I like Tom Friedman.
I like reading him, which I make a point of doing quite often. He’s a liberal, but he’s more of a
center-left liberal than a far-left one.
He realizes the Republicans and Mitt Romney have nothing to offer the
nation except the specter of a third George Bush term with a dash of Ronald
Reagan romanticism sprinkled in for good measure. And he isn’t shy about letting you know about
it, either.
But, like a good bartender, he knows how to spread the graft
around evenly. As brutally honest as
he’s been with the Republicans, he’s been equally open about his disappointment
with Barack Obama. In fact, he’s been a
royal pain in the ass about it at times.
And while it’s hard for many of us on the Left to admit it, the painful
truth is that for all the hoopla over his election in ’08, the President simply
hasn’t delivered on his promise. Sure
he’s done a lot to help the country dig out of the worst financial nightmare
since the 1930s, and Friedman, to his credit, has acknowledged that.
When the economy was going over a cliff in early ’09 and the
Republicans were ostensibly offering another dose of Hooverism as a tonic,
Obama correctly rejected the offer. We
could argue whether the stimulus was, well, a stimulus, but it did manage to
stave off a second Great Depression.
And, with Europe now spiraling toward what some fear is a meltdown
thanks to its austerity fixation, America is one of the few countries whose
economy is actually growing, albeit at a much slower pace than most would
prefer.
The problem, as Friedman sees it, is not so much one of intent
but of vision, or lack thereof. In an op-ed
piece in The New York Times “Wasting
Warren Buffett,” he decries the lack of pushback and narrative building.
Obama loyalists often
say: “Those Republicans are so bad. They’ve tried to block us at every turn.”
Yes, the G.O.P. has tried to stymie Obama; it’s been highly destructive. But
the people who keep pointing that out don’t have an answer for the simplest next
question: Why have they gotten away with it? My view: It’s because too
many Americans in the center-left/center-right do not feel in their guts that
Obama is leading.
Obama is like that contractor who manages to fix the leaky
roof in your kitchen without letting you know why he needs to do it. Then along comes a competitor who tells you
that the roof was fine to begin with and that the other guy just took your
money without really doing all that much.
The political vacuum that has often, sadly, defined this Administration
has been incredibly frustrating to watch for those of us who can count and who
know a thing or two about history and economics. In the real world – the world that votes but
often doesn’t pay much attention – it’s almost as though Obama’s efforts amount
to nothing, because at the end of the day his message, as well as whatever
swagger he had during the ’08 campaign, got lost in the chaos of trying to
prevent Armageddon. It’s hard to prove
things could’ve been worse; it’s even harder when you can’t explain why.
So, like most disgruntled centrists, Friedman’s thoughts
have drifted to an all-too-familiar option that many of us on the Left have
flirted with over the years: third-party candidates. We’ve seen them come, we’ve seen them
go. The most famous of them – Ralph
Nader – virtually sank Al Gore’s chances of becoming president in 2000. For all the uproar over Bush v. Gore, the
simple truth is that had Nader not been on the ballot in Florida, Gore wins the
state and the election hands down. Case
closed. Third-party candidates mean one
thing and one thing only: defeat for the incumbent party. Just ask Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush
what they think of John Anderson and Ross Perot.
Still, even with the statistics right there in front of him,
Friedman is defiant as ever. One can
certainly understand his disenchantment with the two-party system; in fact,
given the current state of politics in this country, it’s laudable, maybe even
enviable. No one who has been paying careful
attention over the last few decades could seriously believe that the nation’s
political process is not seriously broken and corrupt. It now ranks just above third-world status
and, were it not so pitiful, it would be comical. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams must be
rolling over in their graves.
The problem with Friedman’s “obsession” isn’t his zeal for a
transfusion of fresh blood into a cancerous body politic, but rather the utter
impracticality of such a transfusion.
For all the merits of a third-party candidacy, the simple, inescapable
fact is that it will never work, not in the United States anyway. Like it or not, for much of its history, the
country has had a two-party system. First it was the Federalists vs. the
Democrats; then it was the Whigs vs. the Democrats; and, ever since Lincoln, it’s
been the Republicans vs. the Democrats.
There’s something about those Dems, hey?
In Europe, where there are multiple parties vying for
political power, what you have is ostensibly coalition governments where two,
often conflicting, ideologies are constantly battling it out within the same
government. That’s because one party
seldom gets more than 50% of the vote. The
winner usually only gets a simple majority; hence they are often forced to join
ranks with the second- or third-place finisher.
The 2010 general elections in Britain underscore this point. Because no party was able to secure the seats
needed to effectively win and govern, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats
formed a coalition government. How would you
like to be a fly on the wall when David Cameron and Nick Clegg sit down to tea
and crumpets? Think that’s weird? Look what happened in Greece recently – this
from the country that invented philosophy.
The neo-Nazis and the socialists split the vote. Go figure.
And you think we’re screwed?
The real target of Friedman’s contempt should be the quality
of the parties vying for power in America, not the quantity. Let’s for the moment assume that Friedman
gets his wish and we have several, viable third-party options to “challenge”
the supremacy of the decrepit Repulsivicans and Demograbs; let’s also assume
that we could suspend that silly little rule that says a presidential candidate
needs 270 electoral votes to win the general election – hey, it’s a fantasy,
just go with it. How does Thomas
Friedman suggest these viable third parties compete with their bigger, better
financed counterparts? By using Monopoly money?
Maybe they could hold their first convention at Marvin Gardens. If they win, they can have their precession
on the Boardwalk and Park Place.
Of course I’m being a dick, but the point I’m trying to make
is that if you don’t actually deal with the root cause of the rot that’s
infected the American political system in the first place, then it just
multiplies and spreads to everything else.
Like the Borg in Star Trek, it assimilates everything within its reach. If Ralph Nader had actually become president,
do you really think he wouldn’t have been corrupted by the same powers that
made sure we got George Bush and Al Gore to choose from instead of John McCain
and Bill Bradley in 2000? And while we’re
at it, those same powers have done a pretty good job on the current president
haven’t they?
To paraphrase a well-known slogan, “It’s about the money
stupid!” Those who don’t have it often
get screwed by those who do. Ronald
Reagan was famous for saying many things, most of which were irrelevant and
insipid. But there was one thing he said
which bears repeating here. “Politics is
supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it
bears a very close resemblance to the first.”
So my advice to Tom Friedman would be simple. Give up your third-party dreams and focus your
venom where it belongs: at the feet of those who have stolen our country and
bought our elected officials. When we
solve this dilemma and end our long-standing national nightmare that
jeopardizes our very Republic, we won’t need a third or fourth party; two will
be quite sufficient thank you.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/opinion/friedman-wasting-warren-buffett.html?_r=2&ref=thomaslfriedman
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