BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — It was a revealing moment in American politics. In endorsing Barack Obama for president of the United States over fellow Republican John McCain, Colin Powell was not simply giving his blessing to this candidate. That was the easy part.
The harder part was getting up the courage to say something profoundly worrisome about America's Republican Party, with which the mild-spoken military hero has been identified for years. And what he said over the weekend was that today's Republican Party is no longer the useful, broad-gauged corrective to the Democratic Party that it once had been and still needs to be.
In a very large, multi-branched democracy such as the U.S., broad-based political parties that hold the other in check and compete vigorously for voter approval are essential for political stability. Extremist splinter parties accomplish little. The generally pathetic history of third parties in America is illustrative. So when one of the major parties begins to drift, however slowly, in the direction of an extremist splinter party, our democracy runs the danger of developing structural faults of debilitating character.