overall education status today: > [@](#): > > Illiteracy is widespread in comparison with before, standing at 39% for the rural population. Almost 22% of the adult population in Iraq has never attended school, and a mere 9% have secondary school as highest level completed. As far as gender equity, 47% of women in Iraq are either fully or partly illiterate, as women’s education suffers from differences across regions, and especially between the North and South. That 22% of adults never attending school would mostly refer to people who are too old to have been helped by the reforms of the 70’s and 80’s and that’s a pretty large base of uneducated people. Combine that with the tiny percentage of those with post-secondary education (just 9%) and you see that his programs weren’t bad in terms of basic skills and literacy, but certainly didn’t provide the doctors, engineers, teachers, etc that I want to see before I called it very educated. It’s the kind of thing that could have produced a real revolution in the culture/economy if they could have maintained it for another 20 years. If only they had stayed out of wars with… well, basically everyone including themselves, but starting with Iran. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2016, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-must-a-party-govern-to-hold-the-u-s-presidency-forever/746428/28 "2016-02-20T20:02:26Z")
It’s probably impossible, and here’s why: if a President or mayor or governor does a great job solving one huge problem, people won’t stay grateful forever. Another problem will come along, and people will start asking “What have you done for me LATELY?” To oversimplify, let’s pretend to agree that FDR ended the Great Depression. Well, did everyone benefiting from the new prosperity remain loyal to the Democrats? No! Many now started griping about taxes and voted for Ike. To oversimplify, let’s pretend to agree that Giuliani and Bloomberg were responsible for drastically reducing crime in New York. Did New Yorkers stay loyal to the GOP? No. With crime no longer an issue, New Yorkers could safely jerk leftward again, to Bill De Blasio’s benefit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-must-a-party-govern-to-hold-the-u-s-presidency-forever/746428.md?page=1)