Oh Mary! The election is barely over and there hasn't been this much talk of a "mandate" since that gay matchmaking show on Bravo. Now that the Republicans have the creationist vote locked up, they're probably in hot pursuit of the flat-earthers. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party establishment (who, as a business-exec friend said, "should be taken out behind the building and shot") is already witnessing to its newfound personal relationship with Jesus. There aren't any atheists in that foxhole.
While the two major parties jostle to stake out positions one scintilla to the left (or right) of each other, there are probably a lot of folks feeling left out in the cold. Whether you're a disgruntled Reaganaut like Kevin Phillips or one of those African-American leaders who were given the cold shoulder by the Kerry campaign, there are a lot of people who either get taken for granted by what Jerry Brown used to call "the Incumbent Party" or who have been just plain left behind (and not in the Tim LaHaye sense).
"Raising expectation levels to get political parties moving away from a competition between the Bad versus the Worse toward the Good versus the Better requires a civic dynamic that is incompatible with accepting the status quo."
Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, how you define the Good vis-à-vis the Better, and whether you favor abortion and the death penalty, oppose them equally, or mix and match your views, you can probably relate to what Nader is saying. It's gotten to the point where the Communist Party platform, with its calls to extend price supports to farmers, repeal the Patriot Act and increase funding for first-responders, could probably get a lot of signatories if you presented it as being from the "Blue Collar Party" or some comparably innocuous label.
In other words, party labels have ceased to mean very much, perhaps because the parties themselves are struggling with so many contradictions. For many in the labor-oriented base of the Democratic Party, the party's bigwigs are turning tricks for Wall Street, while the Republicans conduct periodic purges to ensure themselves of 99.44 percent ideological purity. Arlen Specter, formerly a hero to many because he carried water for Clarence Thomas in 1991, is now being made to eat dirt for vaguely promising to defend Roe v. Wade.
Then there are those, on either side, who feel that their parties feed them symbolism at election time, then morph back into what Nader calls a "duopoly" until it's time to scrounge for votes again.
In the meantime, presidential politics is more like the Wars of the Roses in medieval England. George Bush the First, having been toppled by an arriviste, is avenged by son George the Second. The emergent Clinton dynasty, having seen its proxy heir (Al Gore) usurped by George II, sharpens its knives in anticipation of the near-inevitable tilt between Queen Hillary of New York and Crown Prince Jeb of Florida.
Hadn't we had enough of this kind of thing back in 1776, when we made our clean break with the House of Hanover? Maybe it's time to build something new—assemble a fresh party using the best scraps of the old.
To start with, you need ...
Positive Brand Equity. "Republican" is good. It reflects the nature of our system of government. And "Democratic" has a nice ring to it, suggesting equal participation and clout for everyone (even if it doesn't work that way). "Green" conjures up images of growth and renewal. "Black Panther," however, can't help but sound menacing, even were the platform written by Barney the Purple Dinosaur. Same with "Bull Moose": too tumescent; it sounds more like an energy beverage. (Of course, Teddy Roosevelt didn't have to worry about alienating female voters because there weren't any back then.) As for "Whig," well, who knows what the heck a "whig" is anymore—although it sure sounds a lot like those powdered things our Founding Fathers wore when they had a hot date at Gilbert Stuart's portrait studio.
Get Local. The man on the white horse ain't coming. Any systemic change is going to have to start at the most basic level, even if it means running for dog catcher. The religious right was onto this early, especially by getting its people onto school boards and other bodies of immediate influence. If you wonder why Johnny can't read Huckleberry Finn anymore, early and frequent democratic action by Christian conservatives is why. Just like animals that develop same-sex reproduction, new-party activists have to adapt or die. Centralized party machinery can be handy but it can also be paralytic. Think of yourselves as single-cell organisms and act accordingly.
Straight Talk. In 1992, Ross Perot was able to mount a very serious third-party challenge, and not just because he had a mountain of money (although it certainly helped). He did something almost unthinkable in politics. He told people what he intended to do and how he meant to do it. It's amazing what can be conveyed with a pointer and some flip charts.
Has anybody learned from Perot's example? Apparently not. Kerry and Bush offered some vague policy nostrums that didn't quite add up, and even though they had enough money to buy—as Perot did—blocks of TV time, they entrusted their message to the fun-house mirror of cable news and to stiff, script-bound surrogates like Ken Mehlman and Tad Devine, who weren't so much spokesman as ambulatory MP3 players.
Would Kenny Guinn have lost in 2002 if he'd leveled about what he was going to do in the 2003 Lege? Probably not. Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold voted against the Patriot Act and the Iraq War, and got re-elected handily (while Kerry squeaked by with a 12,000-vote margin in the same state). Much of the electorate respects men and women of conviction, so level with them.
Now, where are you going to rustle up the recruits for this new party? You might call it the "Common Dreams" party, because the unifying factor would be the aspirations those large blocks of people who won't get a hearing from DLC Democrats or Rapture Republicans. That could extend from the African-Americans, Latinos and other minorities who want the house with the picket fence and the country-club membership, to those free-marketers who see capitalism as the blade that cleaves a slice of the American Dream for everybody—as opposed to redistributing wealth to a ruling elite. If Grover Norquist and Ralph Nader can join forces to oppose corporate welfare and defend civil liberties, anything is possible.
What other constituencies are ripe for recruitment? Gay people are courted by Madison Avenue for their perceived affluence, yet are politically demonized and are being codified into second-class citizenship. Similar things could be said, for different reasons, of Arab-Americans, who fled the Republican Party in droves in this last election. No American citizens were among the 9/11 hijackers but, given the mass roundups and clandestine detentions that followed, this community needs somebody to show solidarity. Native Americans may enjoy prosperity on some reservations but many still live in dire poverty and—like Hispanic and black neighborhoods—their homelands are wont to get the oldest, crappiest voting machines available. That means their ballots are most likely to suffer "spoilage" and go uncounted. It's time they were made full partners in democracy.
Libertarian conservatives have good reason to dread the unchecked growth of the federal government (21 percent of gross domestic product), to say nothing of the creeping intrusion of the CIA and the military into domestic surveillance and law enforcement. (As the likes of Bob Barr can tell you, both the Bush and Clinton administrations have had abominable track records on privacy issues.) Fiscal conservatives, of whatever leaning, surely blanch at the profligate amount of deficit spending in Washington, a spree that will almost inevitably trigger massive tax increases and/or dollar devaluation down the road. Meanwhile, outsourcing of jobs and capital threatens to decimate the underpinnings of our consumerist society, while a reckless "open borders" policy erodes both economic and national security.
As for those, whether on the left or right, who see our treasury being depleted through a series of wars to achieve hegemonic world domination, they've got plenty to complain about, too. And don't write off Christian evangelicals as a monolithic force brandishing bibles in one hand and scarlet letters in the other. They don't all sing from the Karl Rove hymnal.
So what kind of platform might our sadly fictional party run on? Here are a few crackpot ideas to kick around. (I've left aside foreign policy and deficit spending for another time.)
Idealism. It's been a long time since you've heard that word in politics, no? We're taught that a shared sense of purpose was what made America great, especially in testing times like the two world wars. Is this reflected in our public discourse? Surely you jest!
What made John McCain an inspiring—even galvanizing—figure was that he spoke in terms of idealism, service to the greater good and even of shared sacrifice. That's the real "third rail" of politics. Since Ronald Reagan, candidates of both parties have succeeded by shamelessly pandering to the selfishness of the electorate: "I'll give you more goodies than the other guy." September 11 should have been a wake-up call, but our moping, self-absorbed, totally blindsided national response showed how pampered we've become. Times like these call for leaders who urge the public to ration gas and buy war bonds—not accumulate SUVs and visit Disney World.
Don't Be Squeamish About Morality. For all the talk we're hearing about "moral values," it's an abstract construct and not exclusive to Christianity, either. Morality often forms the framework through which political beliefs and policy recommendations are formed. Jimmy Carter used to catch a lot of grief for employing a morality-based foreign policy, but is that basis (as opposed to its aims) so different from what is done now? You can't take the moral aspect out of the anti-slavery, antiabortion and civil-rights movements, any more than you could take it out of World War II (if even we had to wait until we had a pretext to intervene).
The squeamish Kerry staffers who wouldn't allow a "Christians for Kerry" link on their website are as off the beam as Judge Roy Moore and his self-aggrandizing Ten Commandments monument. We're not a secular society, but our freedom of religion does not constitute a license to foist one specific belief upon every stripe of American.
And it's not as though moral issues don't intersect with, say, economic ones. Is poverty a moral judgment upon those mired in it or is it something we're called upon to alleviate? And, in either event, don't millions of people who can't afford housing or health care create a serious economic and policy problem, no matter how hard you try to sweep them out of sight? Rich Cizik, a pro-Reagan evangelical Christian who supported the Cold War on the "Evil Empire," has called for a different kind of struggle. This National Association of Evangelicals member wants to see a new war fought within our own borders, against poverty, with evangelicals at the forefront.
"Can we counter the coarse and brazen commercial culture, including television, which daily highlights depravity and ignores the quiet civic heroisms in its communities, a commercialism that insidiously exploits childhood and plasters its logos everywhere?"
Is that Jerry Falwell talking? William Bennett? Gary Bauer? No, it's Nader again, but he speaks for a wide swath of people who are turned off by the peep show in the public square. Let's get one thing straight: Government is a piss-poor agent for codifying and enforcing morality. It may be shutting down the brothel today but it could easily be regulating how you discipline your kids tomorrow. But there are market-based correctives available.
If you're offended—as I am—by having Fear Factor and Trading Spouses shoved at you through the TV tube, ask yourself why the broadcast spectrum is simply given free of charge to networks that then fart in the faces of the real owners, Mr. and Mrs. America. Viacom may weep and rend its garments over being docked $550,000 for Nipplegate, but that's a drop in the bucket of the profits to be made by pandering to an ever-lower common denominator. Plus, they get to have the digital broadcast spectrum gratis, too. What ever became of selling to the highest bidder? Heck, whatever became of capitalism?
Get Business Off Its Crutches. If our economic system is so much better than anyone else's, why is it endlessly propped up with government subsidies, ludicrous tax deductions and get-out-of-jail-free cards? War profiteering should be illegal, but it isn't. The same with the offshoring of corporate profits, often to sham "parent companies" that only exist on paper. Perhaps John Q. Taxpayer should declare himself a citizen of the Cayman Islands next April 15.
Corporations exist at the sufferance of the state and have civic responsibilities the same as everyone else. We don't want our party to be anti-business; we just want our corporate leaders to show some of the same patriotism the average citizen does. That includes paying taxes. We'll keep the rates low but, in return for that carrot, there's got to be a fair amount of stick, whether it's eliminating the deduction for entertainment expenses (or allowing the rest of us to have one) or closing the loopholes that allow literally millions of dummy offshore corporations to bleed our economy dry.
Heal the Sick. That recaptured revenue could directed toward universal health coverage. As anybody who's been at the mercy of an HMO knows, the only truly low-cost form of health care in this country is death. If universal coverage is good enough for Canada, why not us? Besides, sick people + insufficient access = lost productivity. Is that what we want?
CEO Pay. "Maximizing shareholder value" is all well and good, especially if it's desirable for large numbers of Americans to invest in the stock market. But the CEOs who spout that gospel often are the ones slurping preposterous amounts of cream off the top, then getting still more in the form of low-cost options or outright gifts of stock.
Compared to other industrialized nations, executive salaries are preposterously disproportionate to worker pay: 280 to 531 times, depending on your yardstick. What if we were to go back to the beginning of the Reagan administration, when the differential was 42 times, and put it into law? That would mean that as long as a casino has employees making minimum wage ($10,712, well below the poverty line), the CEO can make no more than $450,000, extra goodies included. Might that not give him an incentive to raise worker pay (and thus his own)?
Legalize Certain Drugs. If William F. Buckley supports it, surely it can't be all bad. Seriously, the only victories in the War on Drugs have gone to A.) the drug dealers, who have seen prices escalate; and B.) the government, which continues to bore peepholes in the Bill of Rights under the guise of "protecting" us. Yeah, I really feel threatened by those medicinal marijuana clinics you guys keep trying to shut down. Legalize the stuff, regulate it, tax it as much as you like, but take the pushers out of the equation and stop making it so lucrative for the drug barons, who terrorize much of South America.
Miscellaneous Platform Planks.
• Public subsidies to build sports stadiums? Forget it. The Al Davises of the world can pay their own way—and should.
• Those jobs being outsourced—no more. Especially if you're a state or government agency. Not one damn dime goes to move a job to Calcutta. Let's put our own people to work first.
• Let's reverse the policy which is allowing hundreds, even thousands of trucks across our borders without inspection. Bin Laden could be in one of those trucks and we'd never know it until it was too late.
The continued pimping of our republic is liable to go unchecked unless some electoral reforms are put in place. These could threaten the sacred two-party system, which is why neither Republicans nor Democrats get too worked up when the Electoral College misfires (as loaded, antiquated firearms are liable to do) or when campaign financing rules give incumbents a near-stranglehold on public office.
A few obvious fixes our party would support include ...
Abolish the Electoral College. It's an anachronism from the days when blacks were counted as three-fifths of a person, women couldn't vote and the only good Indian was a dead one. Of those four bad ideas, only the Electoral College continues to prevail. In a direct national vote, "red" and "blue" states would cease to exist, as would "safe" and "swing" states. Since every vote would count equally, candidates would have to campaign in Delaware and North Dakota, not just in Ohio and Florida. Alternatively, one could ...
Reform the Electoral College. Award Electoral College votes proportionately to the popular vote. This could have produced a fascinating scenario in 1992, when Ross Perot could have held the balance of power (and possibly altered the course of history) with a pivotal 19 percent of the electors. Since third-party candidates will rarely win entire states outright, we've got to change the rules of the game if we want to empower other players.
Public Financing of Elections. As voters in Maine and Arizona have found out, this works better than term limits. Put all the candidates on an equal financial footing and let the best message win. As long as we're disempowering pimps, let's stop the Dems and the Repubs from whoring themselves to whoever has the biggest checkbook. Once they get into office, they're putatively working for us. If we hold their campaign purse strings, too, they might just listen to us as well. Besides, once you put our mythical party on an equal footing with the Establishment, anything can happen. That's the beauty of democracy, right?
Finally, let's have some fun with the process. Let's make it "look more like America," as the saying went. Our last presidential election came down to a tussle between two New England-born, Ivy League members of the Skull & Bones Society. At times it was not a choice but an echo. Why should the upper crust have it all to itself?
Of course, given today's scorched-earth campaigning, it can seem as though the only people virtuous enough to hold office are seminarians. (Then again ... maybe not.) Either that, or perhaps we should find people impervious to any projectiles flung by the other side. If an Italian porn queen could serve five years in that country's parliament, then run for mayor of Milan, it might work in the Land of Opportunity, too.
So let's run Jenna Jameson for some high local office. She has shown she can handle Bill O'Reilly, and there's nothing Steve Wark could dig up on her more shocking than her own autobiography. We Nevadans are supposed to be tolerant sorts: Let's give her a chance here. If the Democrats were willing to import a candidate to challenge cyborg Jon Porter this year, we can offer someone who could really invigorate the electorate. Jameson in '06? There's a candidacy people could get behind.
I'm David McKee and I approved (most of) this message.