The Third Way

March 11, 2006

As Republican presidential hopefuls gathered tonight in Memphis to pander to the Republican base and thread the needle between Reagan Republicanism, loyalty to political institutions and personages, and a struggle for distance between their respective platforms and that of their party leader, the embattled President of the Republic, George Bush, what were the Democrats doing?  And does it even matter?  As WC Fields famously once said, 70% of winning is simply showing up, and because they will, the Democratic Party will walk away with most of the marbles in November.  This time, after two breath-holding leaps of populist faith in the past two presidential election cycles, the American electorate is not going to be hoodwinked in the midterm, and the Republican party across the nation is clearly facing a November date with the wood shed.

But this is hardly anything to gloat over, even for partisan Democrats.  No matter how much campaign re-invention and stunning creativity the Democrats may impossibly muster in the run-up to November, the campaign slogan all devolves to the ineptitude and betrayal of the opposition.  And while that may be enough to carry the day in November, it's not going to cut it with the American public thereafter.  Let's face it.  If Palestinians elected Hamas into power in Palestine, is the United States not capable of bringing the Democrats back to the seat of legislative American power? 

Neither the besieged various wings of the Republican Party nor the emasculated factions of the Democratic Party seem to be able to capture or represent a long-emergent but recently mature political class in America.  Reagan was the last really red Republican president, and Carter was the last truly blue Democratic counterpart.  Since then the mystical "center" and "centrist ideas" have dominated the personal treadmill gauntlet leading one man to the presidency of the nation, leader of the Free World, and most powerful man ever to tread the planet.  Welfare-cutting Democrats?  Tax-raising Republicans?  .Free-trade Democrats?  Big-government squishy-soft-on-illegal-immigration Republicans?  What is our nation coming to?  Does it have to be this confusing?  And is this why a third of us are now Independents?  What is actually wrong with this picture?

There is a third way that is arguably larger and farther more inclusive than either the liberal or conservative political bases of the two aged and rachitic national parties that both court strenuously in the national arena.  In local elections the emergence and solidification of this third way likely is less significant, damped perhaps by a greater preoccupation with local affairs than with an overarching philosophical alignment for the nation that is more evidently manifest in presidential elections.

This accidental and vibrant third-way demographic is one that spans a range of income levels and all ethnic, religious, cultural, sex, and sexual-orientation social strata.  It is a third way that is unmoved by the predominant political concerns of its parents and grandparents.  This third way approximately shares the following personal political values, expressed in ten points.

1)  Believes in very strong national defense and and vigorous prosecution of the war on terror in its strictest definition (i.e. nothing to do with Iraq).

2)  Does not believe in torturing, illegal detention, violations of American law and foreign treaties, nor in unchecked domestic wiretapping in the prosecution of this War on Terror.  This Third Way strongly believes that as the leader of the Free World, the United States does not need to stoop to the methods of its enemies in order to vanquish them.

3)  Will tolerate moderate and judicially approved infringements on some traditional civil liberties to achieve the greater national and state security necessary as a whole in the War on Terror.

4)  Has decided that the Iraq War was a disastrous military adventure launched on the basis of deception and manipulation that was wrought calamitous consequences in Iraq, the broader Middle East, in the American heartland, and that has significantly diminished American military capacity and allowed the nuclear ambitions of rogue states to blossom.  This Third Way Is torn between an immediate versus a timed withdrawal from Iraq but is unified in its insistence on relearning the lessons of Vietnam.

5)  Believes in God and believes in the separation of Church and State and does not want Creative Design taught in American classrooms, nor wants biblical imagery associated with government institutions, whether in the executive, legislative, or judicial branches of government.

6)  Is anti-abortion but pro-choice.

7)  Acknowledges gay rights but draws a line at gay marriage.

8)  Begrudgingly acknowledges (and in other cases openly embraces) the new planetary paradigm of globalization, recognizing that the faster and less restricted flow of goods based on ground-state economic principles carries with it the cost of outsourcing jobs to more competitive labor markets and wage depression as other parts of the world play a bit of economic catch-up as America adapts in goods and services through national creativity and will.

9)  Is not prepared, in light of the sacrifices required under globalization, to be additionally saddled by an out-of-control federal budget deficit and is aghast at the magnitude of the federal debt and wants to restore America's solvency.  This Third Way is prepared to accept a taxation policy more appropriately reflecting our national obligations.

10)  Is disillusioned by business as usual in Washington among both parties and feels disaffected by the party with which he or she has most frequently identified or is presently nauseated with the hypocrisy of being a real breathing American and simultaneously professing support for either of the two major parties. 

While Democratic strategists huddle over their version of the Republican Revolution's famous Contract with America, the public is not so labile as to lap the pap and beam syrupy vacant-eyed smiles back, and what more can you hope to get from a re-invention of a Democratic relict from a once-glorious past.  But, any port will wind up doing in a Republican storm of ineptitude, arrogance, and national diminution, and barring any organized alternative, the Democrats can hardly help but gain, despite a Schizophrenic, deer-in-the-headlights vacancy in action as to sober even the soberest among us. 

Can't we do better than this?

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have what a majority of America demonstrably wants.  And without undoing fundamental underpinnings of what each party represents, neither party can present a platform that is consonant with a plurality of public opinion.  As a nation, are we really that divided, or is it an obsolete political system that has itself contributed and then served to define this alleged polarization?

The Third Way, a hypothetical political platform comprising the foregoing ten-point policy declaration would have a legitimate philosophical claim claim to one third of Democrats and one third of Republicans, arguably.  More tellingly, it would capture 75% of the Independents, likely.  That is about 65% of the voting public right there.  All it needs is a dynamic face and a few hundred million dollars and we'd be off to the races.

Of course there will be no defections from traditional party ranks without a populist groundswell, and this will not happen overnight and never without a tireless and politically skilled figurehead.  It is unfair of course to presume that the major-party-disaffected class of Independents will not be much convinced by an upstart in a presidential-election industry that spins on a figure of $100 million per candidate.  Steep odds, but the American electorate remains ultimately a checkpoint in the natural selection of the political genetics required to govern this nation, and our electoral patterns lead the way if not then and there then at least into the politics of tomorrow that we so vitally need today.  While the Third Way may not emerge to any palpable relevance in the 2008 election cycle, it exists within the American polity, whether organized or not, and its power has been acknowledged for years and has grown and gestated and will doubtlessly break the surface of the political hot tub, perhaps as early as the 2012 cycle. 

As the Democrats are discovering as they flop around like landed fish with all the cards in their hand, It's a lot easier in a political sense to invent than re-invent.  But coming up, the Republicans will have to face that re-invention writer's block themselves, and do we really have to all wait for them all to re-invent themselves eventually toward what America is all about right now?

Isn't it time for a Third Way?

This is an editorial.  This is only an editorial.  Had this been an actual assemblage of facts you would have been advised to withdraw to your nearest fact-assembly shelter to await further instructions.  We repeat.  This is only an editorial.