In his Farewell Address to the nation in 1796, informing voters of his intention not to seek reelection to a third term, President George Washington warned the American people about the dangers and divisiveness of political parties. One of the country’s foremost Founding Fathers, and the commanding general of its army during the Revolutionary War, he wrote:

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

George was right then and now.