Introducing
the Purple Party
Before I was old enough to vote,
I worked as a volunteer for George McGoverns presidential primary campaign, then
voted for him in the November election, then for Carter (twice), then Mondale, Dukakis,
Clinton (twice), Gore, and Kerry. Im nine for nine; Ive never voted for a
Republican for president, like most people I knowand, I expect, like most New
Yorkers.
However, except for McGovern (I was 18; the Vietnam War
was on; his opponent was Richard Nixon), I cast none of those votes very enthusiastically.
In the last four mayoral elections, Ive voted for the Republican three
timesGiuliani in 1993 and 1997, and Bloomberg last fall. Each of those Republican
votes felt a little less transgressive and weird.
I dont consider myself a true Democrat. Yet my
mayoral votes notwithstanding, I am not now nor have I ever been a Republican, and could
never be unless the Lincoln ChafeeOlympia SnoweJohn McCain wing of the party
were to take decisive control, or hell freezes over. For me, what has happened politically
in New York City stays in New York City.
But the thing is, in my political ambivalence Im not
such a freak these days. Fully a third of New Yorkers who voted in the last two elections
behaved as I did, voting for Kerry and Bloomberg. Nationally, more and more Americans are
clearly disaffected with both big parties. In 2005, for the first time since 1997, the
percentages of people telling pollsters they feel generically very positive
toward the Democrats or Republicans fell to single digits. And antipathy is running at
historical highs as well40 percent negatives for both parties, give or take a few
pointswhich suggests that a huge number of nominal Democrats are voting more against
the Bushes and Cheneys (and Santorums and Brownbacks) than they are for the Kerrys and
Gores.
Less than a third of the electorate are happy to call
themselves Republicans, and only a bit more say theyre Democratsbut between 33
and 39 percent now consider themselves neither Democrat nor Republican. In other words,
there are more of us than there are of either of them.
Whats changed hardly at all over the past 30 years,
however, is peoples sense of where, in rough terms, they stand ideologically. Almost
half of Americans consistently call themselves moderates.
We are people without a party.
We open-minded, openhearted moderates are alienated from the two big parties because
backward-looking ideologues and p.c. hypocrites are effectively in charge of both. Both
are under the sway of old-school clods who consistently default to government intrusion
where it doesnt belongwho want to demonize video-game makers and criminalize
abortion and hate speech and flag-burning, who are committed to maintaining the status
quos of the public schools and health-care system, and who decline to make the hard
choices necessary (such as enacting a high gasoline tax or encouraging nuclear energy) to
move the country onto a sustainable energy track. Both line up to reject sensible,
carefully negotiated international treaties when theres too much sacrifice involved
and their special-interest sugar daddies objectthe Kyoto Protocol for the
Republicans, the Central American Free Trade Agreement for the Democrats.
Some lifelong Republicans (such as my mother) abandoned
ship in the nineties when the Evangelicals and right-to-lifers finally loomed too large in
her party and Gingrich and company tried to defund public broadcasting and the national
cultural endowments. As for us lifelong non-Republicans, we dont want taxes to be
any higher than necessary, but the tax-cutting monomania of the GOP these days is
grotesque selfishness masquerading as principleand truly irresponsible, given the
free-spending, deficit-ballooning policies its also pursuing. We are appalled by the
half-cynical, half-medieval mistrust and denial of sciencethe crippling of stem-cell
research, the refusal to believe in man-made climate change. And Republicans ongoing
willingness to go racist for political purposes (as Bushs supporters did during the
2000 primaries) is disgusting. Demagoguery is endemic to both parties, but when it comes
to exploiting fundamentally irrelevant issues (such as the medical condition of Terri
Schiavo), the GOP takes the cake.
Republicans used to brag that theirs was the party of
fresh thinking, but whos brain-dead now? All the big new ideas they have trotted out
latelyprivatizing Social Security, occupying a big country with only 160,000 troops,
Middle Eastern democracy as a force-fed contagionhave given a bad name to new
paradigms.
As for the Democrats, the Republicans still have a point:
Where are the brave, fresh, clear approaches passionately and convincingly laid out? When
it comes to reforming entitlements, the Democrats have absolutely refused to step up.
Because the teachers unions and their 4 million members are the most important organized
faction of its political base, the party is wired to oppose any meaningful experimentation
with charter schools or other new modes. Similarly, after beginning to embrace the
inevitability of economic globalization in the nineties, and devising ways to minimize our
local American pain, the Democrats scaredy-cat protectionist instincts seem to be
returning with a vengeance. On so many issues, the ostensibly progressive
partys habits of mind seem anything but.
However,
what makes so much of the great middle of the electorate most uncomfortable about signing
on with the Democratic Party is the same thing that has made them uncomfortable since
McGovernthe sense that the anti-military instincts of the left half of the party, no
matter how sincere and well meaning, render prospective Democratic presidents
untrustworthy as guardians of national security. Its no accident that Bill Clinton
was elected and reelected (and Al Gore won his popular majority) during the decade when
peace reigned supreme, after the Cold War and before 9/11.
The Bush administrations colossal mismanagement of
the occupation of Iraq is not about to make lots of Americans discover their inner
pacifist, either. Rather, they will simply crave someone who is sensible, thoughtful, and
competent as well as tough in his geopolitical m.o. If Iraq is souring most
Americans on the Republican brand of dreamy, wishful, recklessly sketchy foreign policy,
the result will not and should not be a pendulum swing to its dreamy, wishful, recklessly
sketchy left-wing Democratic counterpart.
Wait, wait, the vestigial Democrat in me pleads, Hillary
Clinton and Joe Biden are certainly not peace-at-any-price appeasers, and, Howard Dean
aside, most of the party bigwigs have strenuously, carefully avoided endorsing a
cut-and-run approach in Iraq.
The problem is strenuously and
carefully: People know tactical dissembling when they see it, whether
its liberal Democrats hiding their true feelings about military force or Republican
Supreme Court nominees hiding their true feelings about abortion law. And Democrats who
are sincerely tough-minded on national security are out of sync not only with much of
their base but also with one of the partys core brand attributes. The Democrats
remain the antiwar party, notwithstanding the post-9/11 growth of the liberal-hawk
caucusjust as the Republicans are still the white party, notwithstanding George
Bushs manifest friendliness to individual people of color.
So the simple question is this: Why cant we have a serious, innovative,
truth-telling, pragmatic party without any of the baggage of the Democrats and
Republicans? A real and enduring party built around a coherent set of ideas and
sensibilityneither a shell created for a single charismatic candidate like George
Wallace or Ross Perot, nor a protest party like the Greens or Libertarians, with no hope
of ever getting more than a few million votes in a presidential election. A party that
plausibly aspires to be not a third party but the third partyto winning, and
governing.
Let the present, long-running duopoly of the Republicans
and Democrats end. Let the invigorating and truly democratic partisan flux of the American
republics first century return. Let there be a more or less pacifist, anti-business,
protectionist Democratic Party on the left, and an anti-science, Christianist,
unapologetically greedy Republican Party on the rightand a robust new independent
party of passionately practical progressives in the middle.
Its certainly time. As no less a wise man than Alan
Greenspan said last month, the ideological divide separating conservative
Republicans and liberal Democrats leaves a vast untended center from which a
well-financed independent presidential candidate is likely to emerge in 2008 or, if not
then, in 2012.
And its possibleindeed, for a variety of
reasons, more so than its been in our lifetimes. In 1992, a megalomaniacal kook with
no political experience, running in a system stacked powerfully against third parties, won
19 percent of the presidential vote against a moderate Democrat and moderate
Republicanand in two states, Perot actually beat one of the major-party candidates.
In 1912, former president Teddy Roosevelt, running as a third-party progressive, got more
votes than Taft, the Republican nominee. The Republicans, remember, began as a dicey new
party until their second nominee, Lincoln, managed to get elected president.
It wouldnt be easy or cheap to create this party. It
would doubtless require a rich visionary or twoa Bloomberg, a Steve Jobs, a Paul
Tudor Jonesto finance it in the beginning. And since a new party hasnt won the
presidency in a century and a half, it would have to struggle for credibility, to convince
a critical mass of voters that a vote for its candidates would be, in the near term, an
investment in a far better political future and not simply a wasted ballot.
Is this a quixotic, wishful conceit of a few disgruntled
gadflies? Sure. This is only a magazine; were only writers. But the beautiful,
radical idea behind democracy was government by amateurs. As the historian Daniel J.
Boorstin wrote, An enamored amateur need not be a genius to stay out of the ruts he
has never been trained in. We have a vision if not a true platform, sketches for a
party if not quite a set of blueprints. Every new reality must start with a set of
predispositions, a scribbled first draft, an earnest dream of the just possibly possible.
In our amateur parlor-game fashion we are very serious about trying to get the
conversation started, and moving in the right direction.
And
New York, as it happens, is the ideal place to give birth to such a movement. This
citys spiritclear-sighted, tough-minded, cosmopolitan, hardworking,
good-humored, financially acute, tolerant, romanticshould infuse the party. Despite
our lefty reputation, for a generation now this citys governance has tended to be
strikingly moderate, highly flexible rather than ideological or doctrinaire. While we have
a consistent and overwhelming preference for Democratic presidential candidates, for 24 of
the past 28 years the mayors we have electedKoch, Giuliani, Bloomberghave been
emphatically independent-minded moderates whose official party labels have been flags of
convenience. (And before them, there was John Lindsayelected as a Republican and
reelected as an independent before becoming an official Democrat in order to run for
president.) Moreover, New Yorks stealth-independent-party regime has worked:
bankruptcy avoided, the subways air-conditioned and graffiti-free, crime miraculously
down, the schools reorganized and beginning to improve.
Were certainly not part of red-state America, but
when push comes to shove we are really not blue in the
D.C.CambridgeBerkeleySanta Monica sense. We are, instead, like so much
of the country, vividly purple. And sofor nowwell call our hypothetical
new entity the Purple Party.
Centrist is a bit of a misnomer for the
paradigm we envision, since that suggests an uninspired, uninspiring, have-it-both-ways,
always-split-the-difference approach born entirely of political calculation. And
thats because one of the core values will be honesty. Not a preachy, goody-goody,
Ill-never-lie-to-you honesty of the Jimmy Carter type, but a worldly, full-throated
and bracing candor. The moderation will often be immoderate in style and substance, rather
than tediously middle-of-the-road. Pragmatism will be an animating party valueeven
when the most pragmatic approach to a given problem is radical.
Take health care. The U.S. system requires a complete
overhaul, so that every American is covered, from birth to death, whether he is employed
or self-employed or unemployed. What?!? Socialized medicine? Whatever. Half of our
medical costs are already paid by government, and the per capita U.S. expenditure ($6,280
per year) is nearly twice what the Canadians and Europeans and Japanese
paysuggesting that we could afford to buy our way out of the customer-service
problems that afflict other national health systems. Beyond the reformist virtues of
justice and sanity, our party would make the true opportunity-society argument for
government-guaranteed universal health coverage: Devoted as the Purple Party is to labor
flexibility and entrepreneurialism, we want to make it as easy as possible for people to
change jobs or quit to start their own businesses, and to do that we must break the
weirdly neo-feudal, only-in-America link between ones job and ones medical
care.
But the Purple Party wouldnt use its populist,
progressive positions on domestic issues like health to avoid talking about military
policy, the way Democrats tend to do. We would declare straight out that, alas, the fight
against Islamic jihadism must be a top-priority, long-term, and ruthless military,
diplomatic, and cultural struggle.
We would be unapologetic in our support of a well-funded
military and (depoliticized) intelligence apparatus, and the credible threat of force as a
foreign policy tool. We would seldom accuse Democrats of being dupes and wimps or
Republicans of being fearmongers and warmongersbut we would have the guts and the
standing to do both.
And as we defend our country and civilization against
apocalyptic religious fanatics for whom politics and religious belief are one and who
consider America irredeemably heathen, we will be especially keen about adhering to the
Founders (and, for that matter, Christs) ideal concerning the separation of
religion and politicsto render to government the things that are its and to God the
things that are his. Our party will enthusiastically embrace people of all religious
beliefs, but we will never claim special divine virtue for our policieswell
leave that to the Pat Robertsons and Osama bin Ladens. Where to draw the line is mostly a
matter of common sense. Public reminders to honor ones parents and love ones
neighbor, and not to lie, steal, or commit adultery or murder? Fine. Genesis taught as
science in public schools, and government cosmologists forced by their PR handlers to give
a shout-out to creationism? No way. Kids who want to wear crucifixes or yarmulkes or head
scarves to those same schools? Sure, why not? And so on.
Our new party will be highly moral (but never moralistic)
as well as laissez-faire. In other words, the Purple Party will be both liberal and
American in the old-fashioned senses.
So: Are you in?
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