President Johnson vs. The Republicans: The Impacts of Checks and Balances on our Two-Party System

After President Lincoln was assassinated, his vice president, Andrew Johnson replaced him and became the new president. However, because Johnson was a democrat, his views were extremely different from Lincoln's which inevitably caused him to be one of the most hated American president's in history. Yet, even though he might have been unfavorable to the citizens of the United States due to his dedication towards preventing federal Reconstruction from giving rights to African Americans in the country, his actions symbolized a very important part of our Constitution, and that is its balance of powers. First of all, when Congress was trying to pass the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments in order to give African Americans civil rights and allow them to have power within the country, Johnson had vetoed each one believing that "White men alone must manage the South." However, because the vote was able to go back through each house of Congress and get a 2/3 majority vote, the legislature ended up overriding the veto and being able to amend the Constitution three times in a row. These amendments were extremely significant, not just because of their content, but also because they allowed both President Johnson as well as Congress to prevent each other from gaining too much political power. If Johnson had not been able to veto Congress' amendments in the first place, then democrats would have been enraged and claimed that the legislative branch had too much political power which could allow it to dictate them. Also, if Congress had not been able to override the vetoes with their 2/3 majorities, then republicans would have claimed that the president had too much power in government as he could have so much control over the policies being passed even though he represented the ideas of only one political party. So, through the political process of checks and balances, the legislative and executive branches of government were able to prevent each other from dictating government policies, which inevitably allowed democratic representation to prosper. Yet, even though the Constitution's checks and balances were beneficial in this situation in terms of preventing the minority (democrats) from controlling the majority (republicans), it seems like it wasn't intended to be that way, or that it would be so limiting on political progress. After all, when they were being written, politicians hadn't thought of the idea that it wouldn't be an individual controlling a government without these balances as opposed to an entire political group composed of millions of people. Does that mean that these checks and balances working in a system where different political parties controlled different branches of government was an unintended side effect? And does the fact that they work necessarily correlate to them being a good thing? After all, if Congress couldn't get the 2/3 majority on these amendments, African-Americans would be systematically oppressed to a much greater extent than they did during the South's periods of segregation all because of the way political parties affected government. That meant that if there slightly more democrats in Congress at the time, they would have been able to control the entire political process just by using their political party's power to their advantage. So, in conclusion, I leave off with these final questions based around this example of political parties affecting how checks and balances function within the United States: Is it "democratic" for political parties to have the power to abuse checks and balances in order to have their voices dominate the federal government? Or is this justified by the fact that a single political party can represent the ideas of millions of Americans, just not those part of the opposing party?