Third parties unfairly ignored

Blake Aued
DM Opinion Editor

As the presidential elections lope along, nothing much has changed in the past few months. Texas Gov. George W. Bush is running slightly ahead of Vice President Al Gore, and nobody can seem to get too worked up about either candidate. The rush toward the middle by both the Democratic and Republican parties has created a vacuum on the left and right, which has been filled in part by third parties. But you probably haven't heard too much about alternative candidates, and you probably won't.

There are two main reasons why these candidates are relatively unknown. The media is doing its best to portray them as mere spoilers, and is focusing instead on fluffy stories that focus on personalities and avoid issues. In addition, things don't really heat up until the fall, when parties hold their conventions and the candidates debate on television. But the big parties are doing their best to keep third-party candidates out of the debates.

Two other candidates are garnering significant percentages in polls without the benefit of much media coverage or big bankrolls to spend on advertising. Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan and Green Party nominee Ralph Nader are both using grass-roots campaigns and word-of-mouth to build significant followings. Nader is currently running at about 7 percent in most polls, and is in the double digits in Western states. Buchanan has about 5 percent of the vote in most polls.

The popularity of the Green Party stems from the belief of many people that Clinton and Gore have sold out their environmental and social principles and gone to bed with big business. Nader opposes NAFTA and is strongly in favor of environmental protection and ending the power of corporations and other special interests in government.

Buchanan also opposes NAFTA, but there the similarity ends. Buchanan has made a career as an ultraconservative thorn in the side of moderate Republicans, both as a Nixon speech writer and a television commentator. He has angered many Reform members with his intolerant social views against gays and immigrants, but has attracted the support of blue-collar Reagan Democrats through his protectionist economic ideas.

American history is littered with the carcasses of failed third parties. But we now have four viable parties, and that trend is likely to continue in the foreseeable future.

The immediate goal for Nader and Buchanan is to gather 5 percent of the vote. That would win their parties federal matching funds for the 2004 election and allow them to build and grow into solid, permanent entities. It will be difficult, though, considering that Democrats and Republicans are conspiring to keep them off the debates. The Corporation for Presidential Debates, which decides who gets on the televised face-offs, is supposedly nonpartisan, but is in fact headed by a former Democratic Party chairman and a former Republican Party chairman. In addition, the debates are funded by Anheuser Busch, a corporation that doesn't take kindly to Nader or Buchanan's anti-corporate message. The CDP has ruled that any third party wishing to qualify for representation on the debates must have 15 percent of the vote in polls by Labor Day.

Nader and Buchanan each have a message that appeals to a sizable proportion of voters, and both differ substantially from Bush and Gore, who are so close together on the issues as to render them nearly indistinguishable. Nader, with his vast knowledge of world politics and economics, could take Gore to task with devastating effect for his support of GATT, the World Bank, the IMF and other international organizations that enrich corporations at the expense of ordinary people. Bush would have little chance of standing up to Buchanan's attack-dog style, honed on the television program "Crossfire".

The presence of these candidates at the debates would both show voters that they have other options besides the status quo. They would also show the flaws in Bush and Gore's strategies. The losers would be the major parties and their big-business collaborators, and the winners would be the American people.

Blake Aued is a senior English and journalism major from Trussville, Ala. He can be reached at baaued@olemiss.edu.