Democracy needs party variety
Mark Rogers
Daily Mississippian
OXFORD, Miss.
In a 1996 Halloween episode of The Simpsons, Homer discovers that Bill Clinton and Bob Dole have been replaced by shapeshifting aliens plotting to take over the world when whichever of them is elected. Homer reveals their sinister plan to the world just before the election so that no one will vote for them, but the aliens laugh it off, saying, "Puny Earthlings! What can you do? It's a two-party system! Bwaaahaha!"
I'm sure Ross Perot and Ralph Nader thought it was hilarious.
The truth is that for a country which prides itself on having fostered the modern notion of democracy, America has a funny way of showing it. Rarely, if ever, has a third-party candidate seriously threatened to win a national election, condemned instead to play the role of spoiler. Perot was a brash candidate whose unprecedented level of support challenged many notions of grass-roots efforts in modern politics, but as soon as the election was over he was forced to assume the mantle of "that guy who cost Bush the election."
Perhaps it was Perot's strong showing among otherwise conservative voters that cost Bush his lead. Perhaps it was Bush's inability to articulate a clear domestic agenda. Regardless, the fact remains that the role of spoiler continues to be the only achievement possible for candidates who do not wish to embrace the platforms of the two major parties.
This is or should be almost inconceivable for a country heralded as the world's defender of freedom. Many of the foreign nations whose governments have been remolded in America's image over the past century now reveal a freer, more open political process than the one here that they are trying to mimic.
The idea of a two-party system is unthinkable in places like Japan, where their political spectrum has been fragmented into so many different flavors that more than a dozen different parties now fight for small percentages of representation like dogs at a butcher shop. In a land where the public's choices for political parties are widely varied, a clear majority is virtually impossible.
The result is a defacto system of compromise and coalition in which like-minded politicians from competing parties choose to ally themselves on particular issues or against particular foes and in which the slightest disagreement between partners can bring a shaky coalition government to its knees.
We could learn a thing or two here. A political system which has many competing choices becomes by default the governmental equivalent of Kroger, a buyer's market in which political parties must seriously sell their product, a platform of ideals and proposals, to a skeptical and flighty public.
Besides, the idea of a mini-mall political arena fits in snugly with one of the great unspoken truths about Americans: that for all of our vaunted progressive ideas we are often surprisingly conservative and slow-moving. It took a century to remove slavery from the last bit of American soil, another to bring about real changes in civil rights and may take yet another to erase the vestiges of prejudice still lingering in our national discourse.
Like the Roman Empire before it, America's progression from a forested land of "every man for himself" to a modernized nation with its large, heavily-taxing protective government has been more like a glacier than a rapid river. A multi-party system plays right into this innate hesitancy.
Don't like sudden swings in the tax brackets, in either direction? Try coordinating five competing coalition partners into a budget deal.
Tired of the influence of the so-called special-interest money on governmental decisions? Try a system in which no one party controls the majority and by extension the purse strings.
Upset at how close the 2000 election was or convinced that the party with slightly fewer votes in the key state won the whole state? Try a system in which no one is the president until a majority coalition is in place, in which the recent trend of plurality-takes-all would be halted.
Think about this cold reality: a majority of the American voting public did not vote for George W. Bush. A majority of the American voting public did not vote for Al Gore. In fact, no candidate since 1988 has received a majority of the popular vote.
What we have is two parties so closely tied among the vast political center that they cannot achieve a majority, but so locked in mortal combat with each other that they cannot see the serious damage being done to the government for which they claim to be servants.
In a country which forced the two top non-majority candidates to learn to work together (since a runoff system would simply perpetuate the mistakes of today), we would take the word "mandate" much more seriously. Then you would start to see some real change.
This column first appeared in the University of Mississippi's newspaper, Daily Mississippian, on Feb. 12, 2001, and is reprinted here courtesy of U-WIRE.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Wednesday, February 14, 2001
