In the race for the GOP presidential nomination, Republicans appear unhappy with all of their choices. There is constant clamoring for new candidates to enter the race. But as soon as a new savior like Texas Gov. Rick Perry throws his hat in the ring, he ends up being a disappointment. Then there is a new boomlet for someone else like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. There are even a few Democrats searching for someone to challenge Barack Obama.
The dissatisfaction extends to both political parties. A September 27 CNN poll found that 48 percent of people have an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party and 54 percent have an unfavorable view of the Republican Party. In Congress, 56 percent of people believe that Democrats are going in the wrong direction and 53 percent believe that the Republicans are going in the wrong direction. Apparently, a goodly number of people think both parties are going in the wrong direction simultaneously.
With all of this political dissatisfaction going around, it’s no surprise that some pundits are again beating the drum for a third party. Washington Post columnist Matt Miller even composed a stump speech for a theoretical third party candidate on September 25. It was filled with a laundry list of sensible reforms for which there is no political support. And how a president who represents neither major party would persuade a Congress still composed almost entirely of Republicans and Democrats to enact this agenda was left unexplained.
Polls consistently show that Americans are receptive to a third party. A Gallup poll in May found 52 percent of people wanting a third party, versus 40 percent who say the current parties are adequate. Interestingly, support for a third party was the same regardless of political philosophy.
It’s no wonder Americans are looking for an alternative to the current system. According to a September 26 Gallup poll, Americans’ dissatisfaction with how their nation is being governed has never been higher. Some 81 percent of people now say they are dissatisfied, compared with just19 percent who are satisfied. Ten years ago, by contrast, 59 percent expressed satisfaction with how the nation is being governed and only 39 percent were dissatisfied. Even at the peak of the Watergate scandal in 1974, just two thirds of people were dissatisfied.
Ralph Nader was responsible for
Al Gore’s loss in 2000 by tipping
the balance to George W. Bush.
Historically, third parties at the presidential level have been built around a charismatic leader who entered the race with wide name recognition and a devoted following. These include Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Ross Perot in 1992, Robert LaFollette in 1924, and George Wallace in 1968. These were the only ones to break into double digits in terms of the popular vote, but almost every year there is a significant third party effort. Even those with minuscule vote totals sometimes have an impact. Many Democrats believe that Ralph Nader was responsible for Al Gore’s loss in 2000 by tipping the balance to George W. Bush in an extraordinarily close election, even though Nader only got 2.7 percent of the vote.
In 2008, there was a generic third-party effort called Unity08 that got a bit of attention. Its spokesman was well-known television actor Sam Waterston (“Law & Order”) and it had the support of some political professionals, such as former White House chief of staff Hamilton Jordan. But lacking a leader to build the effort around, it went nowhere.
In this political cycle, a similar effort is underway called No Labels. Its agenda is a laundry list of good government goals that no one disagrees with, but it lacks any specificity or meaningful strategy for enactment. It’s all based on wishing and hoping that the American people will rise up and demand an end to partisanship and gridlock. But this has never happened in history, here or any place, else to my knowledge.
At least in parliamentary systems, it is often possible for fringe groups to elect a few members. Occasionally, they may even gain some measure of influence. For example, Germany’s Free Democrats, a quasi-libertarian party, have often held the balance of power in that country. In other cases, however, the splintering of the legislature among many different parties, as in Italy and Israel, has been a recipe for dysfunction.
The American electoral system intentionally has high barriers to third parties. The most significant is the Electoral College. Because a president needs an absolute majority of electoral votes, those that go to a third party are wasted. Thus third parties tend to be spoilers, inflicting harm on the party closest to them ideologically. This sometimes leads to mischief. Republicans have been known to encourage Green Party candidates in order to draw votes from the Democrats. Democrats could probably do the same thing by encouraging Tea Party members to run against the Republicans.
All the states discourage third parties, making it difficult for them to achieve ballot status or keep it. Also, growth of the federal government since the New Deal has tended to discourage parochial third party efforts at the state and local level. As political scientists Pradeep Chhibber and Ken Kollman put it in a 2004 article, “As the federal government gained more authority relative to the states and localities, voters wanted their votes to go for parties that would have a say in the great national questions of the day, rather than on the issues raised in state or local politics.”
Finally, the major parties have long been successful in co-opting the leaders and issues of third parties. In the 1930s, the Democrats pretty much absorbed the Socialist Party. In the 2000s, the Republicans absorbed the Reform Party. The Libertarian Party is the only third party that has successfully resisted absorption, but at the price of having no influence. Personally, I have long felt that libertarian ideas would have greater saliency if the LP would go out of existence and its members instead worked within one of the major parties.
There is no reason to think that a third party effort today will be any more successful than those in the past. Unless a billionaire like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg decides to bankroll a personal campaign, it is reasonable to assume that our president will be either a Republican or Democrat in 2013.
