Count me among those who’ve long felt there’s a place for a viable third party in America. Or maybe even a fourth. Some place my positions won’t immediately be lost in tactical compromise. Some place I’d feel more identity than I’ve long sensed in the so-called representatives serving in most of the places I’ve lived.

To date, though, what I’ve observed is that most of the minor-party advocates and candidates have cast their eyes exclusively on the biggest prizes – the White House, especially, or perhaps a governorship or U.S. Senate seat. If you consider the scope of the Executive Branch and the number of qualified appointments to be filled, however, you soon realize there’s no way these individuals are prepared to take on that level of leadership. These are things that come out of big party organization and contacts.

At the other end of the spectrum, the reality is how rare the two-party dynamic is in most locales – it’s usually long-term control by one or the other – meaning the national parties are really just coalitions of 50 state parties. I happened to grow up in a state where regular sweeps of the state offices, from one party to the other, tended to keep things clean, especially in the voters’ welcome of mavericks.

Even closer to home, though, is the reality that getting candidates to run for local office is often a challenge. They don’t even have to be good – just a name willing to attend the meetings, if elected. Yet this is the bedrock of democracy and community.

Party affiliation – apart from ideology – can soon disappear in the practical decisions of garbage collection, fire protection, and street repairs. A Socialist city councilor did a top-notch job for our district, as is the plumber we keep reelecting.

An effective third party, then, would need to be built from ground-level up, not top-down. And that, I assume, would also mean region by region.

How else do you think it would shake out?

 

All those big-oil tycoons, hedge-fund managers, global conglomerate executives, and their lackeys who have contempt for paying workers a livable wages are murdering the work ethic that built America.

Protest all they want, they’re anything but conservatives.

Real conservatives would battle to save the covenant that assures all who labor will earn a livable return – shelter, food, decent clothing, health care, education, enough to raise a family, and time for rest and worship. That’s what real conservatives would pursue rather than greedy oppression or re-enslavement.

And we always assumed anarchists were all Socialists? Think again! The Tea Party’s full of ’em.

Now, tell me: Are anarchists all destructive, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake?

The right’s rife with ’em.

Sounds like a fit, the anarchists, matching everything they’ve been fearing.

 

My title is drawn from a line in John Greenleaf Whittier’s “The Last Walk in Autumn, XXV,” which echoes “blow the trumpet” in Ezekiel 33:3 “and the watchman cried” of 2 Samuel 18:25, followed by “I saw a great tumult, but I knew not what it was” in verse 29.

There were thunders and lightnings,
and a thick cloud upon the mount,
and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud;
so that all the people that was in the camp trembled.
– Exodus 19:17

We, too, live in a tumultuous time, but in the crush of news and entertainment, the trumpets are muted. Prophets are neglected, and analysts and vapid pundits hold forth in their stead. Perhaps the rappers are too angry or too monotonous to cut through. The wheels spin and spin without a destination.

For my part, acknowledging Whittier fits my own turns in this writing. While serious American poetry typically turns away from anything touching on religious faith or political awareness (the exceptions are telling), both have been central to my life. Like Whittier – and Whitman, a step removed – Quaker practice has shaped my vision and voice. Nor is true faith distanced from social conditions. Closer to home, Whittier was a frequent visitor to the room where I worship weekly, and his parents married from the bench where I sit. To read Whittier with any appreciation in today’s literary perspective, though, I find I must break the cloying monotony of his simple rhyme schemes – recasting the lines will usually do the trick. What I then find is a surprising freshness within each line, a much more vigorous reach than is typical for the period. We forget that Whittier is the springboard for Robert Frost and all who follow in that vein. We also forget that Whittier was essentially a topical poet, immersed in the political and economic struggles of his time. Even Snowbound, for all of its seeming nostalgia, is an acknowledgment of technological advance and its impact.

Here, then, begins my cry.

Comments on earlier posts regarding the emerging U.S. presidential race have touched on a topic that ought to be more sharply examined: just what qualities are needed in a good leader?

I’ve seen charts executive head-hunting firms use for corporate hires, which see different quality requirements to match a company’s situation. A small, fast-growing firm, for example, needs a much different kind of person than does a behemoth in a shrinking market. The compensation packages can vary widely, too, especially when considering the likely tenure of the hire. Somebody hired to shake things up might be expected to have a short and stormy span at the helm, unlike a more comforting presence for a smoothly functioning organization.

That said, back to political leadership. What qualities would you list as essential?

The ability to recognize talent and draw out others into a common cause has been suggested. Vision, compassion, intelligence, integrity, willingness to listen to critical perspectives and weight alternative actions are others. And then?

Maybe we’ve been overlooking the most obvious all along. What would you name?

Even in the face of the outrages over the corrupting clout of the superrich investment in partisan politics, a fresh insight can prove haunting. And let’s not dignify that as “donations.” That’s my reaction to a passage from David Cole’s review of Burt Neuborne’s new book, Madison’s Music: On Reading the First Amendment.

It’s not just at the highest levels, either. When the infusion of cash hits smaller races, the whole system gets bought.

As Cole’s “Free Speech, Big Money, Bad Elections” (New York Review of Books, November 5) points out:

… increasingly sophisticated gerrymandering has ensured that many elected offices are sinecures for one of the two major parties. In the House of Representatives, only about forty seats, or less than 10 percent of the chamber, are filled in genuinely contested general elections. The results can be perverse.

I happen to live in one of those seats that’s become contested, after decades of being a Republican stronghold. Cole, however, presses his case that many of the general elections are rigged in favor of one side or another:

In North Carolina in 2012, the popular vote for House members was 51 percent Democratic and 49 percent Republican. Yet North Carolina’s delegation to the House consisted of nine Republicans and four Democrats. North Carolina’s state legislature had packed Democratic voters into four districts, ensuring that Republicans would win the other nine. …

So who’s really representing the people? And who are the winning officeholders really representing? It’s not just North Carolina, either, as Cole notes:

Democrats received more than half of the House votes in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in 2012, and did not get a majority of House seats in any of them. In what sense can such outcomes be called democratic?

Considering the low turnout rates in general elections – a consequence, as Cole details, of a sense of futility for many would-be voters or outright obstacles put in their path – an observer can wonder how much of the public the winners really do represent. That is, if 49 percent of a 40 percent turnout can win 247 seats in the House (this is a theoretical model, mind you), one could argue that the majority of the House of Representatives represents just 20 percent of the public. And if the Freedom Caucus, about 20 percent of that party, insists on dictating its ideology on the rest of the nation, that could be a mere 4 percent trying to run the country. In some places, that would be considered a coup.

Yes, I know the numbers wouldn’t all fall that neatly in one direction or the other. But it’s scary, all the same.

The possibilities of a viable third party or even a fourth in the American political system have long intrigued me. The two-party model in its either/or delimitation has rarely seemed to offer a good fit for my leanings and convictions, especially when we’re trying to reconcile ourselves with a full slate of conflicting issues, and I’m sure I’m not alone here. (Where, for instance, is the fiscal conservative who’s willing to slash the military budget? Even before we ask about abortion rights or education support or environmental stands?)

Sometimes, the lines have been drawn along religious, economic, racial, or similar lines: Protestant/Catholic, white-collar/working class, WASP/people of color, and so on. Or east versus west of the river, those on the hill versus those in the valley, or even two corners of a state or its big city versus everywhere else. And it’s not always that clear, especially when lines – and identities – muddle.

In practice, many parts of the country find themselves having a single-party system by default. One side or the other dominates the elections, year after year. It has the money, influence, and power to override challenges or to simply bully everyone into line. Or else.

Add to that the ways local offices can go begging for candidates. School board? City counselor? Town selectman? How many people are willing to put in the long hours – often at no pay – and often at the end of much verbal abuse? Not that all in public service are entirely altruistic, mind you, but let’s give many of them their due respect and gratitude.

What it comes down to is the importance of alternatives at the local level. (Yes, we’re back to the dictum, All politics is local.) Does a second party in a community necessarily have to line up with a second one at the state or national level? Or can it instead connect with that third or fourth party and then wield some influence?

Let’s ask, for instance, what working models of Libertarian policy and administration at local levels can we look to? Without such community-level organization and practice, dreams of a viable third or fourth party influencing state and national affairs remain only notions. So it’s back to ground level, for real change.