At nearly 900 pages, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) was a sprawling collection of tax breaks, spending cuts, and a breathtaking surge for the debt limit and national defense and deportations which means in sum that the nation has effectively re-united under a One Party System.

Forget that OBBBA will cut $1 trillion from Medicaid, or giveaway $1 trillion in tax cuts for the richest 1%, because the interest on the nation’s $36+ trillion debt now exceeds $1 trillion annually. Naturally, OBBBA raises the debt ceiling $5 trillion to pay for $150 billion in new defense spending, and another $150 billion for border enforcement and deportations. OBBBA increased the funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from $10 billion to more than $100 billion by 2029, making ICE the single most heavily funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.

The high court has given the president immunity (No. 23–939); protects the executive’s actions from nationwide injunctions (No. 24A884); and whether by chance or design has carved a path for Executive Orders — which in at least one incident direct the Justice Department not to enforce duly enacted Supreme Court sanctioned statutes — to delay, flout, or sidestep the rule of law (No. 24–657).

“The current US political climate is characterized by widespread distrust in government and institutions, deep partisan polarization, and negative perceptions of the political process. Americans express frustration with the way their democracy functions, and many feel the American government is not working for them.” While the quote could describe the present-day, it’s lifted from the “National Intelligencer” some 200 years ago; on the occasion of the first presidential election; and the advent of the Two Party System.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Edward Larson chronicled the First Presidential Campaign in 1800, and holds our Founding Fathers culpable for the dissidence and political practices we experience today. “They could write like angels and scheme like demons,” says Larson, tracing the political careers of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson to America’s First Presidential Campaign, the first spark of partisanship in American politics, and the advent of the Two Party System. Larson sat down with Charlatan to alight upon “A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign.”

George Washington was unanimously elected president by the Electoral College in the first two national elections, and therefore the first and only non-partisan President of the United States. He was an Independent politician who held that “partisanship represents the gravest threat to freedom,” and feared political parties and conflict would undermine America’s republic.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were Washington’s VP and Secretary of State respectively, and naturally fostered factions setting the framework for the First Party System. America’s First Presidential Campaign saw Adam’s Federalist Party advocating for a strong central government to ensure domestic peace, while Jefferson’s Republican Party feared that a strong central government would devolve the young republic into a monarchy. Two very different approaches to government, a terse, ideological rift ensued setting the tone for American politics.

There were only 200 newspapers published in 1800 and reached all 5.3 million Americans daily. “Every town had a Republican and a Federalist paper,” says Larson, “and each presented the world from partisan points of view.” Larson points out that newspapers were the only form of communication in 1800, and represented a single, highly concentrated source of information.

Today, media is omnipresent. It both informs and makes impressions on users who retrieve their news only from those with whom they trust and agree. "A newspaper is not just for reporting the news as it is," Mark Twain said, "but to make people mad enough to do something about it."

About three-quarters of U.S. adults (77%) say they follow the news at least some of the time, and nearly half of U.S. adults (44%) say they intentionally seek out news extremely often or often, according to Pew. On balance, the same percentage at 154 million people who cast a vote in the 2024 U.S. presidential election (65%).

“The French Revolution was the topic of the day during the first presidential campaign because it linked the French and American experiments with democracy,” says Larson, “and viewed Bonaparte’s coup as a standing army threatening popular democracy.” Partisan newspapers and pamphlets editorialized public opinion on both sides of the issue.

Republican newspapers reported the news from France in Jeffersonian terms using the press as a political tool to discredit the legitimacy and security of Federalist rule. Conversely, Federalist papers warned against a similarly terrorizing military coup if Jefferson were to become president.

Immigration was a major topic and tool both then and now,” says Larson, “and the election of 1800 set a precedent for negative campaigning by discrediting the opposition through personal attacks and accusations.”

The first radio news program was broadcast on August 31, 1920, and Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first sitting president to speak over the wires. John F. Kennedy used his physical charm and charisma on television in 1960, and Barack Obama’s masterful use of the Internet in 2008 set the precedent for campaigning in the digital age. However, Donald Trump will forever be remembered for instituting social media from the Oval.

Acknowledging the very social media culture we live in, Trump was the first to use a 142 character, insult-slinging, reactionary Internet norm called Twitter to create a distinctive, unprecedented political brand. He was the first to embrace a reactionary culture in real time which makes ludicrous, pervasive, racist, and sexist social commentary not only accessible—but unavoidable. However, negative campaigning isn’t new and can be traced to newspapers in America’s First Presidential Campaign.

America was a “fundamentally Christian nation even as the nature of its religious establishment was evolving,” says Larson, and this evolution was embraced by many influential Republican figures including Thomas Jefferson. Republicans observed state churches in Europe as “bloated, corrupt hierarchies that invoked irrational superstitions to oppress people and support despots.” Federalists felt “secular chaos had replaced Christian order stirring the French Revolution,” says Larson, “and that it could happen in the United States if anticlerical leaders like Jefferson took power.” For Federalists, freedom of religion meant freedom from religion.

Similarly, Republican papers published pieces questioning the character and creed of many Federalist leaders, at times referencing Hamilton’s extramarital affair and “linking Adams’s public support of civil religion to popular concerns over the authoritarian tendencies of Federalists.” The articles turned private lives into public stories, and effectively set the stage for today’s political climate.

In his Farewell Address, George Washington famously wrote “partisanship is the country’s worst enemy." A sentiment entirely lost on a political outsider who consolidated the House of Representatives, United States Senate and White House under what he calls a “mandate,” and Elon Musk now calls the “Porky Pig Party.” Musk has vowed to start a third party. Funding’s no issue, but there are others.

The billionaire’s outrage over Trump’s signature legislation fuels his pledge to rejoin the political fray, despite the wounds he’s taken and the poor electoral record of mavericks. If money talks in American politics, Elon Musk is bellowing. Having spent $288 million last year on a ticket to return Donald Trump and MAGA to Washington, Musk now has a new itinerary for President Trump and his One Big Beautiful Bill: “Get in line with the cost-cutting agenda you campaigned on or get the hell out of dodge.”