The Inexorable Realities of Binary Politics

In anticipation of "Early Voting," which begins here in 11 days, I took a look at the the sample ballot to see how many issues I would be asked to vote on. Not a lot of surprises in that department, but I was, I admit, amazed by the number of "independent" candidates for president. I actually counted 5 in all! Other than the personal satisfaction of seeing one's name on the ballot, I wondered, what motivates all those "independent" candidates to run? Even more, I wondered, what motivates people to vote for them?

Let me begin with a personal confession. Once upon a time, I too succumbed to the allure of voting for a third-party candidate. The year was 1980, and the candidate was John Anderson, a 10-term Illinois Republican congressman, who had gradually drifted away from his party's orthodoxies and ran as an Independent against Republican Ronald Reagan and Democrat Jimmy Carter, even appearing in one debate (with Reagan only, since Carter refused to debate with him). Disillusioned that my preferred candidate had not won my party's nomination and unwilling to vote for the one who did - even if it meant his opponent would win the presidency - I made the bizarre decision to vote for John Anderson. 

I say "bizarre" because at the time I was an Assistant Professor of Political Science and so certainly should have known better. And in fact I actually did know better, but I voted my high-principled resentment anyway. 

What did I know then (and still know now) about Third Parties and "Independents" in American Presidential elections?

I knew, first of all, that such candidates normally never win. The single exception (sort of) was the election of 1860. The present Republican party had been founded as a third-party in 1854. Its candidate, Abraham Lincoln, won in 1860 in a four-way race against two Democrats and a Whig. The sectional split in the Democratic party (together with the terminal obsolescence of the Whig party) made it possible in a moment of acute national crisis not just for Lincoln to win but for the Republicans to replace the Whigs as one of the two major parties going forward. in fact it became the dominant party for some seven decades until the 1930s. This was the only time anything like that happened in American history. Given that it involved a four-year civil war, it may be just as well it only happened once!

Secondly, I knew that only rarely do third parties win sufficient electoral votes to matter - or indeed any electoral votes at all. Theodore Roosevelt's "Bull Moose" third party's bid in 1912 was due to an ideological split in the Republican party, and it did as well as it did because of the leadership of the charismatic former President. But its only lasting effect was to take enough electoral votes away from William Howard Taft to win the election for Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats. Without TR, the "Bull Moose" party then quickly died, and most of its adherents returned to their original Republican loyalty. The split within the Republican party continued as a festering internal conflict, but never again spawned a serious third-party threat.

Finally, I also knew that the only other serious third-parties in the 20th century were sectional parties with exclusively regional (and hence electorally limited) appeal. As such, those parties did well enough to win some electoral votes, but only in one part of the country. Being sectional, they had no serious prospect of carrying any states elsewhere. The Dixiecrats in 1948 were southern segregationist Democrats who bolted Harry Truman's party and won four southern states (39 electoral votes), but did not impact the election's outcome. In 1968, George Wallace carried five southern states (46 electoral votes). The Wallace vote has since come to be seen as a kind of transitional way-station in the realignment of the once "Solid South" from Democratic to Republican.

I knew all that in 1980. I knew that, for all sorts of reasons, it would be virtually impossible for a non-regional third party to carry even a single state and so win even a single electoral vote. So I knew that my vote would thus be wasted and that, if I were in a swing state where my vote actually mattered, all that it would accomplish would be to help the candidate I preferred the least. Still, I voted for a third party - ignoring everything I knew professionally in order to indulge my self-absorbed, high-principled resentment. 

A friend of mine did the same in 2000, when he voted for Ralph Nader. Voting in a state where there was no question about that state's electoral votes, he felt safe in expressing his resentment against the two major parties. But, given the closeness of the electoral vote in an election whose outcome was determined not by the voters but by the intervention of a politicized Supreme Court, it is plausible that at least in some places some people's votes for that third-party candidate did make a decisive difference, and that that difference helped make the 2000 election's eventual outcome possible.

So - regardless of the specific merits or lack thereof of any past or present third-party  or "Independent" candidate - the lesson in all this is the institutional reality of our two-party binary politics. As I learned and taught as a political scientist, all sorts of structural factors, such as single member districts, the one-person Presidency itself (which inherently excludes coalitions - surely the ultimate "single-member district"), and our "first-past-the-post" electoral system (which has given us a Republican Congress even though more people who voted in congressional elections have voted for Democrats) have directed us toward a two party system (much as parliamentary cabinet government and proportional representation in other countries can foster a multi-party system). There is a lot to be said for proportional representation and parliamentary cabinet government by multi-party coalitions, but two parties have been the consistent norm in the US since Washington's Administration. The parties evolve and change, and the electorate may realign, but in the end they tend to stay two.

Some Helpful Insights from Across the Pond

At the Tory Party's annual convention this past week, British Prime Minister Theresa May challenged her political party in ways which are relevant to US politics as well. Perhaps one of the most significant revelations of this political year is the realization that the American leadership class - the political elites in both of our political parties - are significantly out of touch with the concerns and aspirations of a significant portion of the American population. In particular, the political elites in each party have been shown to beout of touch with a significant portion of the voters whom we commonly call the "base" in each party.

The Prime Minister was addressing a conservative political party. So her comments may seem at first sight more especially relevant for US Republicans. - when the time comes for them to pick up the pieces of their presently fractured political party and forge ahead in a way that tries to address present and future realities. But I do think her message ought also to resonate with Democrats as well. Her critique of British political elites seems to me comparably applicable to American political elites in both of our parties. Thus, for example,

Too many people in positions of power behave as though they have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road, the people they employ, the people they pass in the street. But if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what the very word ‘citizenship’ means. So if you’re a boss who earns a fortune but doesn’t look after your staff, an international company that treats tax laws as an optional extra . . . a director who takes out massive dividends while knowing the company pension is about to go bust, I’m putting you on notice: This can’t go on anymore. A change has got to come.

Of all this year's candidates, perhaps that sounds most like Bernie Sanders - or at least something Bernie Sanders could conceivably say when speaking about the consequences of globalization and free trade and something his hearers could readily respond to. But the underlying social problems May identifies afflict and concern a significant portion of Donald Trump's base as well - even if their adoption of the Republican party's more individualistic and non-communitarian language might tend to inhibit them from expressing their concerns in exactly this same form.

In talking this way, Prime Minister May seems to be burying the late Margaret Thatcher's infamous 1987 assertion that there is no such thing as society. In doing so, however, she can call up other and older European conservative traditions of a more communitarian character. That has always been more of a challenge for Americans - so addicted have we become to individualistic and non-communitarian language and ideas. Democrats may find it somewhat easier. "Stronger Together" is, after all a call for - or at least an evocation of - community. But the moral and cultural libertarianism of the Left, which has in recent decades successfully infiltrated so much of Democratic party assumptions, shares in comparable measure a good part of the blame for our society's present distress - along with the economic and social libertarianism of the Right, which has even longer and more decisively dominated and determined so much of Republican assumptions. 

I have often cited the example of my father's boss back in the 1950s. He was the boss, after all, i.e., a small-business owner, and he was certainly richer than his employees. (He lived on Fifth Avenue. We lived in the Bronx.) But I can easily imagine how my father and his boss might have been able to engage in conversation and how they would have had much more in common in terms of world-view and moral and cultural values than would be the case today between members of the globalized elite (be they Democrats or Republicans) and the rest of society.. Somehow undoing some of that separation and restoring some semblance of cultural commonality may be our country's most pressing political challenge going forward.

The Vice-Presidential Debate

There seems to be an emerging consensus among the pundit class that Republican Mike Pence got the better of last night's vice-presidential debate, or at least that he "won" (whatever that means) on "style," while Democrat Tim Kaine flunked on style but "won" on "substance." I am not sure it matters much whether one "wins" a debate - especially a vice-presidential debate. (If Lloyd Bentsen's famous "You're no Jack Kennedy" retort to Dan Quayle won him that debate in 1988, he and Michael Dukakis still lost the election!)

More interesting is what the debate revealed - or didn't - about the candidates and about this election. Mike Pence repeated traditional Republican rhetoric about low taxes and small government - topics of marginal interest either to Trump or to his white nationalist base, but orthodoxy to the Republican elite for whom it is always 1980 and ronald Reagan is always riding to the nation's rescue. Pence sounded more like what a more conventional Republican presidential candidate running this year probably would have sounded like. Tim Kaine's obvious strategy was to force Pence to identify himself instead with Trump. Over and over again, Kaine challenged Pence to defend Trump's more controversial statements and actions. But Pence never really did so. Some think this will help him to position himself for 2020. About that, only time will tell. Picking up the pieces of a fractured Republican party will be a complex operation. If nothing else, the revolt of the hitherto taken-for-granted Republican white nationalist base against the party's traditional elites means that no one will simply "inherit" the leadership next time around.

Democrats, meanwhile, never seem to make as strong a case as they could for their own policies. For example, when Pence attacked Obamacare, Kaine missed the opportunity to point out the obvious fact that lots of Americans now have medical insurance who didn't before - and to ask what exactly the Republicans have to say to those whose insurance they seem to advocate taking away. 

Substantively, I think, Kaine's strategy of trying to force Pence to defend Trump was a smart one. But his tactic of constantly interrupting was just plain rude. Of course, I am from an older generation that was taught that rudeness is bad. Nowadays rudeness is just normal conversation! Still Kennedy and Nixon would never have interrupted each other that way. And thanks to all the interrupting - Pence did it too, although not as much as Kaine - there were times when it was actually hard for the TV audience to follow what was being said.

Given that this was a debate between a Catholic who is very vocal about his faith and a former (what we used to call "lapsed") Catholic who is very vocal about his newer Evangelical alternative, one might have expected more talk about basic principles. Only the final question explicitly invited that. The question challenged the candidates about how they had dealt during their political careers with possible conflicts between their personal faith and their constitutional responsibilities as office holders. Kaine answered by talking about how he enforced Virginia's death penalty statue in spite of his own religious beliefs opposing the death penalty. Pence, who had an embarassing experience in Indiana last year where he had to backtrack on a religion issue, chose not to answer the question and instead changed the subject to his views on abortion - an area in which he obviously has strong convictions and feels comfortable expressing them. Kaine's position on that issue is more muddled and conflicted - and it showed.

Still the fact that it was Pence (not the moderator) who brought up abortion, which hitherto has hardly been mentioned in the campaign, and the fact that no one at all has brought up marriage equality or religious liberty issues really shows the extent to which the so-called "culture war" has been sidelined - and may be effectively over.

That culture war may be history, but this election is very much a contest between two American cultures - one apparently ascendant demographically and otherwise, the other apparently in retreat demographically and otherwise. Again, what will ultimately happen, only time will tell.

Are We Ready for the VP Debate?

Whatever the real or imagined merits of presidential debates, the merits of vice-presidential debates must surely be somewhat proportional to the importance of the running mates themselves. There have been elections - 1960 famously comes to mind - when a particular running mate made all the difference.  As often as not, however, I sometimes suspect that presidential candidates might do just as well (or even better) if they were free to run unencumbered by a vice-presidential running mate.

But, just as the 12th amendment to the constitution has effectively saddled presidential candidates with running mates, so too, since 1976, those in charge of Presidential Debates have saddled presidential candidates (and the country) with vice-presidential debates.

So far, vice-presidential debates have been memorable most of all for the occasionally especially snarky or funny line. Most famously, perhaps, in 1988, George H.W. Bush's running mate, Dan Quayle, claimed that he had “as much experience as Jack Kennedy did, when he sought the presidency” - to which Michael Dukakis' running mate, Lloyd Bentsen, replied with this famous non sequitur: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” Poor Dan was left to respond: “That was really uncalled for, Senator.” It was, I suppose. It also had no discernible effect on the election's outcome, but at least it was memorable.

Another, even nastier line came from Gerald Ford's running mate, Bob Dole, in 1976, when he claimed that "about 1.6 million Americans – enough to fill up the city of Detroit” had been "killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century." While it is true that each party has its somewhat isolationist wing, Dole wasn't there to represent that element. He was just being snarky - effectively denigrating the accomplishments of his own World War II "Greatest Generation" in the process.

Then, in 1992, third-party candidate Ross Perot's running mate, retired General James Stockdale made a fool of himself when he asked "Who am I? Why am I here?" Presumably, someone could have answered the first question for him, but was there ever any plausible answer to the second question? Indeed, is there ever any seriously plausible place for a third-party candidate in our presidential electoral system?

Finally a more recent moment of nastiness - this time from the winning side - came in 2004 when George W. Bush's Vice President, Dick Cheney, sort of dismissed John Kerry's running mate, John Edwards, by saying "The first time I ever met you was when you walked on stage tonight."

All entertaining perhaps, but not very edifying and, all in all, neither all that memorable nor very deserving of remembrance!

What memories will tonight's performance leave us with? Will they matter? Should they? 

Or will viewers be tempted to recycle Stockdale's line and ask themselves "Why am I here?"

Just Doing

How long, O Lord? I cry for help, but you do not listen! [Habakuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4]

Who hasn’t felt like poor old Habakuk at times? Who hasn’t felt helpless and abandoned? Even saints – some of them certainly – have been known to suffer through such experiences. Some people just never seem to get a break. No matter how hard they try, things just don’t go right for them. Jobs are lost. Careers fail. Husbands and wives betray each other. Children disappoint their parents. Parents disappoint their children. Sickness strikes indiscriminately. And the sheer frustration of it all takes its own terrible toll.

And, when things go wrong, don’t we all want to blame someone? Just look at our political campaigns, which often come down to which groups we prefer to blame for our problems.

And then there is God – often a popular object of blame and complaint. For many, searching for answers to their struggles and pains, the struggle and pain of it all can become a complaint about God. For the Prophet Habakuk, however, his complaint is not a complaint about God but a complaint to God – an acknowledgment of God’s perplexingly mysterious power in the face of human limitations. Complaining to God instead of about God, Habakuk becomes a spokesman for hope: For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint. …the just one, because of his faith, shall live.

Nice words, to be sure, encouraging words even; but what exactly does it mean that the just one, because of his faith, shall live?

Faith – famously defined in the New Testament as the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen [Hebrews 11:1] – seems a lot easier said than done. Even the apostles asked, Increase our faith!

Faith is more than just belief. But even belief can be a challenge. According to a recent study, among the reasons Americans identify as a major motivation for leaving their childhood religion behind, some 60% said it was because they simply stopped believing.

Like Habakuk, Jesus offered [Luke 17:5-10] encouragement to his questioning disciples - assuming one is encouraged by the image of a mulberry tree, despite its deep and extensive root system, being uprooted and transplanted into the sea! Where, one wonders, would one ever find such faith even to try to transplant a mulberry tree into the sea?

Most of us have no real reason to want to transplant a tree into the sea. But, like the apostles, we may desire to increase a faith that may seem sometimes to be at best barely sufficient faith. At minimum, don’t we all want to have sufficient faith, as Habakuk says, to live?

And, indeed, it is in living, day-in, day-out, that Jesus seems to suggest that faith is to be found – as unprofitable servants doing what we are obliged to do. Even supposing I did somehow miraculously transplant a tree into the sea, what difference would that make? Whom would that benefit? On the other hand, if I could at least qualify as an unprofitable servant, faithfully doing what I am obliged to do, now that might make a difference!

Faith is about living daily the way we are supposed to live, becoming over time, through the kind of life I live in response to God’s grace the kind of person God intends me to be – striving to live by faith, surrendering to God with confident hope and love.

Maybe living as we do now in an increasingly superficial culture that overdoses on image and special effects, doing what one is supposed to do lacks the spectacular drama of transplanting a tree into the sea. It is, however, in fact the real challenge of a humanly and morally worthwhile life, the real challenge that faces each of us every day.

Homily for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, October 2, 2016.