By Bill Woodruff —
We constantly hear people talk about our “two-party” political system. The framers of the Constitution never planned for political parties but according to some of their writings, they certainly expected them to hatch.
During the past two-plus centuries several political parties have come and gone. Times change and the issues that brought about the creation of a political party may no longer have the same relevance as when it was created.
We no longer have a Whig or anti-Mason party. The ideas of some parties are often assimilated into the platform of the main parties and the minor party fades away. The know nothing party of the mid-19th century may just have quietly dissolved into the Republicans and Democrats but that”s just my theory.
There are several parties on the ballot in California and other states. The other parties receive almost no attention from the media and are excluded from most debates. Ask anyone on the street to name all the political parties and what they stand for. You can expect a lot of blank expressions.
One of the reasons for this narrow coverage on the part of the media is because we use the left-right scale for measuring political ideology. A left-winger is a Marxist and a right-winger is a fascist, as the story goes. Everyone else has to fit somewhere in between on this scale. This to me is as sensible as trying to measure time with a ruler or distance with a thermometer. We are so locked in to this rigid mental box that it causes everyone to have a label stuck on them or be pushed aside if people don”t know how to label them.
For example the Libertarian party platform is based on a much downsized government. This fits in somewhat with conservative Republican thinking although they are miles apart on the amounts. But the party also advocates individual freedom, far more than either Democrats or Republicans.
They”re not Marxists, fascists or conventional moderates so how does a Libertarian fit on the L-R scale? They don”t. Rather than get a new system of measurement or stop labeling everyone altogether, the nonsense just continues.
The same applies to the other parties: the American Independent, Peace and Freedom, Green, etc. Unfortunately I don”t have enough space to cover all these platforms in one column. My point is that there are more than two views on most subjects and many good ideas aren”t getting heard. We”ve been conditioned to have a short attention span and this becomes a vicious cycle when the media is forced into short sound-byte coverage if they want to keep their audience.
As my coworker Jack says, the choice we have between the Democrats and Republicans is like choosing between the Hindenburg and the Titanic. I think a lot of people would like to have “none of the above” on the ballot. That cannot be misconstrued as apathy, which not voting could be.
Polls show that Independents now outnumber either Democrats or Republicans and especially with younger voters. This time it could be possible to have a third party outnumber the Republicans.
Most Republicans this year want anyone but Obama, so this idea might be premature and just succeed in re-electing him. In the past, third party candidates have only succeeded in being spoilers. Ralph Nader”s votes took enough away from Al Gore to elect George Bush.
I don”t fear the prospect of having more than two parties in office. It would be better than the stalemate we have now. The only risk is in ending up with a mess like Italy, having at one time more than 30 parties and needing a coalition of many parties to get a majority vote. We don”t need that extreme either, but somewhere in the middle is a sensible choice of moderation and common sense.
It would be helpful to have more independents in Congress. Both parties would have to work with them to get bills passed. We”ve become way too polarized and rigid.
This country was founded on huge compromises and that is what it may take to get it functional again.
I know I”m not alone in being sick of the gridlock and often not liking any of the major candidates but if you choose between the lesser of two evils, you end up with the evil of two lessers.
Bill Woodruff is a longtime Lake County resident and former business owner.
