Americans are tired of choosing between lousy Presidential candidates, and third party efforts are becoming a normal part of the run-up to any election. This year’s version is the No Labels movement, with West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin and Republican ex-Governor Jon Huntsman as the presumptive ticket toppers. Like others before, this one tries to bring its own new flavor, but there is little reason to believe it will fix the problem.
As of this posting, Democrats are concerned that No Labels would drain from their votes, but Donald Trump would certainly turn his vitriol on the party if that shoe shifts to the other foot. The movement has pledged not to go forward if mainstream parties mend their ways, a clever wrinkle – but it won’t likely amount to more than one more potential spoiler. Aside from the reasons usually cited, there is a logic to our politics that bears explanation.
Everyone sees politics defined on a one-dimensional line, with any political position defined as left, right, somewhere in between, or perhaps “further out” in one direction, but still on the same line. All our discourse, in the media, in politics, and in our heads, talks in this one-dimensional language, and the idea of a perspective that draws on some other part of the four-dimensional universe never comes up.
Third parties with any heft have always been split-offs from one of the two parties, or radical factions from one of the “two sides” of our bipolar politics. Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, John Anderson, Gary Johnson, and even Robert LaFollette in 1924 all fit this bill. So do the lesser efforts such as Jill Stein’s candidacy in 2016. Polling shows that even the “independent middle” comprises people who, for the most part, identify largely with one side or the other.
No Labels’ call for simple “Common Sense” instead of the partisan memes, and its parsing of various issues without tipping into one side’s or the other’s interpretations, does avoid the rhetoric of the partisan poles. But it still speaks from that line defined by them. It does not refute either of the “two sides’” premises that their version of freedom and rights carries America’s fundamental values.
If you reject both sides’ bipolar campaigns, you must debunk both, actively. We have would-be debunkers, but they are usually partisans from “beyond” the two parties, on the same linear spectrum – woke leftists rejecting everyone to their right, and “MAGA” populists anyone to their left. Those who reject both sides, or “all the politicians” often also reject prosaic realities, so their movements lack governing credibility. And the harder the two mainstream parties compete, the more they work to secure their bases, taking on those partisans’ non-credibility in the process.
To claim, as No Labels attempts, “Common Sense,” you need to explain what it is that’s common about your sense, that the two sides neglect. In fact America has a bedrock common national identity, voiced in the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence. It says that we believe that all are equally endowed with unalienable rights and that government exists to secure those rights. The two parties dismember that creed to fit their bases’ emotional demands, to impose erasure of unequal outcomes on the one hand, or suppress measures that counter certain social norms, on the other. Someone has to debunk both sides, and any other partisan co-optation of the creed, in their self-serving interpretations.
That’s the starting point. For any independent effort to take effect, it also needs voices to explain the perspective of the actual creed, on any given issue and especially how that perspective would identify and analyze issues, current or as yet unvoiced. Is abortion about life versus health care, or is it about denial of support to potential life versus denial of a host’s right to withhold their resources? Or is it about fairness in imposing or avoiding consequences of sexual activity, and defining “fair?” Are large language models, or AI, a product of free speech, a threat to human agency, a potential channel for fraud, or a useful tool?
Last, for any alternative politics to be meaningful, the movement needs people who are credible in their explanations, and in their capacity to put the new perspective into living effect. No promises to pass a law without a rationale and a plan to enforce it. No foreign policy stances without clear conceptual connection to our creedal national interest, and full listing of resources and practices to carry it. No naming of “vital” needs without naming what must be foregone to meet them. And full explanation of how any stance comports with the creed, and why alternative interpretations do not work as well.
The bipolar partisan political paralysis will not be undone by third parties touting different permutations of the same contentions, by people who have only played the same political game. Nor by unreasoning rejectionists, of any stripe. That said, America does have deep truths that debunk the poses struck by our politicians, and can support reasonable reform and direction of our institutions. Until some movement picks up the perspective of our founding, any third party is just one more, weaker, player in our bipolar politics.
Common Conviction 