What About Third Parties?

It's easy for single-issue or third-party figures to assume the mantel of moral rectitude and criticize main-stream political candidates for not being tougher about where they stand on issues. The third tier never has to worry about losing an election for being too controversial because they rarely receive enough support to become viable contenders. The best that can be said for most of them is that they may at times be able to open up debate about matters of national concern that would otherwise be left unaddressed.

But no matter what followers of Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney and Bob Barr believe about their candidates, the fact is that, in the end, they are spoilers in elections that can turn on votes they take from the two main-party standard bearers. It is sometimes said that Democrats and Republicans are too close in theory and practice to provide much of a choice - - no question we are in the grip of powerful forces that tend to reinforce governmental conduct that is hard to change. But for third-party advocates to deny fundamental differences between the two major parties is factually incoherent and asserts a purity of purpose on their part that simply doesn't exist.

Ralph Nader, for example, has championed consumer causes for much of his adult life. He helped focus attention on automotive safety and called attention to environmental issues long before it was fashionable. He supports many of the same positions most Democrats do, but is much more voluble about such things as defense spending and corporate domination of our lives and the global economy.

It isn't so much that he's wrong on many of the issues he promotes or that he doesn't have important points to make. It's just that there's a kind of political naiveté and an egotistical stubbornness that prevents him from playing well with others. There were many factors at work during the 2000 election debacle, but those 90,000 votes garnered by Nader in Florida helped hand the White House to Bush. And make no mistake; the Gore-Bush differences were profound.

One can't help wondering what Nader does with himself in the years between presidential elections. What organizational framework does he build during the ‘off season'? How does he advance the cause of his ideals and his party? The inflammatory former congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney, is the Green Party nominee for heaven's sake. So Nader is running on an Independent Party ticket. How strange is that?

On the Libertarian side, candidate Bob Barr is an odd duck. He could almost be called idealistic if he didn't take such consistently self-promoting, ultra-conservative positions. While his association with Judicial Watch may have seemed at times to offer a non-partisan appraisal of questionable political behavior it tended to focus on the misdeeds of liberal office holders. Although he has affiliated since his days in Congress with the American Civil Liberties Union, he is probably best remembered as a virulent Clinton hater and a relentless member of the impeachment team.

His association with the ACLU is understandable in the sense that he is committed to the preservation of personal privacy and individual freedoms. But it is hard to separate what could be described as a sense of fair play from his sour brand of partisan politics. He says the country has engaged in what he refers to as a "racial spoils system" by which he seems to mean that set-asides for women and racial minorities defy the concept of absolute equality. By using Martin Luther King's words that he hoped people would come to be judged "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their hearts" to support his position, he either misses the point or intentionally disregards the striving for equality that inspired the civil rights movement in the first place.

The fact is that none of these candidates have to deal with the pressures of finding enough of a consensus among an electorate of diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds to get elected. They can say whatever they please to whomever they please and pontificate about how they are invigorated by the purist of political motives. But our system is, for better or worse, a two-party system.

Third-party beliefs may sometimes be incorporated into mainstream platforms, but voting for outsider candidates is for the most part an exercise in futility. Only salmon swim upstream to spawn.