It is funny how life sometimes intersects with itself at the strangest times. I was watching “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” this evening (sans commercials on Turner Classic Movies), not really paying much attention. In fact, only inertia kept me from finding the remote and turning to something else. The movie’s message that the common man, and common sense, can sometimes win the day over entrenched special interests and the political machine just rings so hopelessly naive in these days of hyper-partisan do-nothingism. The scene when Mr. Smith begins his marathon speech did get a chuckle from me, as it was so unusual in its day (1939) that all the reporters jumped from their seats and ran to the phone banks screaming, “Filibuster!” it wouldn’t earn a tweet from a junior Senator today when it takes 60 votes to decide what to order for lunch.
So, a quick chuckle then back to this morning’s newspaper. I turned the page and started reading Tom Friedman’s column, “Third Party Rising,” and my spirits began to rise as well. Friedman claims that “at least two serious groups, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast,” made up of what he calls “the radical center,” are developing political parties to compete with the bankrupt, Republican and Democratic parties.
I’m sure some of you are already rolling your eyes, but he’s not talking about Ross Perot or John Anderson waging a lone Quixotic crusade. He’s talking about a real party and he seems to link these efforts (although he isn’t this specific) with wealthy technocrats and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
This would be a party of serious people, who not only believe in free enterprise, but have lived that life and understand that real problems are never solved unless we first speak them out loud and keep all options for solving them on the table.
Their commitment would be back by serious money; rich people with a real interest in finding solutions, so that their efforts can continue to keep them rich, and too much money to make them vulnerable to the pernicious, single-minded self-serving special interest groups.
I’ve been thinking for years that the only way out of our mess is to somehow take the money out of the election system, but I think I’ve been wrong. We need t fight fire with flame-throwers!
Imagine the combined fortunes of Michael Bloomberg, Meg Whitman, Jon Corzine, and Carly Fiorina, joining with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison and the Google/Facebook geeks to back rational, problem-solving candidates from the “radical center” who actually speak the truth to the electorate without looking over their fund-raising shoulders.
Are they going to sweep the nation in 2012? Probably not, but if an honest conversation broke out we’d have a minor miracle right there. I hope you’ll read the article if you haven’t already; the description of the established parties by a Stanford political scientist is worth the effort alone.
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17 comments:
Dennis, I know and understand that you don't have any appreciation for our current elected officials. I can understand that. But if you think I'm gonna buy into having some rich technocrats making the decisions, well then you really did take too much of the purple mesc at Hiram. I'd rather trust the near extinct machines than those muthafuckers.
Since the existing parties are already owned by big pharma, big insurance, big oil, Wall Street, and dozens of other interest groups including teachers unions and old people, I'm just excited to have some new money in the game.
P.S. I never swallowed.
[hankster here, trying to find which Google account is working]
TF's opinion had a ring of optimism. Michael Bloomberg is a very smart guy. That he one of the engines behind this move to solve the hardest leadership problems of our time, is positive. He doesn't care about political labels or convention. Unlike orthodoxy, as those who believe a document or strict way of doing things is the path to salvation, he sees problems as obstacles to solve in achieving goals. I'm with him: I don't see a book written a few thousand years ago or a document a few hundred years old penned by a group of guys who didn't see things the same way as anything other than a road map. I like maps and collect them. But the road and map are 2 different things. The people who wrote the maps did not construct the detours.
Maybe thirty years of raising money for politicians and political causes has made me a cynic but when we worked on the Anderson for President campaign in 1980 the goal was to shake up the two parties. I've been contacted to do fundraising over the years for a couple of "new" political movements and they were always run by people from the "old" parties.
As long as business can spend unlimited resources to effect the outcome of elections, the system will stay the same.
And corporations will never stand for public financing of elections and the supreme court will back them.
Completely behind the rationality, sensibility of Bloomberg. But I beg you to remove Carly Fiorina from the "rational center". Please.
@ Fenway. I can't stand Fiorina, but this is part of what comes with a new political coalition. I don't much care for Meg or Corzine either, but they are well inside the middle third, regardless of the goofball things they might say to get elected today.
You started your piece by mentioning the common man and common sense.
Seems like one party hates the common man….and common sense…is an oxymoron.
George Washington was one of the weathiest men in the colonies of his time. FDR wanted for nothing that money could buy, ever in his life. They were both competent in many things. But most of all in the sure ways in which they led the nation in dark days.
The problem is not too much money in politics - the electorate is after all huge, and more diverse than ever in the ways in which it obtains information about the government and government issues.
The problem, unequivocally, is a vast failure of the American leadership class, in government, in business, in politics (both parties,)in education at every level, in religion, and in media. Until that problem is solved, or otherwise passes, no amount of "new blood", new elites, new money, or new parties will fix the nation.
I know you like Tom Friedman, but if ever there was an icon of leadership failure in "journalism", he is it. Or as I like to say, in my own style, "The world is not flat, Tom Friedman's head is." Maybe we can debate specifics some day on that. The "technocrats and entrepreneurs" that you cite, Bloomberg, Whitman, Corzine, Gates, Buffett, Elison et al, are for sure rich and opinionated. Will they change or reverse the decline of our leadership class and the nation? I doubt it. More likely they are part of the problem, not the solution, and sadly, some of them have already proven that conclusively.
My solution, until this wretched phase passes? I'm an air conditioned gypsy - that's my solution.
I'm not sure a third party is possible but I'd certainly be encouraged if smart, successful people tried to take on some of the seemingly intractable problems this country faces. The challenge will be finding a forum or structure in which to take on these problems. The realm of politics certainly isn't it.
A third party in American politics has rarely, if ever, worked. To survive it needs to have at least a modicum of success. If they siphon off 20% of the electorate from the other two parties, you don't need 51% to govern, you only need 41%. Checks and balances go out the window and we're really screwed more than we are now.
I'm under no illusion that a 3rd party would take control of the country in the short term, or maybe ever. But a third party that actually talked about the real problems facing the country could make a big difference immediately.
@ youmightberight: I'm not say TF is always right about everything, and he is a world class self-promoter of his ideas. But I do think he makes a lot of sense about many important things, and you weren't specific about how he is wrong.
There must be some kind of way out of here. Jokers and thieves the whole lot of them. Tax my paycheck then insult me by wasting it away after they lie to me Local voices are heard then dismissed. Time for good football and a great porter. oh and are the buckeyes going to play somebody else besides the crippled boys from the sisters of the splintered cross.
And what is Notre Dame's record this year? St. Brian of Cincinnati hasn't got them quite all the way back yet has he?
Dennis - You're right about no specific criticisms of TF. Don't worry, I got 'em. As I said, though, maybe we can discuss him later. Meanwhile there's probably something else that interests both of us more that we could argue about.
Sorry to take so much space on this post but I just came across an item that gives I think the best gloss on this subject (http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/16176.html)
“Ordinary Americans with leftist values need to launch an insurgency against the Democratic establishment just as the Tea Party has launched one against the Republican establishment. . . . The real lesson of the Tea Party is ‘clean your own house first’ . . Lefties, get to work. America is counting on you."
Read it all. It's about you. It's important.
Why would you trust either "the extinct machines" or "those muthafuckers." (re: Kaz above) This is the United States, we don't have to take either-or.
Hat tip to the Instapundit.
@YMBR: It was interesting, and perhaps important, but it was not about me. I'm no Democrat and have no interest in reforming that party. I'm not even that liberal, but when the conversation is being dominated by Glenn Beck, Sarah P., and the Tea-baggers, you don't have to be very far left of them before you start to sound like Walter Mondale.
No, no, no.
The whole concept of liberal/conservative is simply as out-dated and meaningless as Gordon Gecko's cell phone. We need to govern from the middle -- not the ends of the spectrum.
The only purpose for government is to solve problems and problems don't have ideologies -- we can only hope they have solutions.
Wow...I was going to stay out of this one until DB's last post. Couldn't agree more. 80% of Americans would get along fine over a beer and agree in principle about most of the important issues. Everyone deserves health care, we need to get the hell out of Afghanistan, REALLY rich MF's ought to pay a much higher share of taxes, we can't keep drilling for oil, we need to invest in new technologies to create jobs, etc. We have become obsessed with extremists on both ends (although I believe that the right is way overrepresented here) and that is an appalling fact. But in the end it is our fault and not theirs that we pay attention to this garbage.
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