So, there's fighting in Washington.
All but the most rabid voters aren't happy with either party, and no one is expecting real change in the next Congress, save for those who have grown so confused that they think "change" and "obstruction" are one and the same. What can we to hope for, besides more gridlock? What can possibly enliven a governmental system so geriatric that some of its key players have actually started passing away?
Casting a net around the world in search of ideas, one cannot help but notice the situation in England: a coalition government, in one of the few countries backward enough to share America's voting system! So far the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition seems to be quite successful, forcing the following question: Why can't we have something similar in the United States? Certainly, a coalition would shake up politics and produce this "change" that many a memoir has promised.
In order to have a coalition, however, there needs to be at least three parties in the legislature, something that is clearly missing from the current political situation in the United States. However, if we are hypothesizing about ways to shake up politics, a third party is hardly out of the question. To capture voters and provide genuine opposition to both of the rather entrenched parties, a new party would have to be able to work with each side of the political spectrum to actually get things done in either a center-left or center-right coalition.
Obviously, then, we need to tack to the center with a modernized neoclassical liberal platform: cut the deficit, promote growth, and do so in ways that will be socially just. Now, that's just the roughest of outlines, but before we can go further and create a platform, we need a name for our new party. This is where things get tricky.
Let's search the world again for ideas. In most democracies, centrist platforms like what I'm proposing here would attract the moniker "Liberal." Already being an expletive for a large chunk of the population, we obviously can't use that. Likewise, the American equivalent of Fiscal Conservative includes the C-word, so that has to be tossed out as well. What is our nascent party to do?
Looking farther afield, we have the Free Democratic Party in Germany, which approximates the third party we're trying to make. Free: yes, very American, very good. Stars and stripes and pickup trucks and all that. But that second bit—Democratic—is a problem, and slicing away the D-bomb leaves us only with the Free Party, which seems to be a bit lacking in pizazz.
Thus while not quite back to square one, we need another word. "Unions" and "Alliances" are also popular, so how about the Free Alliance Party? A bit tacky, but we're grasping at straws here and it does have the bonus of giving us one of those three-letter acronyms that are in vogue, putting us on equal footing with the GOP. Although we may have to be censored during televised debates to keep things G-rated. We'll throw that idea out.
It's becoming clear now that getting a third party in the legislature is going to be a huge job, even before we have our campaign buttons printed and our lawn signs staked, and have been paid by our first lobbyist. But, like all true insurgents and revolutionaries, we shan't give up so easily.
Perhaps it was a mistake to look abroad for inspiration. Instead, if we're out to change America, we need American inspiration only, no more of the second-rate foreign variety. Let's look back to the last time that our legendarily dynamic domestic political scene was gifted with a new party. Granted, it took a war for the Republicans to really shake things up, but no matter, we already have two of them so we should be twice as successful.
The Lincoln Revival Party? The Lincoln Action Party? Both seem pretty decent and are bound to deliver us votes, especially from the Illinois faction that sees the penny as integral to its identity. Plus, who today has anything against Lincoln? The worst anyone says about Abe these days is that his beard was a bit scruffy and unpresidential. His aesthetic might actually help us, because solving this nation's dire top-hat deficit may draw attention away from that pesky fiscal one. To top it all off, we could be referred to as "Lincolnians." Sounds delightful.
The purpose of this thought exercise has been to demonstrate the pitfalls of trying to effect change in the American political system. Even today, when there is great distaste for both parties, forming a third one is nearly impossible; even before we start to work out the details of a platform for a new, centrist party, choosing the party's lexicon is like navigating a minefield.
This demonstrates one of the biggest problems with politics in this country: words that should have clear meanings—liberal, socialist, fiscally responsible—have been twisted to the point that they are just pejoratives to large swathes of the population.
In such a climate, these musings may seem hopelessly wistful. However, the point is that a third party is not an idealistic desire, but a very necessary one. A centrist, third party may cause the voters that support each of the two major parties to be distilled until only extremists remain.
If these extremists have to work with our new third party in order to get anything done in Congress, the LRP (or whatever name we finally decide on) would act as a great moderator. From limiting the filibuster's use to only the most extreme cases, to simply injecting a fresh perspective into Washington politics, a third party, however unlikely it is to be formed, would help greatly to make American politics less polarized.