In Ross I Trusted...Kinda

FYI: Due to technical difficulty, Posts 1-5 are listed as comments under Ed Doran's June 30th Post: The System is Broke and Broken.

And so MM and TF take the circuitous route to 3rd Party town.

I have to agree with Joel Evans - it's not much of a pay off. On one hand, I certainly agree that the current "political system is stuck under the sway of special interests" and the "two parties are so sharply polarized that they are incapable of arriving at the deep, ideologically painful compromises that major initiatives...will require." In fact, recent political headlines do not focus on "Rediscovering America" and tackling cutting edge issues. Instead, the political machine is discussing derivations of the same old stories: Anti-Abortion, No Rape Exemption, Separation of Church and State. No matter your political affiliation, these topics constitute old business. They are the hackneyed issues that reverberate during every election season. Maybe the flavors vary a bit, but the meal is the same. And quite frankly, I'm full. Maybe even a little nauseous. Wouldn't it be nice if politicians "thought big" instead of rehashing the status quo in an effort to get elected or re-elected?

Nonetheless, there are aspects of the 3rd Party suggestion that may bear fruit. For example, TF and MM  reminds us that a "third party succeeds not by winning elections, but by affecting the agenda of the party that does win." This was further reinforced by their mention of the 1992 presidential election where Ross Perot won "18.9% of the popular vote." Supposedly, this lead to Clinton's deficit reduction policy that resulted in "a budget surplus for the first time in several decades." If I take TF and MM at their word, then this certainly bodes well for the 3rd Party theory.

And I'll be honest: I voted for Ross Perot. Was it his southern twang? His short cropped hair? His laugh? In short, to quote Forrest Gump, "He had a way of explaining things so I could understand them." Ten bonus points to you if you read that with a "Gumpian" accent. Anyway, not only did he come equipped with charts and graphs, but he was not afraid to reveal some of the narrow-minded truths of the Washington machine. Unfortunately, his running mate, Admiral James Stockdale frequently looked like he'd just been struck by lightning and was prone to absent-minded outbursts or cadaverous silences.

TF and MM reference an October 2010 poll which states: "more voters identified themselves as independents (37 percent) than as Democrats (31 percent) or Republicans (29 percent)." A compelling statistic, which certainly validates their overall assertion that a 3rd Party could help bring America back to "exceptional" or at the very least commendable.

However, when they close out the book with an empty patriotic call to American History, I think it's a cop out. "The history books we need to read are our own." Really? The founding fathers had a common enemy while surging towards INDEPENDENCE. Today's politicians manifest new "enemies" every week. Terrorists. Wall Street. Illegal immigrants. Police officers. Fire Fighters. Teachers. Until that stops, we go nowhere.