By Martin Dyckman
Published November 28th 1999 in Times Publishing Company
The dinner table talk at a recent banquet turned to guessing the identity of the mystery white stuff on the salad. Some said it was mozzarella, but most of us thought it had to be tofu because it was tasteless. Unlike a good cheese, tofu takes on the flavor of its milieu.
A successful political party is like the cheese, not the tofu. It has its own character, which its candidates adopt. Unlike the chicken-and-egg conundrum, there's no question of which comes first. It's the party.
When the Republican Party arose, it was on a set of principles. Lincoln's candidacy came later. Since then, no new national party has succeeded except in a spoiler's role. If some failed for unpopular views, others simply did not outlive the candidacies of nominees such as Theodore Roosevelt, Strom Thurmond, Henry Wallace and George Wallace, who had created them in their own images.
To those who believe America needs a viable third party, the saddest event in memory was Ross Perot's insistence on running a second time in 1996. Had the Reform Party been allowed to nominate former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, a politician of sound mind and solid reputation, it would have presented a credible alternative to Bill Clinton and Bob Dole and might even have improved on its 18.9 percent showing of 1992. Instead, Perot managed merely 8.4 percent, some 11.6-million fewer votes than before.
Perot's rerun left the Reform Party in such a pitiful state that Donald Trump, a rank but rich amateur who is as vainglorious as Perot but not nearly as funny, can pose as the man who would save it from Pat Buchanan, who just can't help sounding like a bigot whenever he opens his mouth. For a libertine like Trump to contest a hypermoralistic ideologue like Buchanan over the soul of the Reform Party could call into question whether it even has a soul.
Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, who was elected on the Reform ticket without Perot's help, personifies what many voters would want in a third party - fiscal conservatism mixed with live-and-let-live liberalism. (His answer to Playboy's question about flag-burning: "You buy it, it's yours to burn.") But he isn't running, which is just as well for him and for the party considering his uncautious remarks about organized religion.
The Reform Party desperately needs a respectable alternative. There may be one.
John Anderson, the former Illinois representative who polled 6-million votes as an independent in 1980, is thinking about entering the Reform fray. Anderson said he is being urged on by some "very nice people out in California," where the law says he could be on the party primary ballot simply by asking.
He has also talked to Ventura, who voted for him in 1980 and who said, according to Anderson, that he would vote for him in 2000 notwithstanding his overtures to Trump.
Anderson has credentials that put Trump's and Buchanan's to shame, including a demonstrable record of working to improve the electoral process, which is as "reform" an issue as any you could cite. He is president of the Center for Voting and Democracy in Washington, which advocates proportional representation.
He is also president of the World Federalist Association, which would be a mighty hard swallow for those who think the Reform Party should stand for economic nationalism. Anderson is literally a world apart from Perot and Buchanan on that issue. He calls, among other things, for "an international police force under the United Nations to which we hopefully would have the good sense to pay our share."
Anderson, who is also a visiting professor of law at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, tested the waters recently with an op-ed piece on the Knight-Ridder wire in which he urged "full participation in the global community, seeing the world as the first astronauts saw it years ago"; called for "true campaign finance reform," which he said needs a "true outsider ready to challenge the leaders of both major parties"; and advocated proportional representation as "the key to bringing people back to electoral politics."
That's as fine a platform as any party could have. Whether it represents the Reform Party is another question.
Anderson's candidacy would raise other questions. Among them are his age - 77 - and whether he's too much like Bill Bradley for either one's good should both become nominees.
But Anderson has no illusions about actually becoming president or qualms about spoiling the chances of a Democratic progressive. To him, the mission would be to build the Reform Party into a permanent, credible alternative, as it never occurred to Perot to do.
"For many years," Anderson says, "I have been of the belief that something more than an individual candidacy is at stake in a presidential election. It's whether you can lay the groundwork for a more competitive political climate in this country, whether you can get people to go back to voting. That would be the rationale in building a third party. If you just want to pick a winner, go play Lotto."
A successful political party is like the cheese, not the tofu. It has its own character, which its candidates adopt. Unlike the chicken-and-egg conundrum, there's no question of which comes first. It's the party.
When the Republican Party arose, it was on a set of principles. Lincoln's candidacy came later. Since then, no new national party has succeeded except in a spoiler's role. If some failed for unpopular views, others simply did not outlive the candidacies of nominees such as Theodore Roosevelt, Strom Thurmond, Henry Wallace and George Wallace, who had created them in their own images.
To those who believe America needs a viable third party, the saddest event in memory was Ross Perot's insistence on running a second time in 1996. Had the Reform Party been allowed to nominate former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, a politician of sound mind and solid reputation, it would have presented a credible alternative to Bill Clinton and Bob Dole and might even have improved on its 18.9 percent showing of 1992. Instead, Perot managed merely 8.4 percent, some 11.6-million fewer votes than before.
Perot's rerun left the Reform Party in such a pitiful state that Donald Trump, a rank but rich amateur who is as vainglorious as Perot but not nearly as funny, can pose as the man who would save it from Pat Buchanan, who just can't help sounding like a bigot whenever he opens his mouth. For a libertine like Trump to contest a hypermoralistic ideologue like Buchanan over the soul of the Reform Party could call into question whether it even has a soul.
Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, who was elected on the Reform ticket without Perot's help, personifies what many voters would want in a third party - fiscal conservatism mixed with live-and-let-live liberalism. (His answer to Playboy's question about flag-burning: "You buy it, it's yours to burn.") But he isn't running, which is just as well for him and for the party considering his uncautious remarks about organized religion.
The Reform Party desperately needs a respectable alternative. There may be one.
John Anderson, the former Illinois representative who polled 6-million votes as an independent in 1980, is thinking about entering the Reform fray. Anderson said he is being urged on by some "very nice people out in California," where the law says he could be on the party primary ballot simply by asking.
He has also talked to Ventura, who voted for him in 1980 and who said, according to Anderson, that he would vote for him in 2000 notwithstanding his overtures to Trump.
Anderson has credentials that put Trump's and Buchanan's to shame, including a demonstrable record of working to improve the electoral process, which is as "reform" an issue as any you could cite. He is president of the Center for Voting and Democracy in Washington, which advocates proportional representation.
He is also president of the World Federalist Association, which would be a mighty hard swallow for those who think the Reform Party should stand for economic nationalism. Anderson is literally a world apart from Perot and Buchanan on that issue. He calls, among other things, for "an international police force under the United Nations to which we hopefully would have the good sense to pay our share."
Anderson, who is also a visiting professor of law at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, tested the waters recently with an op-ed piece on the Knight-Ridder wire in which he urged "full participation in the global community, seeing the world as the first astronauts saw it years ago"; called for "true campaign finance reform," which he said needs a "true outsider ready to challenge the leaders of both major parties"; and advocated proportional representation as "the key to bringing people back to electoral politics."
That's as fine a platform as any party could have. Whether it represents the Reform Party is another question.
Anderson's candidacy would raise other questions. Among them are his age - 77 - and whether he's too much like Bill Bradley for either one's good should both become nominees.
But Anderson has no illusions about actually becoming president or qualms about spoiling the chances of a Democratic progressive. To him, the mission would be to build the Reform Party into a permanent, credible alternative, as it never occurred to Perot to do.
"For many years," Anderson says, "I have been of the belief that something more than an individual candidacy is at stake in a presidential election. It's whether you can lay the groundwork for a more competitive political climate in this country, whether you can get people to go back to voting. That would be the rationale in building a third party. If you just want to pick a winner, go play Lotto."
Election Day '09 was a roller-coaster for election reformers. Instant runoff voting had a great night in Minnesota, where St. Paul voters chose to implement IRV for its city elections, and Minneapolis voters used IRV for the first time—with local media touting it as a big success. As the Star-Tribune noted in endorsing IRV for St. Paul, Tuesday’s elections give the Twin Cities a chance to show the whole state of Minnesota the benefits of adopting IRV. There were disappointments in Lowell and Pierce County too, but high-profile multi-candidate races in New Jersey and New York keep policymakers focused on ways to reform elections; the Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald were among many newspapers publishing commentary from FairVote board member and former presidential candidate John Anderson on how IRV can mitigate the problems of plurality elections.