What the US needs now: a strong third party
Watching the BBC’s Question Time, which is coming from the US, in a move that the producers no doubt thought would be smart - with Michael Moore, David Frum (ex-GWB speechwriter), coupla other Americans, and the UK’s Richard Littlejohn; the latter usually thought of as a corrosive commentator. In this company, particularly the audience’s, Littlejohn is just drowned out, too nice to bother with.
It’s awful. Nasty, vituperative, bitter, divisive, a dialogue of the deaf. The audience cheers and jeers, and the reason why the whole debate is so sterile - in the manner of razed ground - is that there’s only two sides. Heads or tails, black or white. There’s no credible third party offering the risk of an alternative, in the way that the Liberal Democrats do in the UK, able to call the bluff on both parties, and win votes from either. People are on one side or the other.
Sometimes, it turns out, you need a fence.
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October 29th, 2004 at 8:31 am
I think that is the big disappointment with someone like Ralph Nader. The Democrats don’t want him to stand since he is seen as a “spoiler” who will take away votes from them and let George Bush back in. But his policies seem genuinely radical, and it seems wrong to insist that there should only be two parties in the race. To me, it seems as if the real problem is that the Democrats haven’t been able to energise the electorate enough - even after the failures of Bush in Iraq and domestically. However, as long as Nader is stuck at 1% or less of the vote he is an irrelevance that isn’t really a threat to the two main parties.
October 29th, 2004 at 10:58 am
True, the “spoiler” argument is always wheeled out - but it’s used too against the Lib Dems in the UK, when they’re a far bigger force. Don’t forget that in ..1992 Ross Perot got a notable showing in the US Presidential election despite being completely independent.
However he and Nader can do this because they’re comparatively well-funded. But what’s needed is a grass-roots third party, not something imposed top-down, as those two candidates effectively are.
There’s a real problem in US politics. The Today programme this morning had a report from West Virginia, where one of the parties has a corpse on its ticket. Even more incredibly, John Ashcroft was forced out of the Senate by a dead man who was voted in. Now, you might argue that the dead man would do less harm politically than Ashcroft, but it really can’t be healthy, in every sense of the word, to have the world’s largest “democracy” having its voters represented by something with no life force. You might as well elect the Magic 8-Ball. At least the Presidential debates would be shorter.
October 29th, 2004 at 11:44 am
Funnily enough, we’ve just been watching the West Wing episodes where the dead candidate wins in Orange County! Ross Perot’s candidacy did seem to be high water mark in recent campaigns as far as third party involvement goes. Even within the big parties there are often more interesting candidates who fail due to lack of funds. I was always intrigued by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition and their attempts to get the Democratic nomination. Despite some strong showings he was never even offered a Vice-Presidential post, although I’m sure that wasn’t just down to lack of funding… And I wonder whether Howard Dean might not have been a more interesting candidate than John Kerry. I’m sure that Kerry is very worthy, he just doesn’t come across as someone with much personality.
It seems that a Presidential candidate needs massive funds to have a chance, and while the two big parties may make a show of hating each other, I’m sure they will co-operate to make sure any third party candidate doesn’t muscle in on the Presidential debates. It means that the only likely challenger is someone like Ross Perot with plenty of money to spend on their candidacy. And even then, the big parties are always likely to crowd them out.
Perhaps a system of proportional representation in the US might open up the possibility of an independent third party appearing?
October 29th, 2004 at 4:40 pm
I watched the debate over the web from the US. Frankly I’m not surprised and a little disappointed at how rude the audience was (the BBC feed cut off the last few minutes as well, which are irritating). On the otherhand, you would be amazed at how rare its been in the past year for the public with beliefs on both sides to be in a room and able to ask questions to members of either side. So from that perspective it was quite interesting. I think if the program had been set in New York or Washington, the audience might have been a bit better behaved as these two states aren’t in play.
The main problem in the US is that no one challenges either side to debate why they are voting for a particular candidate. The worst reason I’ve heard so far for voting for Bush, is because he’s a nice man. I have no problem with someone voting for Bush because they believe in his policies, but this seems a cop out when you look at his polices.
There is a third candidate so to speak in this election, the media. Unfortunately its done a pretty lousy job in the past few months, soaking all the spin on both sides with no context and frankly not calling a lie, a lie, until it was too late (Swift Boat Vets for Truth for example). And if I didn’t check out the foreign press I wouldn’t know how bad the situation in Iraq is. The foreign media seems to be unware just how little the US public knows about what’s going on in Iraq, and how unware they are on how much respect the President (and America) has lost over the past two years.