Third Party Politics, and Why They Will Fail

This is an essay about the advantages of having at least three viable political parties in the United States, and why attempts at doing this in the past have failed, and are doomed to failure in the future.

There have been successful third parties in the past, the most notable third party success story is the Republican party. However, in each case there has not been three successful parties co-existing. That is, when one of the two political parties has fallen out of favor to the point that they no longer win elections, there has been a third party to fill the gap and that party has really become the second (or first) party.

(The first failure of a political party was the Federalist party, which elected only one presidiential candidate, John Adams, the second president of the United States. John Adams outlawed any critisism of the government with the Alien and Sedition acts, which were very unpopular. He lost to Thomas Jefferson, who immediately pardoned anyone convicted under these acts. [Today this would be seen as a clear violation of people's first amendment rights, but the Supreme Court had not yet asserted its authority.] Thomas Jefferson had established what is the oldest of the current political parties, the Democratic Party. As I recall, the Federalist party was replaced by the Wig party.)

There is a very big advantage to having at least three viable political parties. In recent years, the only time that this advantage has been seen is when Ross Perrot (sp) ran for president. He was high enough in the polles that he played the part of the viable third party, although he was running as an independent. Basically, the big advantage of three or more parties is that in that case there is no advantage to "going negative."

That is, suppose that Mr. A, Mr. B, and Ms. C are running for an office. Mr. A decides to smeer Mr. B with some questionable accusations, that is, he decides to "go negative." The result is not that Mr. A would win, but rather that Ms. C would likely win because people would be turned off to both Mr. A and Mr. B.

I recall a recent election in Wisconsin where that happened. There were three people running for the house from one district. Two of the three parties "went negative," the third decided to make a joke out of the negative advertisements. Guess who won.

Personally, I think that is enough of a recommendation for having three parties. That is, it will force politicians to stick to defending their policies and actions, rather than allowing someone to get elected on the "I'm not as bad as the opposition" ticket.

I suspect that having a third viable party in all elections would do more to cleaning up the political processes in the United States than any number of laws, including Campaine Finance Reform, and any form of Term Limits.

This will never happen, however, not without a revolution in the United States. (Note, not all revolutions are violent.) There are two reasons for this. The first is that the constitution makes a third party impossible, and the second is that the current top two parties (both Democratic and Republican) have, and are, setting things up so that they will hold on to power.

Let look at these one at a time. The first reason, the constitution guarantees two parties, is probably the easiest to change, in part because the changes needed would not be seen as forcing this issue, and, therefore, may actually be supported by the major parties.

If one reads the Constitution of the United States you will note that there is no mention of Political Parties. In fact, I am lead to believe that the founding fathers, at the point in time when the Constitution was written intended that the country be established with no political parties. They would have been aware of political parties because they had existed in England prior to that. (In fact, the Tory Political Party in the United States chose to apose independence.) Therefore, I am inclined to believe that they were left out on purpose.

If one looks at it, the envisioned approach to Democracy was different than what we see today. They invisioned a demoracy where one never voted for anyone except people that you knew personally. That is, there were local elections, where the people running were known to the community, these representatives got together and elected people to the next layer, etc. until finally, the States elected the Senators, and the president. (This "democracy" was changed over time with the various amendments, and changes in laws, to what we have today.)

Under this system, it seemed reasonable that the, if the people who were brought together to choose our president (the constitution does not say that electors are to be pledged) couldn't do so, then the choice should be left to the group of people who most closely resembles that group, the House of Representatives.

However, the idea of what democracy is has changed. Now, the electors are all pledged (although I have seen some people who suggest that the pledges are not constitutionally binding) to vote for a particular candidate, and I only know of one case were the pledge was broken. (The 1960 election, one elector chose to vote for someone who wasn't even on the ballot. It didn't change the result, and was not challenged.) In addition, congress at times, and in the minds of many people, are viewed as political opportunists (I'm being kind). The result is that most people would not what that body choosing the president. The saying would be, "The House of Representatives should not be the ones to choose the president," as if we had any less choice in voting people into the House than we have in chosing the electors.

If a Representative were to go against the wishes of his (or her) constituents in a matter of this importance, I would fault the constituents if they did not remove that person from office (not re-elect) at the first opportunity.

Consider what would happen if there were a viable third party. In this case, no candidate would get a clear majority of the electorial votes, so we could expect all presidential elections to be decided by the House. That is, assuming the deal making, and political posturing amoung the electors didn't come up with a "coalition" president, or the pledges mentioned above are found to be constitutional. Therefore, one could expect that what ever party controlled the House would control the Presidency. Suddenly the bar for the entry of a viable third party is very high.

I don't see this as the biggest problem, however, because the Constitution can be changed, and in a case like this, very quickly because the public outcry would require it be changed.

There is another problem that is much more difficult to change, however. The outer fringes of the problem has already been mentioned by third parties. That is, Congress has set things up to insure that there is no competion to the existing major parties. This is done, usually, under the guise of Campaine Finance Reform. Therefore, people call for federally finianced elections. But the money is not distributed to anyone, only to "Political Parties which receive more than 15? in the elections," meaning the Democrates and the Republicans.

I admit that the Reform party has managed to sneak into this catagorie, which I'm sure will be "fixed" next year, and the inevetable result has been seen. This party has been torn to pieces this year because other parties and polititians are trying to take the title "Reform Party" strictly for the money. That is, Pat Buchanan representing the "Far Right Republican Party" (I will not burden the Republicans with him, as they had the sense to vote him out.), and the Natural Law Party.

This means that a third party has to raise many times more money than the major parties just to have a wack at it. They are effectively excluded unless the candidate is independently wealthy.

Nor is this the only problem. Look at the barriers place on getting on the ballot. If the major political parties cannot keep their monopoly on power by persuading people, then they will simply make it impossible for other parties to get on the ballot. (Sounds like the old Poll Tax idea.) This has been done by increasing the number of people that need to sign a petition to get on the ballot (I will sign for anyone, whether I agree with them or not). In one case I heard mentioned on the news, the state set an impossible goal, then, once it looked like a third party might make the goal, they decided to add requirements so that the party would fail.

A third reason is the presidential debates. Since Kennedy, the presidential debates have been a major forum that has allowed candidates to get their message out. It used to be that these were set up by the League of Women Voters, a private organization, but as of about 12 years ago congress decided to take this over. (I wonder it the League may have been about to unilaterally open the debates.) Since they have to have some criteria, and I doubt that saying "Democrat or Republican" would go over very well politically, so they do some messing with "the Polls" so that only Democrats and Republicans can pass the bar. I will bet that if a third party made or even approached the bar, it would be "fixed" by the next congress.