Mr. Lincoln's Third Party

Last fall, I spent a few days working as Hal Holbrook's stand-in on the set of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln biopic.  In the dull, quiet time between set-ups, I had time to consider the state of our Union.

And it occurred to me that modern Americans should consider the fact that our sixteenth President was the only chief executive to lead a third party to power.

To be sure, some students of history might quibble with calling the Republicans of 1860 a "third party".  By the time voters went to the polls in 1860, the Republicans were almost certainly the most powerful political organization in the nation.

That said, the GOP had only been in existence for six years.  Beginning with widespread Northern revulsion at the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which erased the historic line excluding slavery from the territories, the Republican Party sprang rapidly into being.  In state after state, anti-slavery Democrats and Whigs abandoned lifelong rivalries to form "fusion" or "anti-Nebraska" parties.  Within two years, these local efforts had coalesced as a national new party.

But for several years, the Republicans were clearly a third party.  As the Whig Party imploded, its position as America's second party was filled by the American Party - the so-called "Know-Nothings" - whose anti-immigrant stance appealed to citizens looking for a distraction from endless political warfare over slavery.

But the Know-Nothings could not last.  Like today's "Tea Party" movement, their weakness lay in a refusal to address the most important issue confronting the nation.  Voters could be temporarily distracted by a negative agenda, but the real problem facing the country - slavery - would not go away.  The Know-Nothings vanished as quickly as they had appeared, leaving the field clear for a new party to challenge the Democrats.

Enter the Republicans.

But here's the point:  If the Republicans of 1860 were no longer a third party, they most assuredly were a third party in 1854 and 1855, when men like Lincoln were abandoning old loyalties - and cautiously embracing former adversaries - to start something new.

 

In today's America, the case for a new third party is as strong as it was in 1854.  In Washington, inter-party bickering has paralyzed government's ability to respond to a dire economic crisis - much  less to address huge, long-term challenges such as energy independence, global climate change, and the aging of the population.

And the American people have taken note.  Both the Tea Partiers and the new Occupy movement express discontents which neither major party is prepared to address.  The  two-party system is broken, as evidenced by the Pew Center's recent finding that, for the first time,  38% of Americans consider themselves "independents" - more than identify with either major party.

Distrust of government is widespread, demand for change, nearly universal.  In a century, conditions have never been better for the rise of a third party to challenge the existing duopoly.  Yet many with only a superficial understanding of American history repeat the old saw that third parties have never succeeded in American politics.

To that conventional wisdom, Mr. Lincoln's party is the exception which tests the rule.  

Americans fed up with the choices offered by the two-party system might well ask:  What was different about the Republicans of the 1850's?

Three things.

First, the Lincoln Republicans did not define their goals entirely in terms of winning the next election.  True, they were practical politicians, with a lust for office.  But their pragmatism yielded to a greater moral imperative - ending the expansion of slavery into the territories.

Impelled by this overarching cause, career politicians - who had defined their ambitions in terms of rising within an existing party - cast their fates to the wind by joining a new organization with an uncertain future.   Unusual acts of individual self-sacrifice, such as Lincoln's support of ex-Democrat Lyman Trumbull for a Senate seat Lincoln himself coveted, were surprisingly common.

Simply put, their cause was greater than short-term considerations of personal or partisan advantage, and that fact gave the Republicans a moral force impossible in an established party.

Second, the Republicans represented a new vision of American economic life.  As the party of America's emerging industrial movement - supported by a transportation revolution and fed by millions of small, family farms - the Republicans offered a free-market alternative to a system which depended upon human slavery.

Finally, the Republicans offered a vision of the future which no established party could embrace.  While their official platform eschewed outright abolition, their forthright opposition to slavery held the promise of revolutionary change.  In simple terms, the Republicans offered the prospect of something bolder than a mere continuation of the cautious politics of the Washington establishment.

Americans disenchanted with today's two-party system should carefully study the lessons of the Mr. Lincoln's third party.  A successful third party is possible, if it is incorporates three ideas:

• definition of success which does not include immediate electoral success;
• the combination of a moral imperative with a new vision for America's economic future; and
• a strong stand for changes which, while popular, cannot be embraced by either existing party.

Washington is in gridlock.  Over a third of Americans reject both major parties.  Left and right, Americans are beginning to take to the streets.

This opportunity might never come again.