The president and his defenders question the legitimacy of last month's impeachment vote on the grounds that it was driven by Republican partisanship. As proof they point to the super-majority of House Republicans who voted to send the case against the president to the Senate. Implicit in both arguments is the suggestion that partisanship is always bad.
American history teaches otherwise.
Now it is true that America's Founders decried partisanship. The first, of course, had generated massive oppression and strife in the European countries from which most early Americans emigrated. And the second became a threat to our own democracy in the years immediately after the American Revolution, when legislatures acted irresponsibly to relieve contracted debts by printing worthless paper money. But when the American party system as we know it was born in 1800, it was not to destroy, but to save the Constitution. Since 1800, we have had two-party government.