A "Civilizing" Case for a Third Party

The following is a revised and extended version of a piece published on Style Weekly's Back Page.  It is republished here as background for arguments to be developed on this blog.

The situation is depressingly familiar.

It's mid-June, and the nominees of the two major parties are locked in.  Along with at least half of your fellow citizens, you're far from enthusiastic about your options.  Like more than 90% of them, you nonetheless know, to a reasonable certainly, the candidate for whom you will vote

Like nearly all Americans, you dread the next five months.  Vast amounts of money have been raised - by the campaigns and supposedly independent "super-PACs".   Attack ads already pollute radio and television.  Landline telephones will soon ring with robo-calls and "push polls".

Your favorite websites will, with the errant movement of a cursor, deliver spam carefully tailored to your presumed fears and preferences.  This year, even your cell phone will likely be co-opted.

The content of the campaign now beginning will be - almost entirely - negative.

It's going to be a long, hot summer, followed by a thoroughly nasty fall.

Many factors interact to produce the ugly political campaigns to which we have become accustomed.  Two predominate:  The fact that we have only two political parties, and the legal necessity, come November 6, of electing somebody. 

Given the rules of the game - a binary, forced choice - the behavior of the two presidential campaigns, and hundreds of campaigns for lower office, will be both rational and predictable.  

In any election, a candidate who conducts a serious, positive campaign, offering plausible solutions to real problems, runs a grave risk.  Real solutions inevitably have costs, and voters are generally reluctant to embrace sacrifice.

But - despite the fact that most Americans loathe negative campaigns - going negative works.

Why?  Because, when voters are presented with a binary choice, everything that dissuades them from voting for Candidate A necessarily moves them closer to voting for Candidate B. 

This reality reveals one of the strongest arguments for a serious third party.  When three or more parties contend for votes, the game changes. 

When there is a plausible Candidate C, Candidate A's attacks may still drive voters away from Candidate B.  But running a negative campaign will also drive voters away from Candidate A - to the ultimate benefit of Candidate C.

Thus, a strategy of staying positive suddenly becomes viable. 

 It doesn't always happen that way, of course.  But it can, and dramatically.

In 2004, I spent some time knocking on doors in New Hampshire for Vermont Governor Howard Dean.  While my young friends and I tromped the cold streets of Manchester, higher-ups in the Dean campaign  - then focused on Iowa - decided to go negative against Dick Gephardt.  Gephardt replied in kind.

Had there been only two candidates, Dean's strategy might have worked.  But John Kerry and John Edwards were also in the race, and they carefully avoided joining the fray.  The result:  Within weeks, Dean's prohibitive lead had melted away.

In the Iowa caucuses, Kerry and Edwards finished 1 - 2.  Dean made an impassioned speech - ending in an unfortunate attempt at a Rebel yell - and that was that.  Dean's New Hampshire lead evaporated, and the one candidate with a realistic chance of unseating George W. Bush wound up in the essentially futile post of Democratic Party Chairman.

Kerry and Edwards - the guys who stayed out of the Dean-Gephardt brawl - went on to form the Democratic ticket.  And lost in November.

Countless other examples, including many from other democracies, could be cited for the proposition that multiple parties work to penalize negative campaigning.

To be sure, Mr. Dooley had it right:  "Politics ain't beanbag."  In the real world, with so much at stake and so many resources available, negative campaigning will always be with us.

But when the rules of the game change, winning strategies also change.  When more than two viable options appear on the ballot, it's riskier to run a negative campaign – and somewhat more rewarding  to run a campaign of ideas.

Reason enough to welcome a third party.

Of course, creating that party won't be easy.  Creating a successful third party will take courage, determination, and years of effort against long odds.

But lately, the odds have been growing shorter. 

For one thing, in-depth polling shows that at somewhere between 34% and 40% of Americans don't identify with either "major party".  The unaffiliated now constitute a plurality - larger than the number who self- identify as either Democrats or Republicans.

Recent grassroots movements - the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement - have demonstrated that millions of Americans believe our political system is broken.  

Even serious scholars and political observers have begun defying the conventional wisdom that third parties cannot succeed in America .  Last fall, Columbia economist Jeffrey Sachs proposed a series of reforms in his book The Price of Civilization.   The key reform: a third party.

In February, journalist Linda Killian addressed UVA’s Miller Center Forum on the subject of her new book, The Swing Vote, which likewise prescribes a third party as one way of restoring America’s political system.

Even President Clinton’s former Secretary of Labor, Cal-Berkeley professor Robert Reich, has hinted his approval.  In a recent interview with Jon Stewart, Reich warned that the continued failure of the major parties will inevitably result in the rise of a third party.

Can it be done?

It can.  But to become viable, a third party must avoid several historic traps:

It must not become the plaything of some charismatic figure with an out-sized ego - only to be abandoned at his whim. 

It must not define itself merely as a party of the center, for both major parties are adept at maneuvering toward the center - for just long enough to win an election.

Most of all, it must not accept the standard definition of “success” imposed by journalists and political scientists - i.e., the ability to win the next election. 

A new third party must be disciplined and patient.  It must embrace serious reforms and commit itself to strong principles. 

But it must also be smart enough, and agile enough, to take advantage of growing public discontent with the existing major parties - building slowly while it concentrates on changing the rules of a game that no  longer makes sense.