U Not Gonna Like This

That issues was raised by American Reform Party (link) in the article below:




Why America Needs A New Political Party



By Stephen E. Ambrose & Richard D. Lamm


America needs a new political party. The most pressing issues facing the nation are beyond the ability of the two parties to solve, because neither party can act alone to solve these problems, and any bipartisan compromise can not equal the magnitude of the problems we face. These are not issues problems we are talking about here; they are structural problems. Structural problems that we are not even seriously debating, let alone solving! Structural problems that can only be solved by a new political coalition.



A new political party is not without precedent. There is nothing constitutional or sacrosanct about the existing two-party system. Other democracies have multiple parties, which make sense in parliamentary systems which have proportional representation (i.e., your party gets 9 percent of the vote, and you get 9 percent of the contested seats). However, in a "winner-take-all" system like ours, a two-party structure is almost inevitable. Constantly shifting coalitions work out their differences using two competing political umbrellas. Thus, although a two-party system usually has many more than two parties, pragmatically only two are real contenders for power. And, generally, this structure has served the nation well.




There have been times in American history where neither of the two political parties were able to solve the nation's problems. At that point, great pressures emerge to form a third political party. In the vast majority of cases, these third political parties add to the dialogue but do not succeed in building a permanent party. Political scientist Richard Hoffesteder has observed that the role of the third political party is "to sting like a bee and then die." This truly has been the fate of third political parties for the last 140 years. Many third parties deeply impacted public policy, but they did not become institutionalized. Their issues endured, but their party disappeared. The last third political party to become one of the two major parties was the Republican Party in the 1850s.



It is now time for another political realignment. We are not arguing for a change in the two-party system into a three-party system; we are arguing that America needs a new political party that would eclipse one of the existing major parties and itself become one of the major parties.



There is no divine right of political parties any more than there is a divine right of kings. Political parties were not part of the vision of our founding fathers, and are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. George Washington actually opposed the formation of political parties. They were necessary, however, as a way to focus political choice in the new republic. Being a pragmatic people, Americans needed some way to organize various philosophical and policy differences. Philosophical differences soon emerged as the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. Americans kept these two parties only as long as they played a useful function, and then easily developed new parties when the old ones ossified or failed to face the political needs of the country.



The Federalists disappeared, the Whigs replaced them, then gave way to the Republicans. Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party became Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party. The Populists of the late 19th Century, and the Progressives of the early 20th Century, failed to replace either the Democratic or Republican Party, but did force them to adopt their issues. They did not institutionalize a new permanent party, but accomplished their ideological mission by changing one or both of the existing parties.



Overall, the two-party system has served us well. A large factor in that success was that the two major parties could be forced to change by a third party threat. New issues forced themselves on the existing political process and demanded to be heard.



As a practical and pragmatic people, Americans were not wed to any particular party. Americans often formed a third party and, if successful, either one or both of the existing political parties adopted their issues. Twice in our history such a movement brought forth a whole new political party to replace one of the existing parties.



Now is again such a time. We fear that neither political party can do politically what we need to do economically to remain a great country, and that a third party built around a personality cannot force change—something just proven by Ross Perot. Bringing America's expectations in balance with our revenue will be a terribly painful and monumental task. We shall have to substantially downsize some of our most popular programs. We have ourselves in a Catch 22—where the best politics is the worst long-term public policy. Neither party can afford to take the steps in campaign reform and entitlement reform required to solve these politically volatile problems. Short-term political considerations eclipse long-term public interest considerations. We judge it to be substantially beyond the ability of either political party in the present political climate to deal successfully with these structural problems.



If a new party is to emerge, it would of necessity have to begin as a third political party and then grow. It is relatively easy to start a third political party; it is immensely difficult to grow them. The third parties that have grown into major parties are those that went after structural change. They solved not political problems (which the existing system could eventually solve), but instead deep structural flaws the existing political process could not solve. The Free Soilers/Republicans of the 1850s, and the Progressives of the first two decades of the 20th Century, are the models. They insisted on confronting issues the two major parties were incapable of addressing — slavery in the first instance, and the need for state and federal regulation of meat packing, drugs, the stock market, civil service, etc. in the second. Major problems had gone unaddressed by the existing parties until a new party filled the need. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum.



The answer of the Progressives to the ills of democracy was something the existing system could not or would not give the nation - more democracy. Recall. Referendum. Direct election of senators. Primaries. Above all, primaries. Progressives said that if you take the nomination process out of the hands of the pros in their smoke-filled rooms and give that power to the people, all of a sudden you will have clean politics. In many ways, this worked. But in the age of TV and special interests primaries have extended the political "season" to a nearly continuous process costing huge sums of money.



There has (correctly, we think) always been a heavy skepticism about the future of third political parties. In the last 140 years, not one third party became institutionalized, not even the Progressives. So, why a new party and why now?



Because we have a structural problem that cannot be solved with "politics as usual." As political scientists Levergood and Breyfogle point out:


We must realize that our current crisis of self-interested bickering and anarchy derive neither from our own selfishness, nor from the dishonesty and incompetence of politicians, but rather from political institutions that are no longer able to restrain the worst within us.



New parties arise when the existing parties cannot or will not meet some large contemporary issue. We see two major issues which are unlikely to be solved within the normal two-party system: campaign reform and entitlement reform.



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