By Edwin Cooney
I have a lifelong reputation for being argumentative. Usually, I insist that this reputation is exaggerated. However, this week I’m “ready to rumble,” as they say! My worthy opponent is the champion wrestler and former governor of Minnesota (1999 - 2003), none other than Jesse Ventura! Ready Jesse? Here we go!
A short time ago, columnist and radio host Michael Smerconish, while arguing for Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson’s inclusion in the upcoming debates between Clinton and Trump, quoted an opinion by former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura. Governor Ventura asserted that it is ridiculous to suggest that a vote for Gary Johnson (or Jill Stein, for that matter) is a waste. “You’re not rooting in a horse race,” Ventura by way of Smerconish insisted. “You’re simply choosing the best candidate for the presidency that’s available.” After 160 years, here’s the reality that third party presidential voters just don’t get: our system isn’t designed to elect a third party presidential candidate. Political parties, in order to be effective nationally, must be able to function at multiple levels of civic responsibility and accountability. Parties must have the capacity to fill public offices with supporting personnel. Such personnel must consist of professionals including lawyers, diplomats,academicians, social and applied scientists, administrators, and so on. They must have access to academic sources as well as legal, scientific, social, and industrial specialists. Finally, while third parties have much to offer in the way of applicable social and political ideas and concepts, voting for a third and fourth party presidential candidate is a wasted vote until the structure of our political system is altered. The next question is twofold. What type of a person becomes a third party candidate? What is their history and why have they not been successful?
All of the major third party candidates have one thing in common. At some level of their existence, they are incapable of mixing well in functional organizations unless they come in as the top person in the party. Sometimes they are able leaders, but they are incapable of taking advice or direction from subordinates.
Millard Fillmore was our first major third party presidential candidate. Although a highly intelligent and principled gentleman, by the time he became Vice President, he had fallen out of favor with many of his Whig Party colleagues such as William Seward and Thurlow Weed. After becoming President upon the death of President Zachary Taylor, he backed the seriously and morally flawed Fugitive Slave Law as part of the “Great Compromise” of 1850 thereby destroying much of his moral credibility and reputation for wise executive judgment. When he did run for president in 1856, it was on the bigoted Nativist or “Know Nothing” party ticket. Fillmore biographers insist that he wasn’t particularly sympathetic to “Nativism,” but it was there as a political instrument to be utilized by an angry and suspicious constituency. Fillmore only carried the State of Maryland in 1856. He then returned to Buffalo, thus becoming a solid, civic-minded citizen until he was felled by a stroke in 1874.
The brilliant, resourceful, decisive-thinking and active Theodore Roosevelt was the next major third party candidate in 1912. TR had been a brilliant and popular president. However, most historians believe that had he not been boosted to the vice presidency by unhappy Republican colleagues in New York State, he would probably never have been nominated for President on his own by the rather staid conservative Republican Party. In 1912, with all his presidential achievements behind him, TR, as leader of the Progressive Party, carried only six states: California, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Washington State. His electoral vote total was 88. He outdid incumbent President William Howard Taft’s 3,484,980 popular votes with 4,119,538 of his own. However, the “rambunctious Bull Mooser” was no match for New Jersey Governor (Thomas) Woodrow Wilson’s 6,293,454 popular votes. (Note: President Taft carried only two states, Utah and Vermont, receiving a mere eight electoral votes.) Sure, TR and Taft together outpolled Wilson, but their electoral vote total was only 96 to the new president-elect’s 435.
In 1924, Progressive Party candidate Robert La Follette carried only his native state of Wisconsin. La Follette was popular with like-minded progressives but he lacked TR’s dynamic personality and vote-getting ability outside his home state. In 1948, the third party candidate, in popular votes, was South Carolina Governor James Strom Thurmond. His popular vote was 1,169,021. Thurmond carried four states: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and his native South Carolina. Thurmond’s electoral vote was 39. Although affable enough for election in South Carolina, his temperament tended to be meanly self-righteous towards colleagues and opponents.
Finally, Governor Ventura, let’s look at 1968 and 1992, the years of George Corley Wallace’s American Independent Party and (Henry) Ross Perot’s independent candidacy. Nineteen sixty-eight was a turbulent year in America. Vietnam, assassination, racial unrest and George Wallace’s dynamic personality inflamed millions of hearts to consider his third party ambitions. When the election was over, Wallace had 9,446,107 votes. Although affable and charming, his threats to run over protestors dare they block his presidential limousine was regarded as “over the top” by most voters. Again, unlike the leaders who come up through the ranks of a party, Wallace was always the major force behind any movement with which he was associated. Wallace carried five states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Note: he received 1 electoral vote from North Carolina.
In 1992 (Henry) Ross Perot, the brilliant, independent-minded business executive, won 19,721,433 popular votes. However, he received no electoral votes. Still, third party devotees hailed Perot’s votes as being greater than TR’s, and as such, invoking a definite political trend that would eat into the traditional two party system. It’s also likely that his on and off again candidacy dulled his otherwise vote-getting prowess.
Third party voters are (of course) highly intelligent and generally progressive. They particularly pride themselves on their logic. “The two party system is corrupt, outmoded, and undemocratic,” they assert. “Furthermore, Republicans and Democrats are out of energy. They need new ideas. Hence, the need for a successful third party presidential candidate.” The flaw in this thinking is its shallowness. The two party system blends well with both our political structure and tradition. It won’t become obsolete until the electoral vote is replaced with the popular vote. Since it takes 270 votes to form a majority in the Electoral College, all one has to do is divide 538 electoral votes by the four 2016 candidates to realize how small the electoral pie really is. Two additional alterations would have to be made. Voting rights and regulations that now exist in the separate states would have to be standardized to simplify party eligibility requirements in the separate states and territories throughout the union.
Governor Jesse, you won in Minnesota because you probably were the best candidate for Governor in 1998. You know as well as anyone that your native state has a history of supporting third party candidates. You also know how fickle those parties can be. Finally, you yourself recently noted that a successful third party nationally would mean that we would have a “three-headed political monster rather than merely a two-headed one.” You know from personal experience that in order to elect a national ticket you have to satisfy the requirements of 50 state jurisdictions. The requirements would be structured in such a way so that you could elect a presidential candidate, and then sustain your president once he or she is elected.
No, Governor, it’s not I who is ridiculous, it’s you!
Okay, Jesse, the truth is I’m readier to mumble than I am to rumble! However, don’t look now, Governor… the guy standing in that partially open door behind me is Hulk Hogan!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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