We Can All Do Better

by Bill Bradley

  In 1986, in my second Senate term, two huge bills, tax reform and immigration reform, became law. Both won bipartisan support. I was deeply involved in tax reform, which had the support of a Republican president, a Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and a Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and passed by wide majorities. On the immigration bill, I remember going to see Alan Simpson, a Republican senator and its main author. I had a list of twenty-two questions about the bill. He and I sat alone, with no staff present, and he answered all of my questions. At the end of our hour, I told him he had my support. I didn’t even know the “Democratic position,” if there was one. The bipartisanship that existed in 1986, and in the Social Security compromise three years earlier, seems impossible today.

  The rigidity of our politics makes everyone a mouthpiece instead of an independent thinker. Polling says that 82 percent of the American people are worried about jobs. What do Republicans propose to do about this? Their only response is, “Don’t tax the rich.” Why? Because, according to them, the rich are the primary “job creators.” Notice the choice of words: Republicans appear to hope that the phrase will persuade the electorate that Republicans care about providing jobs. A closer analysis of their policy reveals that they don’t want the federal government to do anything substantial to relieve unemployment. Most of the “job creators” are not rich but middle-class small-business owners, and most hiring decisions are based on a judgment about their sales, not the marginal tax rate. But the spinners and the pollsters are betting that people won’t look at the fine print and the media won’t point out the obvious facts

  Although the views of conservative Republicans are contrary to the interests of the majority of Americans, many of those Americans vote Republican. Why? I believe one major reason for this paradox is that Republicans use a moral language, whereas Democrats use policy language. In a contest between the heart and the mind—that is, between deep conviction and facts—conviction wins every time. Berkeley linguistics professor Lakoff has observed that swing voters are people who can be conservative on fiscal policy and liberal on social policy (or conservative on foreign policy and liberal on domestic policy), but no matter which side they fall on, they tend to respond to conviction.5 When one party speaks from moral principles on an issue that swing voters care about—say, conservative fiscal policy—and the other party speaks with the facts about, say, liberal social policy, the moral-language position prevails.

  Over the years, Republicans have made a sustained effort to build a national organization resembling a pyramid, with money (lots of it, from very rich people) forming the base, followed by a level for think tanks that generate radical ideas, such as privatizing Social Security. On the next level are pollsters and pundits, who express those ideas in language that achieves the maximum political advantage (i.e., don’t tax “job creators”; don’t support the “death tax”). At the top of the pyramid is the presidential candidate, who, by the time he has run the gauntlet of the primaries, is locked in the prison of party orthodoxy. Often that orthodoxy fails to reflect the views of a sizable number of Republicans, who feel disinherited by the reactionary fringe controlling their party.

  Democrats have a different problem. They have long tended to look for the charismatic leader who, by the force of his or her personality, can single-handedly transform the country. The exemplar is JFK. Democratic candidates in subsequent presidential elections have donned the mantle of youthful, energetic leader. Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama all fit the mold. The problem with such an approach is that in searching for Prince Charming, Democrats have neglected to build their party with ideas from the grass roots up. There is no Democratic pyramid; there are only fan clubs.

  Our politics today has boiled down to two competing ethics: the ethic of caring, which implies collective action and is usually associated with Democrats, and the ethic of personal responsibility, which implies individual action and is associated with Republicans. Every campaign debate begins from these poles. But given our present national circumstances, both ethics are necessary. Take pensions: Collective caring would require protecting Social Security, especially since it’s the only retirement income for 35 percent of America’s elderly. Individual responsibility would require each of us to save if we want more than a subsistence retirement. Yet most Americans don’t save enough. The Survey of Consumer Finances has reported that if you’re sixty-five, you should have saved $300,000 if you want a comfortable retirement. The current average is $60,000. Forty-six percent of all working Americans have less than $10,000 saved.6 Take health care: Collective caring would mean that everyone in America should have access to health care; individual responsibility would prompt us to take care of our own health by paying attention to what we eat and drink and how often we exercise. One third of Americans are obese and another third are overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The healthier we are, the less we cost the system and the more money is available for insuring all Americans. Take education: The state can provide good schools, but families have to provide a context for maximum achievement and the students have to do the homework. Or, take democracy: Laws can ensure the franchise for all Americans, but individual citizens must exercise their right to vote. Caring and responsibility go only so far separately; together, they build the foundation for America’s future. And when they’re combined with research, public investment in infrastructure, and a new tax system to make us more competitive in the twenty-first century, you have the recipe for rising living standards and fulfilled dreams.

  We can all do better.

  The Major Party Duopoly

  For whatever historical or ideological or media-driven reasons, the system just isn’t working for the majority of Americans. We need a return to the idea that the answer to the problems of democracy is more democracy. That means finding a way for people’s voices to be heard so that politicians will listen and politics will once again be a vehicle to make America better for more of our citizens.

  Every two years, we elect a House of Representatives and one third of the Senate. Every four years, we select a president. The candidates we choose from have nearly always been nominated by our two major parties. These parties form a duopoly, blocking the emergence of a third party through campaign finance laws and other election regulations. The Federal Election Commission, which rules on a candidate’s adherence to the campaign finance laws, is composed only of Republicans and Democrats. No independents. Should a third party begin to get traction because of its message, one or both of the parties will steal its agenda, arguing that only they can make something happen in the Congress because virtually all members of Congress are in one or the other of the parties. It’s a circular argument that has worked for a hundred and fifty years.

  The last successful third party was the Republican Party, founded in 1854, which fielded Abraham Lincoln for president only six years later. After 1860, the high point of third parties came in 1912, but the circumstances were unique. A popular president, Teddy Roosevelt had decided not to run in 1908, selecting as his successor William Howard Taft; he even left the country so as to give Taft the chance to establish himself free of Teddy’s shadow. The portly gentleman from Ohio won the election and subsequently proved to be a great friend of big business. When Roosevelt returned from a two-year around-the-world tour, he was appalled by President Taft’s program. After trying unsuccessfully to get Taft to adopt the progressive positions of the previous Republican administration, Roosevelt decided to form his own party, the Bull Moose Party, and ran for president against Taft in 1912. The Democrats’ nominee in 1912 was New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson. A fourth candidate of substance was the Socialist Eugene V. Debs, a founder of the Industrial Workers of the World. The race was one of the best contests in American history, full of larger-than-life characters, playing on a world stage and debating their differences honestly and eloquently. Wilson took 42 percent of the vote, Roosevelt was secon
d with 27 percent, and Taft got only 23 percent. Debs got 6 percent, a high-water mark for an American Socialist.

  After 1912, the only third-party candidates to receive electoral votes were Bob LaFollette in 1924, Strom Thurmond in 1948 and George Wallace in 1968. LaFollette won only his home state of Wisconsin. Running as a Dixiecrat, Thurmond won four states in the South, primarily on a racist appeal; and Wallace, as the candidate of the American Independent Party, won five Southern states. All other prominent third-party candidates—John Anderson in 1980, Ross Perot in 1992, Ralph Nader in 2000—failed to get even one electoral vote. They played big in the media, but they had no chance of winning—which is not to say that they had no effect on our country’s trajectory. Bill Clinton won in 1992 because Perot took votes from George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush won in 2000 because Ralph Nader took votes from Al Gore.

  Very rarely, a major party can do something surprising. In 2008, Barack Obama upended the Clinton establishment and stormed to victory. Smart and eloquent, he was also an innovator, using the Internet to organize and fund-raise. He touched a deep chord in America’s consciousness, and people responded. Of the $746 million he raised for his campaign, more than half came from donations of less than $1,000 and more than 30 percent came from contributions of $200 or less, often made on several separate occasions. The strategic insight of the Obama team was to realize that if he won all the caucus states by quietly out-organizing Hillary Clinton, he would have to win fewer of the primary states to claim the nomination and would force Clinton to spend much more money as the campaign season wore on.

  His communication success came from his having the same story throughout the campaign: “Elect me and together we can change Washington and then do great things again.” Clinton had three stories about her identity: experienced professional, inevitable nominee, and Mama Bear defending the middle class. John McCain seemed to have had a new story every week. Obama’s victory was unique, related as much to his compelling persona and message of hope as to the country’s desire to get beyond its history of racism and the collapse of its international reputation during the Bush administration.

  Nevertheless, despite Obama’s insurgency, the two parties maintained their traditional control of electoral politics. They fought each other tooth and nail on policy, but when it came to resisting a third choice, they stood shoulder to shoulder. A group called Unity08 (the predecessor of Americans Elect) proposed to nominate a candidate for president in 2008 via an Internet nominating convention. The group itself would not be supporting a particular candidate or a specific set of issues, but would offer voters an alternative by getting whoever won the online convention onto the presidential ballot in all fifty states. The Federal Election Commission, a creature of both parties, ruled in 2007 that Unity08 was subject to the campaign contribution limitations that allowed donors to give no more than five thousand dollars each. Unity08 then filed a lawsuit claiming that it was not a party but a nominating process. In July 2008, a federal judge ruled in favor of the FEC. Unity08 appealed the ruling, and on March 2, 2010, the appeals court reversed it, declaring that Unity08 was indeed a process and not a party and therefore could be financed by one person or many, contributing as much as they wanted, in order to give the electorate an alternative candidate to the Democrat and the Republican. When the FEC declined to appeal to the Supreme Court, that ruling became the law of the land, and Unity08 changed its name to Americans Elect.

  Neither major party appears to have fully registered the implication of what happened. As late as the spring of 2011, Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s former political guru, was saying that there would never be another third candidate in a presidential election.7

  While each party was preparing for 2012 in the traditional way, Americans Elect was busy developing their alternative nominating process. Both parties suffered from the arrogance and laziness of a duopoly—think IBM and its mainframe before the arrival of the personal computer. The media was equally clueless, buying into the view, fostered by both parties, that the current system would never change. We seemed stuck with a few small states—Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina—arrogating to themselves the job of selecting who would get on the fall ballot. (In the 2012 Iowa Republican caucuses, fewer than 120,000 thousand voters participated.) The nomination process was hardly democratic. Nothing would change. Both parties liked it that way: If the selection process could be kept closed, there was big money at stake. One of the two parties would control the federal purse strings and reward its supporters; the other would have to be satisfied with the crumbs until the next election. No one could possibly emerge who could shake up the system.

  Until now. Americans Elect was on the ballot in fifteen states by January 1, 2012, and had gathered the needed signatures in fifteen more states by the same date. By summer, Americans Elect hopes to have all fifty states covered. For the first time in our country’s history, there will be an electoral process free of control by the major parties. The sign-up rate of citizens on petitions to get Americans Elect on the ballot in various states has been an astonishing 70 percent of those asked and includes nearly three million Americans.

  The nominating process is simple. Citizens who are registered voters go online to www.americanselect.org and sign up as delegates. They are asked to suggest questions they want candidates to answer and make a contribution; both requests are optional. In mid-April 2012, the Americans Elect online convention begins. In a series of three preliminary votes, the field of candidates proposed by delegates will be narrowed to six by the end of May. At that point, each candidate must declare whether he or she will run and fill out an extensive candidate questionnaire that reflects the questions the delegates have posted and those that a bipartisan platform committee has chosen. In addition, the candidates must select a vice-presidential running mate “from a party other than their own” or someone who is an independent.8 Between May 8 and June 1 there will be three weeks of debate among the six candidates (inevitably, these encounters will be televised) and then a secure online vote of all delegates to the Internet convention. If one of the six receives a majority, he or she will become the nominee. If not, the bottom three vote-getters must drop out. There will be a week of debate among the three remaining candidates. On June 8, there is another vote of delegates with the bottom candidate dropping out if there is still no majority. After two weeks of debate among the remaining two candidates, a winner will be determined by a vote on June 21. The nominee will then take his or her place on the ballot in potentially all fifty states on November 6.

  The identity of the eventual nominee depends on who shows up as delegates. Will it be trade union members or Tea Party true believers? Will it be young people or older Americans? Will it be city dwellers or small-town activists? If a liberal or a moderate gets the nomination and ballot position, President Obama’s re-election chances will be hurt. If a Tea Party candidate wins, the Republican nominee will be at a disadvantage. If lightning strikes and the Americans Elect candidate is the right person at the right time with the right set of views and communication skills, he or she could be elected president of the United States. No one knows how it will turn out. Obama partisans could vote for Republicans and vice versa. Mischief, even disaster, is possible—and so is political transformation.

  What is so exciting about Americans Elect is that once again there is innovation in our democracy. Just as occurred in the expansion of the franchise and ensuring direct election of U.S. senators, Americans Elect takes the decision about who will appear on the ballot away from the exclusive control of the current political parties and gives it to citizens.

  The Americans Elect process of 2012 could lead to a surprising development in 2014, when only the Congress stands for re-election. The court decision that allowed the financing of a presidential election process apart from the campaign finance laws also applies to an Americans Elect process in various congressional districts. Thus there is a real possibility that a third party could organize on the Am
ericans Elect platform.

  When third parties have emerged in the immediate past, they have always been centered around a candidate (Wallace, Anderson, Perot, Nader) and an office (the presidency). But the problem of our democracy is not the presidency, it is the Congress. Recall that the Congress had an approval rating of 6 percent last fall, whereas President Obama had a 40 percent rating. That tells me that Congress is more vulnerable to a third party effort than is the presidency. Even if an Americans Elect candidate won the White House in 2012, he or she would still have to deal with a Congress composed of Democrats and Republicans, whose joint purpose, if recent history is our guide, would be to thwart the presidential agenda. Although the election of an Americans Elect president in 2012 is unlikely, the experience gained from the journey could be valuable in 2014.

  There never has been a congressional third party. Today, that is the opportunity. Other countries have several parties. Canada has five. Germany, England, Japan, and Mexico have three major parties. Granted, they are parliamentary democracies, but the New American Party (let’s call it) could learn from them. A congressional third party whose objective would be the three R’s—Raise our standard of living, Reset our foreign policy, and Reform our politics—could have broad appeal. Those who sought the party’s nominations would be problem solvers. Some might have political experience; others might not. Each House candidate would be asked to commit to running for two additional terms if initially successful, and each Senate candidate would be asked to commit to one term. The slogan could be “Six years for the country.” The party could field candidates in fifty congressional districts and five senatorial elections. The objective would be to win enough seats so that the party could be the fulcrum of power. If neither party had control, each would need the support of the brand-new congressional party on one issue or another. In order to obtain the New American Party’s support, the major party seeking it would have to make commitments to the agenda of the new party. This leverage, combined with the clarity of a limited substantive program articulated by its members, just might be the antidote to our partisan paralysis and the catalyst to meet our country’s needs.