I was taking my customary morning brisk walk through Rock Creek Park, listening to the latest episode of The Ezra Klein Show, when I heard a proposal so chilling it nearly caused me to drop my oat milk cortado. The guest, political scientist Lee Drutman, was calmly advocating for the complete dismantling of the American political order. His weapon of choice? Proportional representation.
Drutman’s argument, which Klein entertained with his usual dangerous curiosity, rests on a superficially appealing premise: that America’s two-party system is structurally broken, and that shifting to proportional representation would pave the way for viable third parties, giving voters more choices.
It sounds lovely, doesn’t it? More choices. It is the exact sort of utopian academic theory that sounds wonderful in a faculty lounge at Johns Hopkins. But as someone who has spent the last three decades explaining Washington to the American people—and, more importantly, explaining the American people to Washington—I must interject.
We cannot give the American electorate more choices. Have you met them?
The two-party system is not an accident. It is a carefully engineered, load-bearing wall holding up the ceiling of American stability. Forcing 330 million wildly diverse, constantly angry citizens into two increasingly rigid demographic buckets is not a failure of our electoral structure. It is a triumph of democratic management.
Imagine, for a moment, the absolute chaos of a multi-party system. Under proportional representation, a block of voters who care deeply about labor rights might form a Labor Party. Voters who prioritize climate change might form a Green Party. Fiscal conservatives who find the current GOP too populist might form a center-right Business Party.
If we allow this, voters might actually find a political home that aligns with their material interests. They might cast a ballot for a candidate they genuinely like, rather than casting a ballot out of sheer, existential terror of the other side. And if we remove sheer, existential terror from the American political process, how on earth are we supposed to drive engagement on Substack?
We must also consider the devastating economic impact a multi-party system would have on the backbone of our nation’s capital: the political consulting class.
Last Thursday, over a delightful branzino at Cafe Milano, I discussed the Drutman proposal with a veteran of six presidential campaigns. He was visibly pale. The very idea of proportional representation strikes at the heart of the multibillion-dollar lesser-of-two-evils industry.
The beauty of a duopoly is that we only have to be slightly less detestable than exactly one other option at any given time. If we have to compete against three or four distinct, coherent visions for the future, my entire industry collapses.
He is entirely correct. Right now, a political party does not need a popular platform. It merely needs to point across the aisle and scream that the alternative is the end of the Republic. This is an incredibly efficient, low-overhead business model. It allows our political leaders to raise hundreds of millions of dollars via text message without ever having to promise anything as vulgar as legislation.
If we break the two-party system, politicians would be forced to compete on the quality of their ideas. I ask you, in all seriousness: is that the America you want your children to inherit? An America where our elected officials have to read policy papers instead of tweeting?
Last month, I had the privilege of moderating a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival titled Democracy in the Balance: How to Save the Voters From Themselves. The consensus among the assembled CEOs, former cabinet secretaries, and thought leaders was clear: the American public is simply too volatile to be trusted with nuance.
If you give a voter a third option, you invite the terrifying specter of accountability. Consider the current dynamic. If you are a progressive who is deeply dissatisfied with the Democratic Party’s moderate incrementalism, where can you go? Nowhere. You must vote for them anyway. If you are a traditional conservative who is appalled by the Republican Party’s populist turn, what is your recourse? None. You must pull the lever and hold your nose.
This captive-market dynamic is the envy of the corporate world. Imagine if Apple and Microsoft could legally prohibit the existence of a third operating system, forcing consumers to endlessly purchase products they actively dislike simply because the alternative is perceived to be fatal. That is what our two parties have achieved. It is a breathtaking feat of anti-competitive engineering. To dismantle it now, just as it has reached peak profitability, would be an act of sheer economic vandalism.
Furthermore, we must consider the aesthetic and cognitive load on our media institutions. Every four years, we are treated to the glorious, binary simplicity of the electoral map. Red states and blue states. Cable news anchors standing before the magic wall, zooming in on Maricopa County, tapping the screen to see if a fractional shift in the suburbs will save the soul of the nation.
Introduce proportional representation, and what happens to the magic wall? It becomes a hideous, fractured kaleidoscope of purples, yellows, and greens. A multi-party map would require the American public to understand complex fractions, coalition-building, and parliamentary thresholds.
Our television personalities are simply not trained for this. You cannot ask a man who has spent twenty years mastering the dramatic pause before announcing the results from a single swing county in Ohio to suddenly explain the intricacies of a center-left supply-and-confidence agreement. It is cruel, and I will not stand for it.
Drutman argues that proportional representation would reduce extreme polarization. He claims it would force parties to build coalitions and govern through consensus.
This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what the American voter actually wants. The American voter does not want consensus. The American voter wants a reality television show where the stakes are absolute, the villains are cartoonish, and the gridlock is perpetual.
If parties are forced to build coalitions, they might actually pass laws. If they pass laws, the status quo might change. And as a homeowner in a highly desirable zip code whose portfolio is performing quite well under the current regime of perpetual legislative paralysis, I must insist that the status quo is fine, actually.
When Ezra Klein nods thoughtfully at the idea of breaking the two-party duopoly, he is indulging in a dangerous fantasy. He is forgetting the fundamental purpose of our electoral structure.
The two-party system was not designed to give people a voice. It was designed to filter the terrifying, chaotic noise of the masses into two manageable, easily controllable streams of revenue for consultants in Alexandria. It is a hostage situation, yes. But it is a bipartisan hostage situation. And in an increasingly fractured world, isn't there something beautiful about the fact that 330 million people are all trapped in the exact same basement?
Let us discard this foolish talk of proportional representation. Let us embrace the binary. The next time you walk into a voting booth and feel a deep, soul-crushing despair at the two names on the ballot, take comfort in the knowledge that you are participating in a grand tradition. You are keeping the system stable. You are keeping the map red and blue. And most importantly, you are keeping people like me comfortably employed.