Would an Independent President Mend the Partisan Divide? David Loftus

Every President has said he’s in favor of bipartisanship, and every one has faced largely unremitting opposition from the other party. Every President has made extravagant campaign promises he could not keep, because they were too complicated, too expensive, or faced too much resistance in Congress. Nothing about this particular round should surprise us.

It’s tempting to think a President who was not affiliated with either the Democratic or Republican party could legislate with a clean slate, but that will never happen. A third-party candidate simply could not be elected to national office in this country in the first place. We have a smattering of socialist and Green party officials in local government seats around the country, but none of them is likely to progress to national office, because you need to raise lots of money to pay for decent mailings and publicity, which is probably impossible outside the party apparatus. (Can anyone envision a socialist billionaire spending his own wealth on a presidential campaign?)

As a life-long Democrat, would I vote for an Independent? Sure I would, but that’s because party isn’t essential to defining or identifying the best person for the job. If the Republican or some other party fielded a candidate who was clearly superior to everyone else, then I would vote for that person. In 1996 I voted for the Socialist candidate, whoever that was, because I was not thrilled with Bill Clinton, but I could also see that he wouldn’t need my vote to beat Bob Dole. So it was more of a protest against both major-party candidates, an attempt to give a third party more of a margin in hopes of qualifying for public funding. You can see how well that worked.