What Might a Third Party Do?

At 4 PM on New Year's Eve, our Congress has once again demonstrated the brokenness of our political system.  Whether our elected representatives manage to avoid the "fiscal cliff" by working out some last-minute deal is not the issue.  By repeatedly playing chicken on fiscal policy for the past two years - since the Democrats lost control of the House - the Republican majority has hampered an economic recovery which should, by now, be well on its way.

Not all the fault is on one side.  When Democrats refuse even to consider adjusting the inflation index for Social Security, that's also a sign of partisan intractability.   Still, considered all in all, the public's tendency to blame House Republicans seems just.  For two years now, since the midterms, America has careered from crisis to crisis - all entirely artificial.  The resulting uncertainty has resulted in untold costs to millions of families and thousands of businesses.

As a people, we should be unwilling to tolerate this.  The difficulty is that we have grown to accept this insanity as the new normal.

It is anything but.

Consider this:  Our national government functions much of the time without an actual budget, which in the past would have been taken as a clear dereliction of Congress' constitutional duties.

Moreover, Congress' repeated balking over raising the debt ceiling is just plain silly.  Logically, it seems the height of absurdity that Congress must decide, for a second time, that it will authorize paying for bills it has already voted to run up.

A gutsy president might well call Congress' bluff, treat the original appropriations as authorization, and raise the debt ceiling by executive order.

Maybe it's time for that.

The conduct of House majority seems, at times, little short of economic terrorism.  Ask yourself what we would do if a group of Islamist conspirators had spent the last two years doing this kind of damage to our economy.  I rather imagine we'd have, at the least, rounded them up for a nice, long stay in sunny Gitmo.

We might even have sent in a drone.

For sure, we wouldn't be calling them "The Honorable" and giving them suites of offices, big staffs, the franking privilege, and the best parking spaces on Capitol Hill.

But then, that's what happens when a problem develops so slowly that we don't feel the pain acutely.

In Virginia, there's an old folk saying about boiling a frog.  If you wish, for some reason, to boil a frog, you don't drop him directly into boiling water.  He'll just jump out. Instead, you ease him into a pot of cool water and then heat it slowly.  As an amphibian, the frog's body temperature will slowly rise with that of the water until it's too late.

The same is true of us.  When pain is inflicted suddenly, we react with anger and demand a remedy.  When the pain comes on slowly, we might recognize that there's a problem, but there is no trigger for a reaction.

At least, not until things have gotten very bad, indeed.

On this blog, I write mainly for those who agree that things are, in fact, very bad.  But I also assume that we live in a country which is not yet ready to revolt.  (Such a country would have thrown out incumbent Congressmen by the hundreds at the last election.  We're not there  yet.)

The problem, for those of us who are intellectually prepared to act, is figuring out how to take action when most Americans are not yet ready to join us.

Even among the aware, there is a kind of intellectual paralysis.  My position is that this paralysis arises from our inability to escape the paradigm of two-party politics.  The best means for a determined minority to act - in advance of public opinion - is, in Lincoln's words, to "think anew".  The first task is the creation of a small, disciplined entity capable of assuming a leadership role when public opinion has shifted. 

And then, to do the vital work of helping public opinion toward that shift.

We must understand that part of the resistance to change rests with the fact that many Americans are hostile to one or the other of the major parties.  (Some, clearly, are hostile to both.)  I believe that there are at least a few millions voters who are ready to vote out a Republican - but not at the price of electing a Democrat.

And vice versa.

And that's where a third party comes in.

Imagine that the incoming Congress included a small, disciplined group of freshmen from a Commonwealth Party.  Say 5% of the total membership - 22 members, elected mostly from previously Republican districts.  So small a group might - with the right math - be in a position to determine which party organized the House. 

It might be able to force a coalition on the House - in return for attention to a few of its issues.

Certainly, it would be in a position to say - to both sides in the current impasse - that it would act with whichever party proved more flexible in dealing with the issues of taxation and spending which have created the situation.

Now, please understand, I do not suggest a party which positions itself between the existing parties as a matter of strategy.  Any party worth belonging to is not going to define itself in terms of the present duopoly - but in opposition to it.

It will, indeed, advocate the reform of many evils upon which both major parties depend for their survival - including gerrymandering, restrictive ballot access laws, and contributions from large institutions such as corporations and labor unions. 

But in any given situation, a small, disciplined party would have the tactical flexibility to occupy the political center in order to compel the existing parties to act more reasonably. 

In my imagination, I see the Commonwealth Party as occupying the space formerly occupied by the now defunct liberal/progressive wing of the Republican party.  This would put it in the philosophical tradition of Theodore Roosevelt, Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton - and Henry Clay.

In the present situation, I would want to see this party act as Clay did - forging temporary coalitions to resolve long-standing disputes and move the nation's agenda forward.

Such a posture would hardly be all a third party could do, but it would be an honorable place to begin.  Twenty or thirty seats out of 435 would probably suffice for a new party to play such a role.

The question is:  Are there twenty or thirty districts around the country which might - in preference to the incumbent - elect a member, not of the opposite party, but of a new party?

I believe the Virginia's Seventh District - home of Eric Cantor - could be one.

I'd be interested in hearing about others.

The Requisites of Change

During the holidays, I've had the freedom to set aside required readings (Shakespeare and his contemporaries) in favor of other things.  Thus far, the most intriguing read has been Thomas E. Ricks' The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008.

I've enjoyed Ricks' writing in the past, and his new book, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today is on my list for spring break.  But The Gamble has interested me for more than its history of America's conduct of the  counterinsurgency in Iraq.  It also contains lessons which inform and encourage my thinking about a matter close to my heart, and to the main purpose of this blog - i.e., reforming the American political system.

According to Ricks, the war in Iraq had come close to being lost in 2006 - before advocates of "the surge" persuaded the Bush Administration to try a new strategy grounded in classic counterinsurgency doctrine.  What interests me is that the decisive pressure for the new strategy came - neither from the White House nor from within the Pentagon - but from a few relatively junior officers, a retired four-star general, and a handful of intellectuals at a conservative think-tank. 

Which is real-world confirmation, if any were needed, that - even in an institution as hierarchical and conservative as the US military - meaningful change can come through the efforts of a small, determined tribe of insurgents.

Of course, no serious student of history - or of evolution - should doubt this.  Big change nearly always begins with a few courageous, determined individuals.  The key questions are whether those agents of change begin early enough - and with a clear, well-thought-out vision.

Historically, human institutions come into being to meet a certain set of challenges, but persist long after those challenges have disappeared and been replaced by new ones.   Often, established institutions lack the ability to evolve to meet new challenges, resulting - over time - in internal revolution, external conquest, or societal death.

Occasionally, a set of institutions will have in them the ability to evolve gradually, adapting to changing times and circumstances while avoiding disaster.  Since the Civil War of the 1640s, Britain has managed this trick fairly well - though it flirted with disaster in the late 1930s, when the cabinet system failed to respond appropriately to the threat of Hitlerism.

As an offshoot of Britain, the United States inherited political ideas which - adapted through two revolutionary decades - led to our present Constitution.  This document has proved remarkably durable, and Americans have usually managed to find a way forward through the political process.  The one exception was extraordinary - the unpleasantness of the early 1860s, which cost over 600,000 military casualties and untold human misery. 

That exception allowed, Americans have shown a genius for reforming their institutions without excessive bloodshed or repression.  Most often, periods of rapid evolution have come through the rise of popular movements led by visionary leaders, such as the Jeffersonian "revolution of 1800". 

Sometimes, the leaders have been more charismatic than visionary, as was the case with Andrew Jackson's populist movement in the 1820s and 1830s.  In such cases, the results have been more mixed.   

The necessary prerequisite to such movements has been the existence of new challenges, and the failure of the existing power structure to deal effectively with them.  The key to success has usually been the leadership of an individual, or a small group, with a clear, positive vision for the next phase of American history.

Vision is the key.  In any society, popular frustration or anger arises fairly often, and in an open society such discontents will inevitably attract potential leaders.  When these leaders lack vision, they can take public discontent in an essentially negative direction - which may benefit the leaders, but not their cause.

A recent example would be the Tea Party movement, which achieved great initial success, but which lacks the vision to do more than play an obstructionist role.  The Vietnam era anti-war movement shared many of the same failings, and - curiously - not a few of the same, Baby Boom participants.

Other movements have been more successful.  The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and early 1960s is a case in point.  Not only did the movement have an extraordinary wealth of local leaders - many of them ministers and lawyers - but its national voice was Martin Luther King, Jr., a man of extraordinary vision.

Dr. King was able to do the two essential things which seem essential for a successful American popular movement.  He was able to connect the movement with our national history and traditions, and he was able to enunciate a positive vision which most Americans could understand and accept.

Dr. King's link with the past focused - as  was Lincoln's a century earlier - on the core philosophy of the Declaration of Independence.  By framing the Civil Rights movement as an evolutionary development along the lines laid out by our Founders, Dr. King touched Americans in their point of greatest national pride. 

His link with the future was equally effective.  For all the power of his case for equal justice, it was the vision of "I Have a Dream" - of an America where children of all races could grow up together in friendship - which proved irresistible to millions of Americans not of African ancestry.

My purpose in writing this blog has been, from the outset, to inform the process of starting something new - a third political party, rooted in America's history and values, and with a vision for the future.  I believe such a party could succeed - if success is defined in terms of changing the terms of our nation's political debate and raising the importance accorded to challenges and opportunities largely ignored by our two-party system.

In the past, here and elsewhere, I have sketched out what I believe to be a viable strategy for such a party.  In coming months, I propose to continue elaborating on that strategy.

But I am even more interested in connecting a certain cluster of discontents with America's great past, and with a vision for the future.  These two connections - especially the latter - seem to me the real test of any successful movement for change.

Change can happen, and it can start with a very few individuals who are determined to make it happen.  The need is clear.  Are we ready to launch an insurgency?

Somebody Needs a Spanking

This blog post originally ran in December, 2012.  The only correction needed is that the Democratic popular vote margin in last year's Congressional elections was closer to 1.5million.  Without gerrymandering, there would be no Republican majority - and no shutdown.

I was a little kid during the Eisenhower administration, when men were men and Republicans were rational.  Like most little kids, I spent a few years trying to get my way about everything - employing various age-old tactics in the process.

Among the tactics I quickly abandoned was the tantrum.  If confined in an uncongenial atmosphere, such as church, I would begin wriggling and squirming and - if my parents attempted to restrain me - I'd start getting vocal about it.

At which point my Dad would generally yank me up, march me outside, and administer ten or twelve ungentle swats to my bottom.  This didn't usually have the immediate result of quieting me, but it removed me from the scene where I was causing embarrassment - and after a few swats, the tears would come, and I'd be reduced to blubbering for a bit.

On the whole, the treatment was pretty effective.  Dad was anything but brutal.  I think, for him it really was a question of, "This will hurt me more than it hurts you!" -- though he was never so silly as to say anything like that.  Dad's spankings were rare, but they were effective, because they were deserved.  And I quickly learned that the consequence of being  a pain in the butt, was getting a pain in my butt.

I've never raised children, but I know things have changed since those long-ago days.  About the time TV turned from black-and-white to color, spankings started going out of style.  All sorts of new tactics have become fashionable - some effective, some, I suspect, pretty silly.  The pendulum has swung, as pendulums will, from one extreme to the other.

If I had to guess, we'll eventually come back to the spanking, on a much more infrequent basis, based solidly in good research.  After all, it can - properly and appropriately administered - be quite effective.  It certainly worked for me. 

I was a restless kid, easily bored.  Today, I'd probably have been labelled ADHD and given medication.  But all it really took was a couple of spankings to persuade me to sit still and keep quiet.  During my first few years of school, where I was not spanked, I continued to be a nuisance when bored - which was most of the time.  At my school, my first few teachers solved the problem by sending me to the library - which rewarded my misconduct.

With my parents, I quickly became tractable. 

The certainty of a spanking is probably why I skipped the "hold my breath 'til I turn blue" phase of rebellion.  It's almost impossible to protest properly while holding one's breath, so - as far as I can remember - I never tried this tactic.

Which is another reason why I would not make a very good latter-day Republican. 

We live in the era of the tantrum as political tactic.  It shows up at both ends of the spectrum, but Republicans of the "tea party" variety have made it their specialty.  Here we have a party which - with respect to many key issues - refuses to debate, refuses to compromise, and refuses to accept facts.   

Last night's failure of Speaker  Boehner's rather pathetic "Plan B" was merely the latest demonstration of the political tantrum.  Many Republicans - elected to serve the nation in making laws, budgets, and public policy - have come to Congress so freighted with absolute, unconditional demands that they simply can't participate in the legislative process.  All they can do is say "No" and - confronted by their party's rejection at the polls - threaten to hold their breath until they turn blue.

And I do mean "rejection at the polls".  The new House of Representatives will still have a Republican majority - much reduced - but only because of gerrymandering.  Last time I looked, the popular vote for Congress, nationwide, gave the Democrats an edge of about half-a-million votes.

But that won't stop the Republicans' extreme right.  In office, they will prefer the tantrum to the hard work of government. 

They will oppose any tax increase, because they signed a pledge to Grover Norquist.  (Never mind that they also took an oath to all of us to "well and faithfully discharge the duties" of a Member of Congress, though those duties certainly include making the sorts of compromise which make legislation possible.)

Many of them will oppose any legislation to control the availability of military-style weapons and large-capacity magazines in a nation increasingly terrorized by deranged killers.

Most will continue to oppose any improvements to, or extensions of, Obamacare.

And watch this:  Many will even oppose improvements to our nation's lamentable mental health services, even when those services are the only conceivable alternative to weapons restrictions which they also oppose.

But what has logic to do with it?  To be a Republican, today, is to be absolute on so many things that you can only function as an obstacle to progress.  To be a latter-day Republican is to be:

Absolute in opposition to tax increases, or even taxes at their present levels.

Absolute in the conviction that government is "the problem" - if not the enemy.

Absolute on women's control of their own reproductive systems.

Absolute on "Second Amendment rights", as newly defined by a Supreme Court dominated by right-wing Republicans.

Absolute in rejecting the science of global climate change - or even evolution.

Absolute, absolute, absolute - and willing to hold their breath until they - and the rest of us - turn blue.

Please understand - I write this as one who has long since grown disenchanted with the Democratic Party.  It is the servant of too many special-interest groups and a slave to old ideas which no longer work very well.  

It is also too timid, too lacking in force or vision, to lead us into the future.

In writing this critique of the Republican Party, I do so as one whose proper political allegiance once was - in American terms - to the left wing of the Republican Party.

But progressive and liberal Republicans no longer exist, in any meaningful sense.  Those liberals and progressives who still cling to the GOP do themselves, and their country, a grave disservice.

We have long needed a third party which occupies the space once occupied by the liberal-progressive branch of Republicanism.  We need it now, more than ever.

Meanwhile, we can only deal with a minority party which prefers tantrum to governing - and a majority party which refuses to take them out behind the Capitol and give them a good spanking.

Murder, Courage, Silence

(The following, with some editing for length, is supposed to run in tomorrow's edition of Style Weekly, Richmond's alternative newspaper, which frequently offers me a place in print.  But with the debate moving so quickly, I wanted to get this out to my friends.  Please feel free to share this via social media.  There are certainly wiser and more powerful voices on this topic, but I believe this perspective also has a part to play.)

Last Friday morning, America experienced its seventh mass killing of 2012.  An unspeakable act of madness resulted in the deaths of 20 elementary schoolchildren, four teachers, a school psychologist, and the school's principal. 

Some of the adults died performing acts of heroism.   From early reports, Principal Dawn Hochsprung died trying to disarm the killer with her bare hands as he forced his way into her school.

Shortly thereafter, Vicky Soto, a 27-year-old teacher with a smile that could melt a glacier, was gunned down after hiding her students and putting her body between the gunman and their hiding place.

 

We need to remember such acts of heroism.  We need to remember Dawn Hochsprung and Vicky Soto - and other heroes - from this massacre and earlier massacres.

We need to remember them for their love, their courage and their sacrifice.  And we need to remember their names - for two reasons.

First, we should celebrate their names rather than that of the killer.  We give these mad dogs far too much publicity, which only serves to encourage the next anonymous loser to seek posthumous infamy by taking an even greater number of innocent lives. 

You won't read the killer's name here.  We should all refuse to mention his name.  So should the media.  Label him for what he was - a loser, a madman, a murderer of children.  Call him Herod.  But minimize his name, his picture, his story.  Let him be as anonymous in death as he was in life.  

Second, we should celebrate the heroes by way of contrast with our so-called leaders, who continue to cower at the thought of offending the NRA and the rest of the "gun lobby".  We should remember those who laid down their lives to protect children - and compare their conduct with that of elected officials who won't even risk re-election to do the same thing.

That cowardice must end.  So must ours.

Within hours of the news from Sandy Hook Elementary, the social media entered a cycle we have seen, over and over, for decades. 

Passionate voices were raised in favor of doing something about the easy availability of offensive weapons in a country with its fair share of mentally-troubled people.

This is always the first response:  demands for rational, effective, legal reform from those who understand American society - and fanciful schemes for the elimination of all firearms from the clueless.

These cries - both the rational and the fanciful - are quickly met with a massive counter-strike by indoctrinated defenders of unrestricted personal weaponization.  A flood of bumper-sticker slogans, questionable facts, and pretzel logic - underscored by a tone of paranoid rage - is enough to discourage the timid from pursuing the subject.

Then come the peacemakers, with plaintive calls for suspension of the debate.  "This isn't the time," they cry.  "Think of the children!"  "Think of the families!"  "Pray to God for peace!"

And this is what the political class counts on - those good-hearted souls who find it unseemly to debate public policy when we should be sending flowers and teddy bears, or flocking to houses of worship to pray to a God who (if He exists) is clearly in no hurry to protect little kids from bloodthirsty madmen with military weapons.

Once the "voices of compassion" are raised, the politicians come out from cover and join in the flood of empty words and cotton-candy comfort which does little for the bereaved and traumatized - and absolutely nothing to protect the next bunch of schoolchildren, movie-goers, shoppers, or worshippers targeted by an angry, unbalanced loser.

And so it goes.

It will go on, endlessly, until ordinary Americans find the courage of Dawn Hochsprung and Vicky Soto - and demand that our politicians do the same.

The courage to do what, exactly?

The courage to debate - openly, honestly, rationally - what steps our society might take to address a mounting tide of mass murder which amounts to the equivalent of a domestic al-Qaeda. 

Many civilized democracies have managed - without violating the rights of law-abiding citizens - drastically to limit the availability of assault weapons to madmen and bad men.  We should find out how.

No one remotely familiar with American society could believe that any elected government would attempt to ban all firearms - or that it would succeed if it tried.

But rational weapons laws are manifestly necessary, and they will come only when we are prepared to have a debate - an open, honest, passionate, sometimes angry debate - about what our laws should be. 

It's called democracy.  And those who would impose silence - whether in defense of guns or in the name of peace - are, for all their pretensions, the enemies of democracy.

So, where do we start? 

We can start by realizing that flowers and teddy-bears, compassion and prayers, are not the answer.  If there is a God, this is apparently one of those problems He expects us to solve for ourselves.

The place to begin is by talking about it- and demanding that our politicians talk about it.

For me, the first step has been writing this piece.  In eight years of writing a weekly opinion column - in which I have taken many unpopular stands - I have steered clear of the weapons issue. 

I was afraid of it.

No more.

The chief weapon of the gun lobby is intimidation.  The appropriate response is counter-intimidation. 

So from now on, no progressive or liberal candidate who refuses to discuss guns in an honest, courageous manner will get my vote.  

Even if that means victory for someone whose position I find loathsome.

If enough rational, well-intentioned Americans took that stand, our politicians might begin to find their courage.

And we should demand courage of our leaders.  We should help them find it.

After all, Dawn Hochsprung and Vicky Soto found theirs.

Jobs, or Work?

And so the "Jobs Election" is behind us.

This year, every candidate was the jobs candidate.  The President pledged to finish the work of restoring a full-employment economy.  Mr. Romney touted his private-sector background as creator of jobs.  Conservative super-PACS spent vast sums attempting to re-label rich people as "job creators".  Pundits pontificated over every tenth-of-a-point shift in the unemployment rate.

Everyone seemed obsessed with creating more jobs - as though a job was - like food, clothing, and shelter - a basic necessity.  Or - like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - a natural right. 

Now, please don't get me wrong.  The way our system is presently organized, a job can be a fine thing to have.  For many, jobs still provide the security of a steady paycheck, health insurance, and a pension.  Once upon a time, most American families relied on one - sometimes two - employed adults to provide such things.

But, for most Americans, that's no longer the case.  Confronted by global competition, employers have trimmed or eliminated the benefit packages which once made jobs so rewarding.  Job security is becoming a thing of the past.  Full-time employment is becoming harder to find.  Today, many American families rely on income from two or more breadwinners - each working two or more jobs which pay too little and offer few, if any, benefits.

 

Our whole society once rested upon a prosperous middle-class which enjoyed long-term, full-time employment, extensive medical coverage, and good pensions.  Thirty or forty years of steady work - perhaps supplemented by the second spouse working part-time - were sufficient to provide for an entire family's immediate needs and the parents' long-term needs.  Moderate thrift - often supplemented by employee benefits - sufficed to send a bright child or two to college.

This, of course, is no longer true.  Economists have told us for years that - while America has continued to grow richer - the average middle-class family has not.  Forced to compete globally, the large corporations that once provided so many with lifetime employment and benefits have been cutting back on everything  - except the salaries and bonuses paid to their top executives.   

Allowing for inflation, workers' wages and middle-managers' salaries have - except briefly, during the Clinton years - remained essentially stagnant.   But hours have gotten longer for some, while others have been reduced to part-time.  Health-care costs have risen steadily, even as health benefits were pared.  Life-spans have grown longer, even as pensions have been frozen, cut back, or eliminated.

Meanwhile, for the middle class, housing costs have sky-rocketed.  Because of the way we organize our public education system, it's often necessary to move to a pricier neighborhood in order to get your kids into the best schools.   Decade after decade, middle-class Americans have moved farther and farther from the centers of work - to buy ever-larger houses for ever-smaller families.

Under all these pressures, the two-income family has become the norm, at an increasing financial cost in terms of day-care - and other costs in terms of marital stability, child-rearing, and healthy nutrition.

Looking back over the half-century since I was a kid, it seems to me that jobs are not what they used to be.  Most no longer provide the security they once provided.  Nor do they enable families to function properly, since - in many cases - there is no adult in the home during vital parts of the day.

And surely - since most jobs in this country no longer involve making or growing anything - many Americans feel less job satisfaction than their parents and grandparents did.

All of which leads me to ask this question:  Does America really need more jobs?  Or would we be better off with fewer?

Let's keep in mind that there's a huge difference between jobs and work.  When this country was founded, very few people had jobs - in the sense of being employed by someone else.  Most people had family farms or small shops.  The large seaports employed a certain number of people - longshoremen, sailors, whalers, tavern wenches, etc.  But most Americans lived in small towns or on farms, and nearly all of them - excluding the slaves, of course - worked for themselves.

For such people, independence wasn't just a political condition.  It was a personal status.

Here's my point:  Societies exist by virtue of laws and customs, all of human origin.  It  is no more natural or inevitable that most modern Americans be employees than it was for a quarter of the population of early 19th century America to be enslaved.  Institutions change all the time.  They can be changed by conscious choices, if we are wise enough to make those choices.

When old ways of organizing society begin to fail, free people are empowered to make new arrangements.  It says so, right in the Declaration of Independence.

  

Since jobs no longer provide the advantages they once did - and since unemployment creates so much economic damage and social insecurity - perhaps we should consider evolving toward a society in which more people are self-employed, and fewer must depend upon large institutions for their very livelihoods.