Elections in Brief: Top 10 Third Party Candidates
I'm tired of hearing about people talking about voting for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. Not because I disagree with them but because most of them have no idea what voting for a third party candidate means (if this isn't you, don't get offended, it's not about you then). I'd venture a guess none of them have ever heard of Eugene Debs, the most tenacious third party candidate in US History. Do they know anything about historical third parties or their role in American politics? Or why we don't have any small, strong parties today? Instead of mocking these ignoramuses (ignoramii?) , it's time to get educated.
I'm not just going to lecture here about the dangers of third party presidential candidates. Ralph Nader arguably turned the results of the 2000 election. As a result, people who want to vote for a third party candidate keep having to hear about the futility of that decision. Nader won only 2.74% of the vote and received no electoral votes, but he still tipped the election toward the candidate most ideologically opposed to himself, George W. Bush. Is this always the result? With the two parties controlling the entire political process, is there hope for third-party candidates? Here's a list of the top 10 most successful third-party candidates, by success in both electoral votes and percentage of popular vote. Nader doesn't even rank on this list, and he tipped an election.
Keep Reading >>
I'm not just going to lecture here about the dangers of third party presidential candidates. Ralph Nader arguably turned the results of the 2000 election. As a result, people who want to vote for a third party candidate keep having to hear about the futility of that decision. Nader won only 2.74% of the vote and received no electoral votes, but he still tipped the election toward the candidate most ideologically opposed to himself, George W. Bush. Is this always the result? With the two parties controlling the entire political process, is there hope for third-party candidates? Here's a list of the top 10 most successful third-party candidates, by success in both electoral votes and percentage of popular vote. Nader doesn't even rank on this list, and he tipped an election.
Keep Reading >>
Labels: brief, elections, Politics, presidents
posted by Daroff at
12:06 AM
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Clinton should have learned from Wilson. Bubba gets a lot of flack for encouraging people to buy houses, leading to sub-prime mortgages, leading to the recession. His real problem was not Republican-proofing his plans. Dude, learn from history: Americans fear change. In the modern age, before you reform, you must make your policies regressive-proof. If you push too much reform, you will be handing the presidency over to the Republicans. Oh, and while we’re at it, Gore’s an idiot. You can’t under-estimate your VP choice. I will argue til I’m blue that Lieberman’s the reason he lost, like Ferraro brought down Dukakis, Quayle brought down Bush, and Palin brought down McCain.
If Bush had paid attention to history, the Republican Party might not be in such disarray. Bush took a Harding-like approach and overturned everything Clinton accomplished, both the good with the bad. Thus, he falls somewhere near Harding in overall job performance. Had he followed the Eisenhower approach of trying to continue Clinton’s reforms, we may have avoided the recession. In the end, it was our own faults he got re-elected. How did we let him use “flip-flopper” as a negative? Lincoln’s giant flip-flop from conservative to liberal saved the Union and ended slavery.
Obama just needs to learn from general precedent. He's simply not going to get re-elected. If he wins in 2012, it will be the first time since Jefferson-Madison-Monroe that three presidents in a row successfully completed two full terms. Presidents elected in a wave of backlash against the current administration (Pierce, Harrison, Carter) rarely get re-elected. Presidents presiding over an economic downturn without clear and concise recovery (Van Buren, Hoover, Carter) hardly ever make it. Washington outsiders who lack the political skill to pass bills (Carter) usually cannot rally for a second win. With all this stacked against him, the question remains, why the fuck isn't he trying harder? Always with the coalition building. For a short period of time, he has a slight majority in both houses of Congress. Why the hell isn't he forcing through a Jacksonian or Teddy Rooseveltian wave of unbridled reform? Screw the second term, like Polk did in 1848. Dude, just step up and say "I'm the president, and I'm going to fix EVERYTHING right now, and I'm going to it my way. If when I'm done you feel like I've made your life better, vote for me. If not, fuck you." Seriously, Barack, you're not going to win in 2012, so stop trying to be Mr. Popular and starting being a fucking president.
... But Carter fucked up big time. It took him 3 years to figure out how presidenting worked. No one in Washington liked, or really respected him, even prominent members of his own party. He is the embodiment of good intentions backed up by less than zero political ability. By the time he got his footing, he had already pissed off everyone, started a gas shortage, and got a bunch of people kidnapped. At least he won a Nobel Prize, eventually.
Had Reagan not spent the 20’s dreaming about becoming a movie star, he might have noticed that President Coolidge spent his time in office spending and deregulating the country into the Great Depression. Reagan, like Coolidge, was wildly popular, but he was all talk. Anyone can look at a calendar and claim Reagan freed the hostages in Iran and ended the Cold War, but look closer, and you’ll see that it's probable Reagan was barely aware of what was going on around him. All that tough talk people attribute to Reagan was just Hollywood grand standing, and if the Russians weren’t so weak to begin with, the Soviet Union would never have fallen. Despite rumors to the contrary, Reagan was not a great president. He was a great Republican, and his party has every right to credit him with pulling them out of the gutter.
For all the flack he gets for flip-flopping on “read my lips,” Bush was an amazing half a president. His tax policy was just one example of his inability to lead at home. His foreign policy, however, was unmatched. His strong, wise leadership helped transition the world out of the Cold War. The man marched an international coalition into a a foreign nation that hadn’t declared war on any of them, and left without destabilizing the entire region. That takes cojones. That’s the double-edged sword of modern presidential politics. You can be a brilliant leader of the free world, but if you can’t match that by being the loving father of the US, you won’t get re-elected.
Historians have started downgrading this old fornicator’s god-like status to something a lot more average. His appeal had a lot more to do with his image than his actions. In his short time, he handled the crises before him deftly, but he didn’t accomplish anything overly groundbreaking, and based on his record, he wasn’t on his way to accomplishing much more. He did, however, start a grand modern tradition of the young, inexperienced candidate raising the grandeur of his ticket by attaching himself to a long-time Washington insider.
For all the flack he gets as flower children’s enemy #1, LBJ was the fucking man. He was the McKinley of his time. He knew every inch of Washington and as president, he furthered Kennedy’s agenda better than Kennedy ever could. He morphed the New Deal into the Great Society, highlighted by the Civil Rights Act. Then Vietnam happened, which was arguably Kennedy’s fault, and the honeymoon promptly ended.
Unfortunately, Johnson was so widely hated, the American people actually turned to Richard fucking Nixon to save them from him. Back when he was Eisenhower’s VP, he was a young buck, ready to take on Washington. By 1968, he had morphed into Tricky Dick, ready to take the presidency back for the Republican Party, who by the way turned on him when he lost to Kennedy 8 years earlier. His accomplishments don’t fucking matter because he destroyed the office of the president forever. 
In 1967, the 25th Amendment finally established clear guidelines for passing power to the VP. The Amendment covered presidential incapacitation and resignation, but also the procedure for filling a vacancy in the VP’s office. Just 6 years later, the Amendment was used 3 times in less than a year: replacing the resigned Spiro Agnew with Ford, replacing the resigned Nixon with Ford, and filling Ford’s empty VP office with Nelson Rockefeller. I’m only focusing on cool historical precedent because Ford himself didn’t do much worth giving a crap about.
FDR was a dick. I’m just going to say it. He was an effete, New York asshole. He bullied his way into office, lied to and manipulated everyone while in office, and spit in the face of tradition by getting elected 
Even though he was hated at the time, Truman earned his place as one of the great presidents by being FDR’s exact opposite. He was a good man, crappy politician. With the lowest approval ratings ever recorded, it's no wonder he almost lost to Dewey. Only because he operated in FDR’s shadow could he de-segregate the government, drop food aid on Germany, evolve FDR's New Deal into the Fair Deal, drop the bomb on a couple cities, got the ball rolling on NATO, and help establish Israel. For all your great accomplishments, 
A funny thing happened with Ike. He didn’t backslide. After 20 years of nearly non-stop reform, the pattern would predict Ike, a member of the opposition party, would try to turn back the New Deal. He didn’t. He was a forward thinking Conservative. No major reforms. Just keep everything as it is. Sorry, no jokes on this one. Just think about that for a second, and think about how something as simple as putting country above party should be something we take for granted, but it isn't. Nowadays, it's all about vengeance for both sides, and it gets us nowhere. A man like Eisenhower can't get elected today (see: Colin Powell, Wesley Clark), so we swing back and forth in 4-8 year increments ultimately getting nowhere. 
A genius political science scholar, Wilson positioned himself as the new head of his party, thereby making his chief responsibility to guide Democrats in Congress, and by extension Democrats in state government. Mr. Smarty Pants missed a fundamental flaw in his plan, though. His reforms would only work if Wilson himself was president. Now watch as his successors, scared of change, roll back every single reform.
Harding deftly won by making everyone afraid of how smart Wilson was and opposing basically every reform since Hayes. He deferred authority to Congress and gave high offices to his buddies, who subsequently tried to sell off the country piece by piece. Rumor has it, his wife found out his buddies’ scandals were about to come out, so 
Coolidge was the first “radio President” (I’m quoting myself because hopefully I just made up that term). He was a crappy politician and an even worse public speaker, so he took to the airwaves to get the people to support his policies. It worked, and he remains one of history's most popular presidents. Unfortunately, Genius Boy’s Roaring ‘20s spending led to the Depression. Oh, also, he kept us out of The League of Nations and World Court, resulting in the ultimate dissolution or de-balling of both. Way to kill peace, douche.
You’d think a Sec. of Commerce would be able to keep us out of a Depression. So did the American people. He did what his giant brain told him would save us, and he failed miserably. I guess these things happen. Oh, but he built a 
The Williams went head-to-head in 1896. Both wanted change, but McKinley’s pragmatic Progressivism won out over Bryan’s bat-shit crazy calls for massive and immediate government overhaul. The world was expanding around us and we couldn’t be isolated forever. Despite Bryan’s passionate opposition, the US scooped up Guam, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and The Philippines as colonies. To kick the Spanish out of our neighborhood in Cuba, McKinley finally 
The source of TR’s brilliance is that he beat the Democrats by assuming their political platform. The line between Progressive Republican and Democrat was so thin at this time that TR just took Bryan’s policies for his own, but he replaced extremism in policy with extremism in action. Like Jackson before him, TR used the federal government like a baseball bat to kick the crap out of anyone and anything threatening the American people. So strong was the force of TR that he could take any idea, no matter which party came up with it, and personally drive it into practice.
Roosevelt forced Taft (yes, another William) to run in his place. Taft didn’t really want to be president. He hated being president. He was pretty bad at being president. He was so miserable while president; he gained like 80 pounds during his term. Kind of makes you feel bad for the guy Taft beat to become president. You guess it, William Jennings Bryan.
We have a tradition in this country of assassinating the best presidents. Garfield didn’t have a lot of time in office, but he spent it doing as much good as possible. He was so obsessive about Civil Service Reform that he personally, painstakingly interviewed candidates for basically every office (except of course the VP he got stuck with at the convention). Ultimately, 
Only a year and a half before Garfield’s death, President Hayes had removed Arthur from office in disgrace. Are we starting to see why the political machine needed reforming? As president, Arthur sought to prove he was above corrupt influence, and 
Cleveland was a super Civil Service Reformer. He went as far as letting Republicans keep their jobs if they were good at them. The bigger issue by this point, though, was tariffs. Cleveland supported lower tariffs, but Congressman William McKinley believed in higher tariffs. Cleveland stuck to his guns, but when the economy lagged, tariffs were blamed and he lost the election. Tariffs are much more juicy than Civil Service Reform, right?
Apparently, the best way to beat a Democrat in the 1800’s was to nominate a big war general to oppose him. This time, though, unlike WH Harrison and Taylor, he didn’t die. His wife did. In 1892, he sat at his wife’s bedside, so he didn’t campaign. Harrison was a regressive who believed the president had no power to do anything, so no one missed him.
Abraham Lincoln was a man with a modest beard and, believe it or not, was a giant flip-flopper. He thought slavery was abhorrent, but he just wanted the issue resolved so we could go back to peacefully killing Indians, like the good old days. It was only after careful study and consideration that he realized slavery was an issue so big and so evil that if the North won the war with this pox on our country, the war would never truly be won. Change after careful thought; funny how that works out.
Andrew Johnson was a 
Grant, despite a valiant effort, also totally fucked up Reconstruction. It’s hard to build relations with the South when you’re snorting coke and allowing your administration to sell-out basically everything and everyone. Kinda kills your credibility. He did, however, establish Yellowstone Park and made Christmas a national holiday. As a Jew, I thank him deeply for that last one.
In this age of bearded wisdom, the Republicans followed Grant with Hayes, who possibly was the founding member of ZZ Top. National unity, black rights, pshaw. He was a lot more interested in wrestling Civil Service Reform. I know, exciting, right? What could be so important about about Civil Service Reform that he sold out generations of southern blacks? More on that next week.
After 3 failed tries at the White House, the Whigs abandoned Henry Clay and turned to another Jackson-like General. Taylor ate something at a 4th of July celebration that most likely led to his death (poison or diarrhea, your call). To kick Henry Clay just one more time, the Democrats tore apart his compromise over slavery in the west.
Clay’s failed compromise turned into The Compromise of 1850, supported by none of the Whigs in Congress. Putting aside how this was just another attempt to not deal with slavery, it was a final insult to Clay that he and his Whig Party completely lost control under this useless Whig President. And with that, the Whig Party died, and Henry Clay retired. Again.
By this point, the Democratic Party was so un-Jackson that Van Buren pulled the cool people out. The 1852 Convention was so deadlocked, they had to toss in Blandy McPierce just to get some sort of consensus. Right before his inauguration, 
This guy just looks like a douche. While trying to memorize the presidents in second grade, I just called him "dick weed." He got elected because he was in Britain while the government fucked up the slavery issue. He seriously didn’t think the divide between the North and South was that big a deal, probably because he was in Britain while the government fucked up the slavery issue. This effete idiot was icing on the cake of this era of Presidential uselessness.
Jackson believed that in a Democracy, nothing was more important than the will of the people, by which he meant every crazy thing he did was, in fact, the will of the people. Working under this delusion, he expanded the West by killing lots and lots of Indians, destroyed the Bank of the United States (after firing four Secs. of Treasury who wouldn’t do it), created the institution of states deciding presidential candidates, and extended states rights 
Jackson liked to reward those who blindly followed him high political jobs, like making the head of his Democratic Party, Martin Van Buren, Sec. of State then VP. Van Buren was a great party leader, but an abysmal president. 
Van Buren didn’t look or act like Jackson, so Clay’s Whigs raised up a guy who looked and acted like Jackson. 
Tyler didn’t actually get elected, so he spent most of his time in office 
I guess realizing his Whig party kinda sucked, Henry Clay just nominated himself in 1844, and lost to Polk, who quite possibly was more Jackson than Jackson. Lots of people, myself included, thought Polk was one of the more useless Presidents, like Tyler. More recently, we’re realizing this guy was up there with the greats. Where Jackson forced his will with a stick, Polk connived the country into prosperity. You know how we have a Federal Department of the Interior, 
Madison was a lot more interesting before his time in office. He led the charge to establish a federal government, focusing largely on his idea for a 3-branch government. 
At this point it was almost a given that Secretary of State was the first step toward becoming President. Monroe was so popular that the only delegate not to vote for him for re-election did so only to maintain the unmatched status of Washington’s unanimous re-election. Domestically, he, with the help of Henry Clay, rolled out an agenda so non-partisan, it accomplished nothing, like Clay’s slavery-argument-perpetuating Missouri Compromise. On the world front, Monroe, with Clay and others, established Liberia as a place for freed slaves, but more famously announced the Monroe Doctrine, 
Like his father, JQA was a shitty politician who was way smarter than everyone else. You’d think because he was Secretary of State, his election was a given. Actually, JQA had to (allegedly) plot with Clay in 1824 to 
Washington’s presidency was AWKWARD. The Constitution took this administrative job of President of the Continental Congress and gave it its own branch of government. Washington saw the job as just that, chief administrator; he was no king. Thinking his new office didn’t have all that much power, he just sat back and let Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson bicker over little things like the role of the federal government. His neutrality in the French Revolution started the U.S. on its road to Isolationism.
I think the easiest way to understand American History is to think in terms of two great men working in opposition. During this time, it was Adams and Jefferson. Adams stood for strong federal government, while Jefferson saw the government as a body with small and limited authority. Adams built a Navy and gave them a cabinet post, and passed the Alien and Sedition Acts to try to quash support for involvement with the French. Jefferson responded maturely, launching the first major negative campaign (
In 1800, the congress basically tried to stack the presidency and failed miserably. After the disaster of having Adams and Jefferson as Pres. and VP, they decided to stack the deck and have Jefferson and Aaron Burr, both Dem-Reps, hold the offices. Well, they fucked it up, resulting in like a hundred recounts. This began the process toward the 
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