Party Crashing

We have a two-party system that determines what candidates we get to vote for.  Those parties have become fundamental to our government, even though political parties are never mentioned in our Constitution and the Father of our country and first president, George Washington, warned against them.

While some people today are urging the repeal of the Electoral College, we might consider returning it to its original role.  The Constitutional way of picking the president was for citizens of the states to elect people entrusted with the task of finding the best person for the job.

Currently, the two parties put up their candidate as determined by winning the state-by-state party primaries.  But Americans who are not members of either party have no say at all in who the candidates will be.  And, it turns out, 42% of Americans are Independents, members of neither party.  Democrats comprise only 29% of the population and Republicans comprise only 27%.

So no wonder our politics are so dysfunctional and out of synch.

Peggy Noonan discusses the strange phenomenon that Americans are gearing up for a contest that the majority of them don’t want and suggests that now might be a good time for a Third Party candidate to emerge.  Part of the problem with that, of course, is that the two parties so control the states that it is very difficult for alternative parties to even get on the ballot.  But the No Labels movement plans to have enough signed petitions to get on the ballot in every state, which it will use for the benefit of independent “Unity” candidates.

From Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall), Biden vs. Trump in 2024?  Don’t Be So Sure:

A third party, if it comes, could have real and surprising power in this cycle. I am the only person I know who thinks this but, again, look at peoples’ faces when you say it will be Trump or Biden.

Independents now outnumber members of each party. No hunger for a third-party effort is discernible in the polls. So the effort would have to blow people out of their comfortable trenches and make them want to go over the top to seize new ground. It would have to be something centrists, by their nature, aren’t: dramatic. The people who would lead such an effort worry about whether or not they’d wind up as spoilers for the Democrats. You could argue as well it might spoil things for the Republicans.

They should be thinking: We are past the moment for such questions. If you think the country is in trouble and needs another slate of candidates, do it. No ambivalence, no guilt about spoiling it for the lesser of evils. If you’re serious, go for it. Look at the other two guys as spoilers.

A third party would have to have compelling candidates for president and vice president. That would be hard. I am not certain a third party is desirable. But I don’t think it’s impossible.

Third-party enthusiasts tend to be moderate, sober-minded. Such people are almost by definition not swept by the romance of history. But we are living in a prolonged crazy time in American politics. Anything can happen now.

Really, anything. I wonder if they know it.

It is surely significant that, though nations around the world have adopted representative democracies inspired by the United States, hardly any of them have a two party system like we do.  Rather, they have adopted parliamentary democracies, with many parties, in which voters can find exactly the shade of opinion that they agree with, whereupon coalitions of the various parties have to be built  in order to “form a government,” with the leader of the biggest party made the nation’s Chief Executive.

That still embodies the “party spirit” that Washington warned against, and I’m not sure having a three party system would be much of an improvement over having just two.  Of course, what Noonan is calling for is not so much a third party–there are already a number of small parties that are on some ballots, such as the Greens, the National, and the Libertarians–as a third major candidate.

It has been said that the United States has already elected a third party candidate, namely, Donald Trump, who pulled that off by taking over one of the two established parties.  Indeed, Trump opposed and was opposed by the Republican party establishment but won its primary and then the general election anyway.

So who would be a good third candidate this time?

Some celebrity like Oprah or the Rock?  A bridge candidate like Robert Kennedy, Jr., who has the Democratic pedigree but the anti-vax, COVID-skeptic bona fides to attract Republicans, plus an anti-corporate stance that members of both parties can agree on?  A centrist, like Joe Manchin?

I have heard people say that they are sick of all of the celebrity and ideology.  What they crave, what they think we need, is not just another celebrity, nor an embodiment of some cause, but simply someone who is competent–someone who can run the executive branch, get the parts of the government to work together, and be a steady hand in the problems that we face.

Or do we want ideology after all, someone with the ideas we most agree with?  If so, given the multiple schools of progressivism and conservatism, don’t we need more parties to accommodate those ideas?

Perhaps the issues we must deal with today–abortion, transgenderism, woke progressivism, the economy, threats of war–do not admit compromise and shades of grey.  There are only two sides, and one of them must prevail over the other.  In that case, maybe two parties in polar opposition may be the best we can do.

What do you think?  I myself am open to persuasion.

UPDATE:  Here is what George Washington said on the subject of political parties, from his Farewell Address:

“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.”

Was he wrong?

Illustration:  “Americans Suffer As Our Two Party System Stagnates!” by outtacontext via Flickr, CC 2.0.