Democratic Party Is Better Than

¶ … Democratic Party is better than the Republican Party.

It is often difficult to decide who did most for their country, the Republicans or the Democrats, but there are facts that sustain the idea that every moment of national economic growth or political supremacy on the international stage is associated to a Democratic leadership at the White House. The Democratic presidents were always charismatic individuals, whose presence made a mark on the times they were leaving in. Individuals such as FDR or Kennedy were able to successfully fight the opposing forces, either Soviets or Germans, and to leave a prosper and powerful country at the end of their mandates.

This paper will aim to support the idea that Democratic rule is often based on principles of social equity which encourage a sustainable development of the country, compared to Republican expansion, often chaotic and unrealistic, unsustainable and based on conservative principles less adaptable to today's environment.

The analysis should first concentrate on the economy and the economic segment, as well as on the measures that the Democratic Party took in time to build a strong and sustainable economy. The Democratic Part is known to encourage an economy that can support itself and as a party which does not encourage public debt or external deficits. If we look at the historical data, the years that marked a serious increase in external trade deficits are usually associated with Republican presidential terms.

An excellent example in this sense is 1983, during Ronald Reagan's presidency. The trade deficit had been marked at 26 billion USD in 1982, only to suddenly double in value to 57 billion USD in 1983, the following year. This is the type of unsustainable macroeconomic changes that we can talk about. Such an increase in the national trade deficit of over 100% in one single year is enormous.

The trend continued over the next 25 years, but with an emphasis on the last years of Bush governance, when the U.S. trade deficit reached the worrying value of 758 billion USD. The figure is not necessarily a problem in itself, but it can become one if we discuss whether or not the deficit is sustainable. This was a question that theoreticians asked themselves in 2000, only at the beginning of the Bush presidential terms, and they had arrived to worrying conclusions, but now it's probably significantly less sustainable than it was at that point.

The 1990s represented one of the best periods in U.S. economic history and this period is associated with Bill Clinton and his democratic presidential terms. During this period, economic growth was constantly high over the entire period, exports averaged 7.5% a year and businesses prospered. This is not the only case when the Democratic leadership created a highly competitive and efficient economy.

During the 1930s, F. Roosevelt restructured the failed U.S. economy and took the country out of the deep economic crisis that laissez-faire policies implanted by previous Republican presidents Coolidge and Hoover had created in the United States. He managed to restructure the banking and industrial sectors, to deduce unemployment to normal levels and, especially, to reduce the increasingly alarming inflationary process.

The general agenda of the Democratic Party, as well as the legislative proposals generally sustained by Democrat Senators or Representatives, sustains the idea that the party takes actions that are likely to spread economic prosperity to a larger number of U.S. citizens. Such actions include, for example, governmental spending in such areas as the educational system or the healthcare system, rather than in areas such as military defense or security. This certainly does not mean that these areas are ignored, but it shows that Democratic concern spans a larger number of social classes and that governmental spending is often targeted towards areas with national benefit.

The arguments previously presented are not to describe the periods of Republican governance as periods of constant economic decline. There have been some Republican presidents who encouraged economic growth and prosperity. However, the constant problem of such Republican presidents resided in the fact that they never looked for a sustainable growth, a growth that could penetrate all categories of U.S. citizens to the same degree. Republican policies were generally near-sighted and without perspective.

This is also the case for the Republican foreign policies, as compared to Democratic external actions. Unfortunately, the unrealism from the economic sectors was translated into such actions as well.

Two of the external affairs blunders, the War in Vietnam and the War in Iraq, were fed through individual Republican ambitions and through a near-sightedness that has no place in foreign policy. Both Nixon and George W. Bush completed military actions that brought no result other than a large number of U.S. soldier casualties.

At the same time, democratic foreign policy, from the times of FDR to Clinton's presidential mandates during the 1990s, has been characterized as "a blend of liberalism and realism," similar to the one governing the internal, economic policies. Their constant interest did not exclude national security, but this needed to be adopted in the period subsequent to the Cold War, when the bipolar world was no longer a reality.

In my opinion, they have managed to defend national security through actions that did not involve the U.S. troops to the degree to which the Republican presidential terms did. In this sense, we can point out towards the campaign against Serbia, during the late 1990s. This campaign was based almost entirely on the American technologic advantage, resulting in few, if any, losses. Direct military intervention was turned down in favor of air strikes and, then, a swift diplomatic campaign.

The Democratic tendency towards reconcilement and a measured approach rather than a conflicting one was clear through history. The peace treaty between Israel and Egypt was also signed during a Democratic term, during Jimmy Carter's presidency, in 1979. The historical agreement between the Israeli and the Palestinians, in the mid-1990s was the achievement of constant encouragement from Democrat Bill Clinton and the list could certainly continue.