Forgotten Options

On Monday evening, I attended a forum entitled “U.S. Presidential Debate—The Alternatives” at Vanderbilt University.  The debate (seen here), moderated by my colleague Bruce Barry, had issued invitations to the Democratic and Republican candidates, as well as all third party ticket nominees.  Obama and McCain, of course, declined the invitation, as did Libertarian Bob Barr and Ralph Nader.  I’m assuming the latter two declined with the idea that such a debate would make them appear “marginal” to the election process. 

The candidates who did appear included Brad Lyttle of the U.S. Pacifist Party, Charles Jay of the Boston Tea Party, Gloria LaRiva of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Darrell Castle of the Constitution Party, Frank McEnulty of the New American Independent Party and Brian Moore of the Socialist Party.  Each of these was the Presidential candidate for their party, save Castle who is on the ticket as vice-President. 

The debate took place, with somewhat sparse attendance (maybe 100 people) in a fairly large classroom with information tables set up for a number of the candidates.  The Boston Tea Party’s candidate arrived late, delaying the start of the debate, when he was caught in a traffic jam caused by the arrival of John McCain and his crew at the Nashville airport.  While there appeared to be a number of “media types” in attendance, I was fairly sure that these were people from a few local newspapers and student publications.  There was very little network coverage—there was a local TV team and the local NPR group, but no national news, no CSPAN coverage.   There was, however, a single microphone passed from one candidate to the next---a microphone that distorted badly when held too closely to the mouth, mind you—as the candidates responded to a number of two minute questions asked by Barry.  In short, despite the best efforts of Barry and the thoughtful responses of the candidates, there was something flat out sad about the lack of community (in any sense) interest in the event.  The setting made it difficult to take the function seriously as having anything to do with national politics.

Having cast a number of third party votes over the years, I admit that I have more sympathy for these groups than do a majority of voters.  Nonetheless, my guess would be that anyone who saw this debate would, for the most part, find each candidate reasonable, well spoken, thoughtful, and more specific than either major party candidate.  And, yes, while you might cringe a little at some of the more dogmatic positions, for the most part the claims made by each candidate would fit within a wide range of the positions held by most Americans.  (I personally found Charles Jay, of the Boston Tea Party, to hold the most reasonable positions and to have the most charisma).

I don’t want to go into depth about their positions—you can do that by linking to their web pages—nor do I want to endorse any of these candidates.  I’m likely to vote straight major party this year because I feel as if so much is at stake that I have to make a statement any way I can.  I do, however, want to comment on the lack of any coverage of these candidates and my wish that we had proportional representation laws if only in order to insure that these positions have a better change of becoming part of the national dialogue.   These were mostly reasonable ideas, and they all deserve reasonable reflection. 

While a proportional representation system would allow these parties a legitimate voice in government (granted they were able to gain enough support), I would be happy enough if these candidates were simply gaining enough press coverage to become part of the national dialogue.  Our current election process unfortunately moves a number of useful inventional resources to the margins of the political spectacle.  Even if the full positions of the candidates at this debate would not be endorsed by a majority, their positions offer ideas—often fresh ideas-- that would be useful in the larger debates over public policy.  If the democratic ideal demands a thorough process of debate and reflection—and I think it does—then we need to find some way to more fully engage a wider range of ideas and possibilities.

Comments

[Daniel]

The parliamentary system looks better with every passing year.