Sometimes I think political pundits, like real professionals, should need to pass some kind of licensing test before practicing their chosen trade. The math nerd in me would like to include something about the difference between a percent change and a percentage point change, but really one could get off to a good start with a single question: “Is today the right moment to get excited about a third-party presidential run?” If you answer “yes,” you need to find some other line of work.
By that standard, Jonathan Alter and David Broder would both need to find something else to do in the wake of their gushing responses to the launch of the Unity '08 initiative, a bizarre effort to recruit one Democrat and one Republican to run together on a single ticket for national office.
Unlike Alter, who appears to believe that the existence of computers has somehow repealed the entire structure of reality (while laboring under the odd misapprehension that “Linux lets users design their own operating systems,” which is a story for another day), Broder at least has the good sense to recognize that the scheme couldn't possibly succeed. Nevertheless, in the sort of move that's made the erstwhile “dean” of the Washington press corps a punch line among non-brain-dead consumers of the political media, he's managed to convince himself that it is, on some level, a worthy endeavor.
In point of fact, the specific Unity '08 agenda that so enthuses Broder manages the neat trick of being dafter than the third-party concept itself. It's well-known that conceptual space exists for political coalitions very different from the two that dominate American politics. One such coalition might be a libertarian one, interested in reducing government intervention into both the American economy and Americans' private lives. Another could be a sort of populist coalition à la Pat Buchanan -- socially conservative, and inward-looking, hostile to the global trade regime, all forms of internationalist foreign policy, and immigration alike. The availability of those options no doubt explains why, in fact, the Libertarian Party runs candidates for President every four years and why Pitchfork Pat himself ran in 2000.
The former is a perennial failure, and the latter was a failure when attempted, too. You can file these phenomena under “Consistent History of all American Third-Party Presidential Runs” and “Simple Consequence of the American System of Electing Presidents.”
But those guys are true believers, operating with idea-sets that have an internal logic of their own and really do go unrepresented in America's two-party system. Unity '08, on the other hand, is looking for someone to address such issues as “global terrorism, our national debt, our dependence on foreign oil, the emergence of India and China as strategic competitors and/or allies, nuclear proliferation, global climate change, the corruption of Washington's lobbying system, the education of our young, the health care of all, and the disappearance of the American Dream for so many of our people.”
Broder, Alter, and Unity '08 alike are doubtless correct in their view that a party seeking to emphasize those issues while downplaying hot-button “cultural issues” could have significant appeal. Indeed, it would probably have millions of loyal adherents around the country, elect dozens of governors and senators, compete credibly for control of the House of Representatives, etc. Just like, you know, the Democratic Party does right now.
But no. Unity '08 informs us that “both parties and all of us who have been active in them share responsibility for the current political morass.” Democrats aren't angels, but this is comparable to the observation that “Matt Yglesias and David Broder both write columns about politics.” Mine runs on this Web site, his goes in a giant, influential daily newspaper. He's a regular on Meet The Press, I used to sometimes get invited to do five-minute spots on CNNfn before it went out of business. Democrats have no doubt done some stuff that's contributed to some problems, whereas Republicans have governed the country unilaterally throughout the 21st century. The problems in America are, by any reasonable standard, overwhelmingly the Republicans' fault.
One doubts that anyone would seriously deny this. What's going on here isn't genuine disagreement, but just a manifestation of a phenomenon that, unlike the bogus hobgoblins of partisanship and polarization, really is wrecking American politics. The first is a pathological dislike for Democrats. Over the past 25 years or so, the GOP has done a better job of winning elections. It's comforting in a storybook morality kind of way to attribute this not to dumb luck or skill at electioneering but to some deep-seated moral flaw lurking inside the other party. Thus, it's simply a priori impossible that the platform Democrats have been espousing is the correct one since, after all, they didn't win the election. If the correct platform actually is the one Democrats have been espousing, this simply needs to be ignored and instead we'll all agree to pretend that deficit reduction, expanded access to health care, and enhanced emphasis on environmental issues is some out-of-left-field notion rejected by both parties.
The sad truth of the matter is that American politics is, on some level, a bit dull. If you strongly object to the current direction of the country, you have to support giving the other party a chance to run things. There's no other way around it, and anyone who says otherwise is part of the problem.
Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.
