During the 2000 election we saw them on our campus for Ralph Nader and the far left. In 1996 and 1992, Ross Perot got all the headlines with his who-knows-what agenda. John Anderson ran as a centrist in 1980, George Wallace on the far right in 1968 and Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond on the far left and far right, respectively, in 1948. Some people claim erroneously that Lincoln was one of them in 1860. Right now, Ed Thompson occasionally visits the campus to cash in on the same spirit. Just what is the fascination with third parties, and why do they always seem to capture some people's imaginations?
Ed Thompson, playing the part of the humble, populist governor's brother, visited my political science class'it was interesting, to say the least. Some of what he covered was normal fare for a small-town mayor running for governor, strongly criticizing McCallum's war on local government, education, etc. Some other stuff was just plain batty, like his main plank of barroom gambling and his apparent perception that the paramount issues for the average college student are not education costs or other economic problems, but the ability to smoke pot and get drunk whenever we want. Education, healthcare, the economy, etc. all played second fiddle to getting stoned. His mannerisms were truly unpolitician-like'manic even. How do these guys catch on?
First off, there is that attraction of rebellion: A system of popular election and majority rule has a naturally conformist nature, so intentionally going against the grain carries a certain romanticism with it. Whether it's George Wallace's declaration that there isn't \a dime's worth of difference"" between the two parties on race, Perot's detailed critique of the federal deficit, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan saying the exact same stuff on Israel, or occasional Green candidate Jello Biafra's discussion on why he's glad the Challenger exploded, it's refreshing to hear people say things no one else would dare say, whether right or wrong, rational or just plain loony-toon.
Second, independent of actual ideas, the conformist nature of democracy brings about a certain homogeny amongst most candidates'if not in ideas, then in demeanor mistaken for ideas by a TV audience. This monotony, even through the ideological battles between the two parties, does get grating, and some long for a protest vote just to lodge their frustration with cookie-cutter politicians. No one knows quite what Ross Perot stood for, but people were annoyed enough with politics that one in five voters in 1992 and one in 12 voters in 1996 cast their ballots for him.
Third party candidates can take advantage of this factor in their quest for 15 minutes of fame, like Ed Thompson emphasizing a quasi-leftist platform to a Cardinal columnist or my political science class, while his Web site lists his priorities as slashing taxes, school vouchers, business deregulation and other economic conservative ideas.
Thus, Ralph Nader was able to have the strangest coalition of all in 2000 with anarchists and ultra-socialists under one roof. People read what they want to read, hear what they want to hear, and vote with a smile on their faces.
This does hit a wall though. What happens when, as my mother put it with the election of Jesse Ventura, enough people vote for Alfred E. Neumann that he actually gets elected? At that point, the protest vote becomes genuine politics and the funny side candidate has to actually govern. Regardless of whether they crash and burn or adapt successfully to the job, it still flies in the face of the original rebellious nature of third parties.
The Reform Party collapsed almost immediately after it actually won a governorship, finding that, in order to get the original shock value back, they had to embrace Pat Buchanan.
If Ed Thompson were to win, which I don't expect for two seconds, regardless of whether he could make the transition from the Tomah Mayoralty to the governor's office or would instead plunge the state into a worse hole than McCallum's, the Libertarian Party would go from a few dozen aldermen nationwide and a protest vote every four years to an actual governor, a real spokesman and serious problems to deal with.
Nevertheless, anything is better than that school-robbing, local government-bashing, mismanaging fool Scott McCallum. Happy hunting.
