At the risk of adding fuel to the fire Donald Trump ignited by using songs from the legendary recording artists Queen, Neil Young, REM, and Adele without permission, I have to say this. If the American people had their way, the theme song playing in the background of their rally for a reimagining of the electoral process would be the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” While Hillary Clinton got approval from the singer Rachel Platten to use “Fight Song,” the Democrat did opt for the combative in choosing it as her official anthem. She’s come under fire in social and traditional media for not selecting a Katy Perry tune.
Regardless of the two major party candidates’ taste in music, few Americans would be singing Clinton or Trump’s praises anyway. They’d be trying to shout them down, stifling them like an unwanted child at a rally. On top of that, the headlines seem to be screaming at us with regularity as polling data comes in. “Voter Satisfaction with Presidential Candidates Lowest in Decades,” reads the label on a June 2016 Pew Research Center report’s graphic. And if we’re to believe other polling data, it’s not just the two candidates themselves who have voters on edge. Those polled (and there were 6,000 of them, more than five times the typical poll sample size) feel that their identity and well-being are in jeopardy. Nora Kelly’s article on voter dissatisfaction in the April 2016 issue of the Atlantic ran with this intro line: “A new Quinnipiac survey shows most Americans believe the country has lost it way.” Kelly goes on to cite specifically how a majority of Americans believe that the country has “lost its identity,” that their values and beliefs are “under attack,” and that they are “falling further and further behind economically,” among other complaints.
So that pulsing bass line you hear beneath the doom-and-gloom melody and lyrics does offer hope that your desire to see things improve will be met. You can hear it if you manage to filter out the rest of the noise. Sixty-four percent of those who participated in the Quinnipiac survey indicated that they were in favor of “radical change.” Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders’s most ardent supporters believe that their guy was “leading a movement, and not just a campaign.” Radical change and movement sounds like a revolution doesn’t it?
I’m here to tell you that Trump and Sanders don’t display the kind of radical thinking that the majority of Americans find palatable. In Sanders’s case that doesn’t really matter anymore; he is no longer a candidate. Trump’s volatility has him and his people now actively engaged in walking back his talking back. In the meantime, Mrs. Clinton has to fend off name-calling from her Republican costar: she’s a liar, she’s the devil, she’s a cofounder of ISIS. In my mind I can hear someone putting those lyrics to a catchy tune.
I have some sympathy for her, even though she didn’t take the high road and called out (deservedly so) Trump as a racist. I guess that when you’ve been in the political game as long as she has, patience can be in short supply.
At times, when I turn on the news and the election coverage, I wonder if I’m mistakenly getting a recap of a Mexican telenovela.
I probably shouldn’t make light of the situation like this. Except, like many of you, I need to do something to get rid of the angst that afflicts these times and threatens to invade my psyche.
Back to that glimmer of hope I mentioned. That call for radical change is something that I’d like to see brought about. And not just at some point in my lifetime, but now. If it hasn’t been made clear to all of us before, it has become apparent today. The two-party system is broken. Many, including me, are sounding the death knell of the Republican Party. Our representative democracy appears to be in shambles. If a supporter of one party is putting a best foot forward, it’s only to trip up a member of the opposition.
I apologize. The epic dysfunctionality we’re witnessing isn’t really funny; it’s sad.
And forgive me in advance if I’m preaching to the choir. A September 25, 2015, Gallup poll (the most recent available on this question) showed that 60 percent of Americans believe that a third major political party is needed because Republicans and Democrats “do such a poor job” of representing the interests of the American people. This trend in favor of a third party began in 2003, but the percentage of those in favor of them is the highest it’s ever been. That’s more than a decade of growing desire.
Isn’t it time someone did something to bring about this major change?
The time to take the next big step is now.
Attaining major party status is a difficult task. It will take an enormous amount of resources and likely a large amount of time. That said, we can all take action today. We can get behind one of the third-party candidates in this year’s election.
These parties may not have attained major-party status, but some have ideas that are reflective of what most Americans believe and will put into practice what most Americans want.
I believe that the Libertarian Party best fits that description. A group that has the right ideas and the right practices that represent most Americans?
Sounds like a major party to me.
This level of disillusionment, distrust, and dysfunction hasn’t happened overnight. When I served as the Republican governor of New Mexico from 1994 to 2002, I saw firsthand some elements of it. I soldiered on and made some real changes in how our government went about its business. From the start, I was the quintessential outsider. I’d never run for public office before. I’d been a member of the Republican Party since 1978, and with two exceptions—in 1984 I chose libertarian candidate David Bergland over Ronald Reagan, and in ’92 I voted for Ross Perot because of my concerns over the deficit—I voted Republican every election. In 2000 I was the only governor to not endorse George W. Bush in the primary, believing Steve Forbes could deliver the same results to the country that I was able to achieve in New Mexico. I was a social liberal in a party of social conservatives. In a very real sense, even before I left the Republican Party to join the Libertarian Party, I was a third-party candidate. I was a member of a small subset of like-minded individuals who didn’t mind stating our beliefs in the face of opposition from within our own party.
Yes, divisiveness existed back then, both within and without the party. To one degree or another, in American politics it always has. But at no time has the dualistic Republican / Democrat, I’m right / you’re wrong, yes / no, on / off, black / white way we talk to and interact with one another in the political sphere been such a yawning (read: shouting) chasm.
I’ve sometimes heard people say that when things fall to pieces, it is because the center cannot hold. We have a broken system. There are those who, rather than stand back and watch its continued slow demise, would like to shatter it. That sounds frightening to many.
But I believe that a new center will hold.
The Democrats and Republicans, particularly as represented by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, have ceded their claim on the political center in this country. They’ve each taken an authoritarian stance, one on the left, one on the right. In both cases, they are deniers of freedom.
Fortunately, as the saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum. In that vacated space I see an opportunity for another mode of political thought to occupy the central place in American politics and governance that both major parties have tried to lay claim to. Libertarianism is on the move, and I believe that it now occupies that middle position, the place where the vast majority of Americans feel most at home—a place where those who are socially inclusive and fiscally conservative can find comfort.
In writing this essay and entitling it “Common Sense for the Common Good,” I want to examine the current state of affairs and look at the root causes that have brought the two-party system to crisis—the absence of common sense and a focus on the common good. I also want to share with you my political history and evolution. At one point in my life, I’ve been a registered Democrat, a registered Republican, and a registered Libertarian. I’ve held public office as a Republican and have run for office as Libertarian. That’s not inconsistency; that’s following my conscience. From the beginning, as I developed my political consciousness, I knew that I had libertarian leanings, even though I did not join the Libertarian Party.
From my unique perspective as a onetime member of three political parties, I’ll look at how it is possible for a third-party candidate to thrive in the present environment. And I’ll offer evidence that libertarianism is, as I stated above, the new center of American politics. We live in an interesting political climate, to put it mildly. Examining how we got here and what it’s like to be here will help us do something that I believe the vast majority of the American people can get behind—move forward.