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| ISBN-13: | 9781250098191 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 09/15/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 348 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
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A Reason to Vote
Breaking the Two-Party Stranglehold â" and the Remarkable Rise of America's Fastest Growing New Political Party The Natural Law Party
By Robert Roth
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 1999 Robert RothAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-09819-1
CHAPTER 1
Does Politics Matter Anymore? (Yes, More Than Ever)
No one cares about politics anymore; at least that's what the polls show. Televised presidential debates don't draw viewers. Campaign commercials don't change voters' minds. It's not like the old days when you could get into a good heated exchange over dinner with an uncle or a neighbor over the president's stand on civil rights or foreign policy, what Congress was going to do next, and whether the media were reporting from the left or right. Or when college campuses were teeming with political activity — radical, reactionary, and stay-the-course. Opinions mattered; involvement was a must; caring was paramount. Those days are pretty much gone.
Political commentators tell us why. They say that voters see government as out of touch with the concerns and values of the people, in the pocket of special interests, and now, when the country is flourishing economically, increasingly irrelevant. Business is booming, crime is down, and America is playing a leading role in the family of nations. But for most people the national transformation appears less the by-product of government leadership and more the result of American ingenuity, creativity, and self-reliance.
True or not, this good news has had at least one chilling side effect. It may be lulling us into a political deep sleep with dangerous consequences. Are these good times numbing us? Recent polls indicate that we don't care that much about the campaign finance scandals. We seem to be reconciled to the fact that the high-stakes, highly objectionable deals between public and private sector leaders are an inevitable, if not acceptable, part of Washington life. Such deals are of little immediate consequence to our own lives, the polls suggest. If the economy is good, life is good. And if life is good, there is nothing to worry about. Let Washington do as it wishes; it won't affect us, not really.
Don't believe it. Those deals aren't just for money to win elections; those deals are to cut in stone the direction of public policy in America and the world for decades to come.
The fact is we, the American people, have lost, or are in extreme danger of losing, our power to set the public policy agenda for our government, for the nation. How did we lose it? Principally, in two ways: the buyout of the politicians and the buyout of the press. Those hefty PAC and corporate contributions certainly do influence our leaders' decisions. Special interests often do take precedence over national interests, particularly on the big-ticket items, such as health care reforms, energy policies, corporate subsidies, and biotech regulations. Also, the fact that many of these same special interests are buying up the major media outlets does dictate, or at least severely restrict, the scope and depth of information about the issues that reach the American people. But for my money, the most damaging development, which is tied inextricably to special interest influence and the media buyout, is the shutting down of third parties in America. I know that sounds odd because most people these days hardly consider third parties. And that is the problem.
CHAPTER 2Ruminations of a Third-Party Operative
I can tell you a lot about starting a new political party, far more than you may ever want to know. For example, I can tell you how many volunteers you will need standing in the parking lots of how many Wal-Marts in how many Texas towns each collecting how many signatures to pass the threshold of 43,963 valid signatures required to put your candidate on the ballot in that state.
I can tell you how to plan a campaign stop in, say, Cleveland, to get the most media coverage. (Press conferences are risky. If there is a fire downtown, you are out of luck; that's a much better photo op. Lectures in university political science classes always seem to attract newspaper reporters. Check the president's itinerary, and don't send your candidate there if he's in town. Trust me, no one will show.)
I can point out the laws passed by Republican- and Democratic-run legislatures in almost every state just to keep new parties and independent candidates off the ballot and out of the political debate — and to make your job as impossible as possible.
I can also tell you that even if what I say does not particularly interest you right now, it will soon. The way the two main parties are discrediting themselves in the public eye, within the next one or two election cycles, third parties are going to be a confounding, if not altogether revolutionary, force in America.
Who am I to tell you so much about third parties? As the press secretary for the Natural Law Party, the fastest-growing new party in America, I have worked for the past six years with an ever-expanding cadre of friends and colleagues to build what we hope will be the next- generation mainstream political party in America. We started late in 1992 and against considerable odds we are making remarkable headway. In 1996 we ran four hundred candidates on the ballot in forty-eight states — a huge accomplishment for a new party. We had little money for paid advertising, so we relied primarily on word of mouth, and it worked — for now. Together our candidates totaled several million votes. Dr. John Hagelin, a Harvard-trained quantum physicist and our presidential candidate, was the only third-party presidential candidate to qualify for federal primary matching funds (about half a million dollars), a feat not even Ross Perot accomplished and a testimony to John Hagelin's broad-based grassroots support. We have also developed a platform that most Americans, when they hear about it, endorse. In fact, the response to the party and platform since the 1996 election has been so great that we are on target to run two thousand candidates on ballot in all fifty states in the 2000 election — and win many, many seats on the state and federal level.
Of course, many diehard Republicans and Democrats say that we (and all third parties) have an impossible task, but the times are on our side, and we are bullish about our future.
To give you a better idea of what I do and to introduce you to the Natural Law Party and what we stand for, I offer these five brief episodes that took place during four days in Washington, D.C., October 7–10, 1997.
"USA Today Is Here"
Tuesday, October 7, 1:00 P.M. I am standing in the back of a room at the National Press Club, keeping out of the line of sight of a television camera crew. The room is small and stuffy, with about forty people jammed into chairs facing a podium in the front or senting the votes of nearly ten million Americans during the 1996 election and the sentiments, I believe, of tens of millions more.
This is the first time in U.S. political history that the leaders of third parties have united with a common cause: to push for sweeping campaign and election law reforms. The event has been organized by the Natural Law Party, and the press turnout has been good, larger than I expected, considering that there is a campaign finance scandal in progress and Harold Ickes, one of President Clinton's closest aides, is testifying on Capitol Hill.
John Hagelin, the Natural Law Party's presidential candidate in 1996, is at the podium, introducing the other leaders who stand in a semicircle behind him: Ralph Nader of the Green Party, Harry Browne of the Libertarian Party, Howard Phillips of the U.S. Taxpayer Party, and Russ Verney, representing Ross Perot of the Reform Party.
It strikes me, amid the frenzy of a news conference, that this is a good day for the Natural Law Party and a great day for democracy.
Each political leader at the podium has set aside his own ideological differences to support two bills introduced by U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, a Republican from Surfside, Texas, who wants to overturn election laws and debate regulations that keep independent and third-party candidates out of the political arena.
The obstacles are significant and outrageous when you consider that they were enacted by Republican and Democratic lawmakers. Here are a few: An independent or third-party presidential candidate must collect 701,089 valid signatures to get on the ballot in all fifty states, which is twenty-eight times the number needed by a Democratic Party presidential candidate and thirteen times the number needed by a Republican. Third-party candidates also have to meet sizable discriminatory filing fees, filing deadlines, and restrictions on who can circulate and who can sign the petition — regulations that are not required of the major parties.
Paul's Voter Freedom Act of 1997 (H.R. 2477) would set fair and uniform ballot access standards for federal elections and prohibit states from erecting excessive ballot access barriers. The Debates Freedom Act of 1997 (H.R. 2478) would prohibit recipients of taxpayer-funded campaign matching funds from participating in debates to which all qualified candidates are not invited. Any presidential candidate who is on the ballot in at least forty states is guaranteed inclusion in the debates.
Everyone of course speaks eloquently and with considerable passion in support of the bills, but Ralph Nader's comments stick with me throughout the day. Ralph can see that there is a good media turnout, but he is not overly impressed.
"In 1920 America's black leadership held a major news conference in Washington, D.C., to call attention to the unfair and discriminatory laws that blacks must overcome to participate in the political process," Nader says. "The Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal did not attend that news conference. The parallels are striking between black participation in the political process then and third-party participation today. I would like to ask now, Is anyone here from the Washington Post, New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal?" There is a painful moment of silence when no one answers, until Andrea Stone, who covers third-party politics for USA Today, says, "Well, USA Today is here."
"It Shouldn't Be Easy to Exclude Third Parties"
Wednesday, October 8, 11:45 A.M. I am standing on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, and very fortunately, today is not a hot and muggy day, because I am in the midst of a crush of media. Television camera crews, photographers, and print reporters balancing tape recorders and notepads all are jockeying for position. Their target: Ralph Forbes, a boyish-faced, heavyset middle-aged man from Arkansas who has become a thorn in the side of public television.
Forbes is suing Arkansas Public Television because the station refused to let him participate in a televised debate it sponsored during the 1992 campaign. Forbes was an independent candidate for U.S. Congress in Arkansas's Third District. He was a legitimate candidate in the eyes of the state; he had gathered the necessary petition signatures to put his name on the ballot. In fact, two years earlier, in a 1990 statewide race, Ralph received 47 percent of the vote. But Forbes was not a Republican or a Democrat, so the editorial staff at the station decided Ralph was not really legitimate, had little chance of winning the election, and therefore barred him from the debate.
Forbes took Arkansas Public Television to court and lost. He didn't go away. He appealed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and won. His argument was simple. Commercial television is privately owned, must concern itself with ratings, and must answer to advertisers. Therefore commercial television may make an excuse for not inviting every candidate to its debate. But public television is government-owned and is under no such constraints. The journalists who work for public television are government employees, and they should not be the editors in chief for America's 180 million eligible voters, deciding what ideas, candidates, and political parties are worth hearing about and what are not. That is the right and responsibility of the American people.
(Certainly you cannot have fifty or a hundred candidates participating in a publicly sponsored debate. There has to be some criterion to determine what makes a candidate viable. But such a criterion is already in place: getting on the ballot. If a candidate is able to surmount the considerable obstacles to ballot access put into place by state lawmakers, then let him or her talk.)
The court of appeals agreed with Ralph Forbes, overturning the lower court's decision. Arkansas Public Television disagreed with the new ruling, appealed to the Supreme Court, and that's why I am here today.
It is my job to host Ralph Forbes for his court appearance. The case is a big one. Several hours before the 10:00 A.M. hearing, there is a line of two hundred or more people, many of them law students, stretched across the courtyard in front of the Supreme Court steps, each waiting for a chance to get in for a five-minute glimpse of the case in process.
The hearing goes surprisingly well. I am sitting next to Forbes in the audience, and his face is registering waves of shock and amazement as his lawyer's arguments gain a positive foothold in the minds of many of the justices. Justice David H. Souter worries that if public television wins the case, it is just another way of saying that "a distinctly minority candidate always loses." Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says, "Debate is for the public. It shouldn't be so easy to exclude third parties." Justice Sandra Day O'Connor says that criteria for participation in a debate should not be arbitrary, left up to the opinion of a government employee after the fact, but should be made clear ahead of time to all candidates.
The case has far-reaching political ramifications, beyond simply whether public television can pick and choose its own debate guests. According to Richard Winger, the editor of Ballot Access News and an expert on U.S. election laws, third parties have been the principal source of most of the good ideas that have shaped our democracy, from the abolition of slavery to the right of a woman to vote to basic child labor laws. How will similar new ideas reach the public arena in the future if all media outlets, including public television, shut out small, but potentially powerful, new voices?
The hearing ends at 11:00 A.M., and Forbes's lawyers are quietly exuberant. We step outside into the bright sunlight for a news briefing that draws a big media turnout, and it pushes on for over an hour — a lifetime by Washington standards. This time reporters for the Washington Post and the New York Times are here, along with USA Today, Associated Press, Christian Science Monitor, ABC, CNN, and NPR.
The air is clear and crisp, the news briefing is going well, my job is done, and I am relaxed. Behind me is the U.S. Capitol building, where President Clinton's staffers are under interrogation for a campaign finance scandal that won't go away. The significance dawns on me as I watch the camera crews pack up their gear. Over there, across the street, the Republicans and Democrats are severing whatever thread of trust and credibility remains between them and the American electorate, while just one hour ago, up the steps from where I stand, in the chambers of the Supreme Court, the most fundamental and precious tenet of our democracy — the constitutional right to free speech — was on trial in the highest court in the land. The justices will decide in the coming months whether third parties have a seat at the table of our political process and, not coincidentally, whether our democracy regains much of its former vitality and vigor.
It is clear that we are at a crossroads in the political future of America. Given a level playing field and an equal chance under the law, it is also clear that third parties are destined to play an ever-larger and more powerful role in the years ahead.
"Thank God for C-SPAN"
Wednesday, October 8, 2:00 P.M. I am on the phone to Mimi Hall, White House reporter for USA Today. She covered third parties during the 1996 campaign, and now she covers the White House. We talk about our news conferences at the National Press Club yesterday and at the Supreme Court earlier today. She has a few moments to chat, so I tell her about a phone call I recently received from a political science professor from the University of Virginia. He was working on a textbook on third parties, and he wanted to know if I had any thoughts on how the press treats us. I asked him how many ninety-minute cassettes he had for his tape recorder. He laughed, thinking that I was joking. I was not. I have a lot of thoughts on the subject, and few of them are flattering.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Reason to Vote by Robert Roth. Copyright © 1999 Robert Roth. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
SECTION ONE: THE BATTLE
1. Does Politics Matter Anymore (Yes, More Than Ever)
2. Ruminations of a Third-Party Operative
3. Are Third Parties a Threat to Democracy?
SECTION TWO: THE MESSAGE
4. Media Tips from the Front Lines
5. "The Best-Kept Secret in America"
6. Preparing for the Vice Presidential Debate
SECTION THREE: THE ISSUES
7. Genetically Engineered Foods: The Hazards of Tinkering with Natural Law
8. Putting Health Back into Our Disease Care System
9. Beyond Sustainable Agriculture: Going Organic
10. America's Energy Future: A Solid Basis for Optimism
SECTION FOUR: THE PRINCIPLES
11. The Roots of Natural Law in American History
12. Science, Consciousness, and Public Policy
SECTION FIVE: THE APPLICATIONS
13. Quiet Time at the Fletcher-Johnson School
14. An Opportunity to Meditate
15. The Forgotten Victims of Inner-City Stress
16. Creating a True Peacekeeping Force
SECTION SIX: THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
17. What's So Funny about the Campaign Trail?
18. New Leadership for California
19. The Most Valuable Asset in the Global Information Economy
SECTION SEVEN: THE FUTURE
20. This Is What Third Parties Do Best
21. Final Thoughts
SECTION EIGHT: APPENDICES
Appendix 1 The Natural Law Party's Fifty-Point Action Plan to Revitalize America
Appendix 2 The Natural Law Party Platform