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« Back to Will a Third Party Decide Election 2000? main page    Transcript for: Will a Third Party Decide Election 2000?ANNOUNCER: Funding for Think Tank is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Donner Canadian Foundation.(Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg. George W. Bush and Al Gore have their sights set on the White House this year. But, there are two minor party candidates, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan, who might determine the actual outcome of the election. If they do it won't be the first time a third party has shaped American politics. Will Nader or Buchanan make a difference in 2000? To find out Think Tank is joined by: David Gillespie, professor of political science at Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina, and author of Politics at the Periphery, Third Parties in Two Party America; Norman Ornstein, resident scholar for public policy research at the American Enterprise Institute, and coeditor of The Permanent Campaign and Its Future; and E.J. Dionne, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and author of They Only Look Dead, Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era. The topic before the house a third choice in 2000, this week on Think Tank. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Since the country's earliest days American politics has been dominated by two parties, but throughout our history third parties, and sometimes fourth parties, have often made their mark and brought new ideas to American public life. Sometimes minor parties have turned major party candidates from winners into losers and vice versa. Abraham Lincoln was arguably a minor party candidate when he was elected president in 1860 on an anti-slavery platform. No third party candidate since has matched Lincoln's success, but many have tried. In 1912, former president Teddy Roosevelt ran on the ticket of the Bull Moose Party, and gained 27 percent of the vote. George Wallace won 13 percent as a candidate of the American Independent Party in 1968, and of course, there is Ross Perot, who got 19 percent of the vote in 1992, and 8 percent in 1996. Even in defeat third parties have shaped the national agenda. Teddy Roosevelt's progressive platform led to efforts to introduce the minimum wage and the 40-hour workweek. Ross Perot's emphasis on a balanced budget pushed the major parties to act. This year's election could yield a somewhat similar pattern. Despite general prosperity, many voters are wary of globalization. They may consider Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan, or Green Party nominee Ralph Nader as alternatives to free traders Bush and Gore. Nader in particular is said to be running well in important states like California and Michigan. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us. Let's just go around the set here, is it likely that either or both of the third party candidates will be influential in determining the winner of this year's election? MR. ORNSTEIN: I think they will be influential in having some impact on the debate, I doubt very much that they'll be influential at all in determining the outcome of the election, and I'm skeptical, frankly, that either of them will reach that magical 5 percent threshold of support that would bring them federal funds for the next time around and establish them in a better way as parties. MR. WATTENBERG: David Gillespie? MR. GILLESPIE: I think it's very likely that the two candidates you mentioned, Nader and Buchanan, if Buchanan gets the Reform Party nomination, will have a very important effect on the election in states like California. It seems to me that it is most likely that it's going to be to the great disadvantage of Al Gore in this election. MR. WATTENBERG: Because the Nader vote comes principally from the Gore vote? MR. GILLESPIE: And because Pat Buchanan appeals not only to conservatives, but to some union anti-globalist types. MR. DIONNE: I agree that Nader could tip some states. I think that they are already having an effect. What you saw in early July, late June, is Al Gore becoming much more populist, must more insistent on going after the Democratic base. I think that he's doing that for a number of reasons, but one of them is that Ralph Nader is taking some of that vote, and Gore wants to make sure he gets some of it back. MR. WATTENBERG: So this is according to classic electoral theory, pulling him left when he should be heading into the center to his right. MR. DIONNE: It's interesting, because the way Gore is trying to do this, as Jerry Brown once said, he's trying to go left and right at the same time. He's saying, we're the party of prosperity and balanced budgets, that's why you should be against the big tax cuts, but we're also going to try to keep the big boys in the drug industry and elsewhere honest. And he's trying to walk this line. And at least if you judge by the polls immediately after that -- MR. WATTENBERG: He has this unique proposition, he says, he's for the people? MR. DIONNE: It's unique in American politics. No one is ever for the people. MR. WATTENBERG: We have a lot of anti-people candidates all the time. David, historically are you right or wrong about your observation of this year's election. This year's election you say the third party candidates are going to play an instrumental role. Give us the short form lecture on third parties over the years? MR. GILLESPIE: Well, there have been many times when third parties actually determined the outcome, the most obvious example would be the split in the Republican Party in 1912, with the Bull Moose progressives actually coming in number two, completely sacking what might have been a Republican year. MR. WATTENBERG: Destroying President Taft's reelection bid. MR. GILLESPIE: That's exactly right. It is in my opinion not entirely confirmable, but certainly Republicans will give you an argument if you say that Perot did not deprive them of the election in 1992, so as recently as that. I don't think that in 1996 it's confirmable that the election was turned by a third party candidacy. MR. WATTENBERG: Although Clinton did not get 50 percent in 1996, he got almost 50 percent. MR. GILLESPIE: That's right. MR. WATTENBERG: Norman, why are you butting your head against the stone wall of history here? MR. ORNSTEIN: Well, I think you can make a very strong case, first of all, that neither George Wallace in 1968, Democrats believe that he deprived Humphrey the victory, a lot of evidence to suggest he opposite. MR. WATTENBERG: He almost deprived Nixon of the victory, that's what happened. MR. ORNSTEIN: Yes, or that Perot made the difference in 1992, there's a substantial amount of evidence there about what the second choices were. What I think happens is, at least in recent history, third party support tends to peak around June or July of an election year, and then begin to decline. We saw that with Perot in 1992, we saw it with John Anderson in 1980. MR. WATTENBERG: This is sort of the he can't win syndrome. MR. ORNSTEIN: Well, partisans tend to come back home, but also people who flirt with a third party, as it gets close to an election, look and see who's going to win, and want to have an effect on the vote. MR. WATTENBERG: You don't disagree with that do you, David? MR. GILLESPIE: I don't disagree with that. I would like to say something about the treatment of third parties in this country, if I might do so. MR. WATTENBERG: Please, that's what you're here for. MR. GILLESPIE: This country is the leading country that proclaims itself to be a democratic country, in an era in which the second and third worlds are showing aspiration toward that end, it is absolutely pathetic that what we have is two centrist candidates, cut off the same ethnic cloth, both perfectly willing in a heartbeat, when their managers tell them to do so, to redefine themselves to be whatever the market people say they should be. And we are right now seeing a situation in which Nader and Buchanan and others are having a terrible time getting on the ballot in various states around the United States. We still stack the cards against third parties. There is a duopoly in this country. Some people -- one of my students once said that we're twice as good as the Soviet Union in terms of -- MR. WATTENBERG: I love it when a soft spoken Southerner comes out with a machine gun and just goes rat-tat-tat. Now, E.J., you have in your hand a yellow piece of paper, which speaks to that in a very interesting way. Tell us who it's from and what it's about. MR. DIONNE: I was reading in the last few days a new book by Seymour Martin (sp) and Gary Marks (sp) about why we don't have -- we never had a mass socialist party here the way most of the other rich democracies had. It's a book called It Didn't Happen Here. And they quote a man called Edward Keating, who was a leader of the non-partisan league in North Dakota, where essentially a bunch of lefties took over the Republican Party. And Keating said that the reason why third parties aren't as strong here as they are elsewhere, is because we have primaries, and dissident groups can go into primaries. The primary law, Mr. Keating said, renders the formation of new parties unnecessary for the reason that whenever the people wish to renovate one or both of the old parties they can use the expedient of the primary. And I think that's a way in which our system is more open. I partly agree with the professor that some states have unbelievably onerous laws, which really are unfair, and keep third parties off the ballot. On the other hand, I do think you need some hurdle, because think of the primaries this year, 30 million-plus people participated in the Democratic and Republican primaries. They are open. They are democratic. They are flawed. We can argue about money's influence, but they're an open process. That's a lot of people. I think third parties need to show some level of real support to get on the ballot. There are over 200 third party candidates, we don't want a bed sheet as a ballot, but I do think that there should be a reasonable chance that candidates with some support can get on the ballot. MR. ORNSTEIN: Let me take on what David said in a more fundamental way. I believe in the two party system. I want to have outlets for other parties. When I look at other democratic countries that have multiple parties, I don't see them govern better than we do, or having a greater sense of unity, or a sense of legitimacy in the system. Take Italy, please, take Israel. MR. GILLESPIE: I think Italy is a lovely place. MR. ORNSTEIN: It's a lovely place to go, their democratic system is I think flawed and countries -- even Germany where you've had small third parties, representing a sliver share of the electorate, that can often make the balance of power, and have enormous leverage, and can in fact drive a country apart. This is a country where most voters are in the middle, and to have two parties compete for where most voters are, I think is not a bad idea. MR. DIONNE: To take Norm's point, it seems to me that there are two different kinds of democracy, what you have in multiparty democracies like Italy is lots of parties on the ballot that can get into the parliament. Most of the bargaining happens after the election. That is not always as democratic as a two party system where the coalitions are formed before the election, and the voters know more or less what mixture of forces they are voting for. Do you think the multiparty system is actually a better, more democratic system? MR. GILLESPIE: I think I would respond by saying that I ultimately believe in a two party system, too. But, one that is a result of not stacking the deck. And I would not go and change our constitutional system. James Madison believed that we ought to avoid the spirit of faction, and out of that grew a single member district kind of representation. MR. WATTENBERG: That's the winner take all kind of thing, which also works against the third party. MR. GILLESPIE: Winner take all, electoral college, I'm not advocating doing away with that, I'm simply saying that when you get through those onerous ballot access laws you ought to be able to get on the debate stage. For example, this fall without having 15 percent of the polls, that's another example. MR. WATTENBERG: the root of this argument, as to whether or not third parties are going to make a big difference in this election in the year 2000 is how close an election is it going to be, because if it's going to be a lopsided election either way they're not going to make a whole lot of difference. Now, I have been looking -- let's kind of catch up to where we are. I have been looking at the polls. And they are -- MR. ORNSTEIN: Big mistake. MR. WATTENBERG: Big mistake? MR. ORNSTEIN: That's right. MR. WATTENBERG: And they are at this point, I must say, a little baffling. Until about two or three weeks ago you saw Governor Bush with about a five to ten point lead, nationally. Some of the polls are now still showing that. Some of the polls are showing it very close to even two points or something like that. At the same time we are getting in polls, and if you all read Hotline you see them, from some of the absolute bell weather states in America, the ones that everyone agrees you have to win to win, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and they are coming out and they're usually razor thin margins, and they are coming out five to ten points plus for Bush. Can anybody enlighten me as to how close this election is? Let's talk about right now, not what it's going to be, but which sets of these polls makes some sense? MR. ORNSTEIN: Let me suggest one thing to you, Ben, that I think is of importance for viewers, as well. Polling is a big business now. Every news organization pours huge amounts of money into its own polls, and then publicizes them like crazy. And they are almost meaningless at this stage. MR. WATTENBERG: But, these are all public polls, taken by newspapers, taken by Gannet, USA Today, these are not hustle polls. MR. ORNSTEIN: No, they have utter freedom to do their polls, they're just meaningless, because voters have not -- we know, we know from one survey done by the Shorenstein (sp) Center now on a regular basis, the overwhelming majority of voters are paying no attention to this election, something like 25 percent aren't sure whether the election is this year or next year. People do not begin to focus until the conventions. We can spend an enormous amount of time, an enormous amount of airwaves, an enormous amount of money debating what the polls mean today, what you can tell is until you get to August or September, they're not worth paying any attention to. MR. WATTENBERG: Norman, if you were running for president would you at this point seven points ahead, or seven points behind? MR. ORNSTEIN: To tell you the truth, I think I'd be just as happy as George Bush, Vice President George Bush, was in 1988 being 14 points behind right now, because it's going to change. MR. WATTENBERG: Do you believe that E.J., if you were running for president you wouldn't care if you were seven ahead or seven behind? MR. DIONNE: I think maybe it's characterological, I'd always rather be ahead. But, the point is what you're seeing in the public polls nationally are very conflicting sets of numbers. There are some polls, which show the race razor edge, a couple of points maybe for Bush. You had some polls that came out right after the Buddhist temple thing came out where there was a push toward Bush, he had a big margin. I think what that suggests is you have a lot of very weak preferences out there right now. MR. WATTENBERG: Let me put something up on the screen. We talked recently to John Kenneth White at Catholic University, about the effect that Ralph Nader had on the election in 1996, and here's what he had to say. MR. WHITE: In 1996, Nader did impact the race in Colorado significantly. He took a significant percentage of the vote, therefore shifting the state, which had gone for Clinton in '92, to Dole in 1996. That was unusual because in many ways the 1996 election was almost a rerun of the 1992 election. MR. WATTENBERG: When it's close as it was, Colorado is sort of a pretty close state, a third party candidate, in this case Nader, who did not run a very energetic campaign in 1996, barely showed, but even then he turned the state. And that's what you were sort of saying that there will be enough close, winner take all states, that that phenomenon will likely appear? MR. GILLESPIE: I think it's very likely to happen. There were a group of political scientists recently who logged in their predictions that prosperity will always have its place, and the incumbent party is not the Republican Party. The Republican Party will try to proclaim that as leader of the Congress that it is the incumbent party so far as prosperity figures in, but any polls that show Al Gore behind right now are to be taken with some degree of a grain of salt, I think. MR. DIONNE: Ben, I think one of the things when we talk about third parties that we don't look at is where we say, well, he'll take votes from somebody else, third parties can also increase turnout. I think the best example of that was Ross Perot in 1992, where we had the highest turnout we've had in a long time. Ross Perot got 19 percent. If you looked at the exit polls after the election, Perot voters split about 35-35 Clinton-Bush in their second choices, but a big chunk of them said they wouldn't have voted at all if Ross Perot hadn't been on the ballot. Similarly, I think with Ralph Nader, he's going to pull out people who might otherwise stay home and say, well, there's no real difference. Nader will get some people to the polls. And one of the interesting things will be, what effect does he have on the House races, does he pull left of center voters to the polls, and then do they vote Democratic down the ticket when there's no Green Party candidate? MR. WATTENBERG: Is that what you think is going to happen? MR. DIONNE: I don't know how big Nader's vote is going to be, so I'm not going to make any predictions that he's going to tip those elections, but I do think that there will be a lot of states where he will pull some people to the polls who wouldn't vote. MR. WATTENBERG: But, again, in a winner take all system you don't have to move a lot of -- particularly in some of those very close House races, you can have the Nader vote killing Gore and electing a Democratic congressman. MR. DIONNE: I think that could happen. MR. ORNSTEIN: Let me make one larger point here, an ironic point. Historically third parties have had two kinds of basis, one is the simply personal charisma of an individual candidate, and when that's been tried to -- when they tried to translate that into an institutionalized party it often just flops, the American Independent Party was not a party without George Wallace, for example. John Anderson ran as an Independent, tried to create a party, it didn't work. The other more enduring question is whether you have an issue base for maintaining and institutionalizing a party. Well, we have two parties out there now, the Green Party, which presumably is an issue based party, the Reform Party which Ross Perot has tried to turn into an issue based party around issues of governmental -- MR. WATTENBERG: Of the center. MR. ORNSTEIN: Of the center. Now, what's happened? Well, because we have rules set in place with reforms in 1974, public financing in presidential campaigns, an attempt to bring third parties in, if you get over a 5 percent level you then get federal funds, which the Reform Party has, the Green Party wants. They have, in effect, taken marquee candidates, who are in many ways either not concerned about the issues that drive them, or anathematic to the issues that drive them for one purpose, which is to get enough votes to get the money. So the idea that these are parties set up so that they can maintain this integrity of issues, it's turned into a money grubbing process, where they're going against everything they believe in to get those levels. MR. WATTENBERG: That is a cool word, anathematic, I've known you for a long time. I've never heard you use it. MR. ORNSTEIN: Thank you, I've' worked on that. Scrabble, it's a good word for Scrabble. MR. WATTENBERG: But, this brings up an interesting question, which I want to ask you. Pat Buchanan is running terribly in the polls. Now, you see him running at 2 and 3 percent. And I don't think anybody on this panel would disagree with the idea that more than 2 or 3 percent of the people in the United States support a Buchanan view. I mean, this is just a fact. He scored good poll numbers in 1992, he scored good poll numbers in 1996, I mean, not majority but solid base of support. In the 1999 early run ups in those straw polls he suddenly sank to next to nothing, and he's next to nothing now, which tells you maybe the Reform Party, assuming he gets that nomination, will not reestablish its 5 percent cut off point. Does anybody have a speculation as to why Buchanan is running so poorly? MR. DIONNE: Buchanan was an excellent candidate at a time of economic downturn. He did very well in '92 in New Hampshire against George Bush on economic issues. In '96 he captured and united a lot of the social conservatives in the Republican Party in the primaries. I don't think he has the opportunity to run against the downturn now, and on an issue like abortion George W. Bush is pure enough for the right to lifers that they don't want to endanger his election by going to Buchanan. I think those are some factors. MR. ORNSTEIN: There is a third reason here, and that is, if you've been in the White House for eight years, and your party has been in the White House, you're going to alienate the base in a very fundamental way, because a successful president moves to the middle, and a portion of that ideological base, the longer you're there the more their expectations get raised. Once you win a reelection it's, he doesn't have to worry about reelection, now we can get what we want, and you don't. MR. WATTENBERG: You're talking about President Clinton now. MR. ORNSTEIN: I'm talking about Clinton, and I could go back to Reagan or Bush. So where you're going to have a disaffected group of people is going to be on the left right now, because their party has been in power, they haven't gotten what they want. If you go for eight years of Republicans, Pat Buchanan or a similar candidacy is going to do better. Right now conservatives want to win, they want to beat whatever Clinton stood for, whatever he was, whoever is out there representing what he represents. And so it's going to be tougher for Buchanan. But, there's a caveat here, remember, Pat Buchanan if he wins that Reform Party nomination gets $12.6 million in federal funding which Ralph Nader will not get. So don't discount where he will be vis-a-vis Nader by the time we get to the fall. MR. GILLESPIE: There are some infrastructure problems within the Reform Party to say the least. And that's certainly, I think, Pat Buchanan's look within. MR. WATTENBERG: It's a zoo. MR. GILLESPIE: It is an absolute zoo, there are 40 court cases in 40 different states challenging -- MR. WATTENBERG: Is it possible that Buchanan will 'win' the nomination, and then there will be lawsuits that will hold up the delivery of this $12 million? MR. GILLESPIE: That's conceivable. MR. WATTENBERG: Tell me how you think the third party candidacies this year will influence the agendas of the major party candidates? MR. DIONNE: I think Ralph Nader is already making Gore a little more of a populist sounding candidate. I think that will continue. I think Pat Buchanan may make it harder for George Bush to choose a pro-choice running mate. There will be a fear of at least a little bit of seepage to the Buchanan candidacy. And if they run any kind of campaign they might have a modest effect in bumping turnout upward. MR. WATTENBERG: David? MR. GILLESPIE: I doubt sincerely that the third party candidates will affect the agenda of the major party candidates. I suspect that both of them will try their best to remain in the center, and to hug that particular turf. MR. WATTENBERG: Norman? MR. ORNSTEIN: Big rhetorical effect, we've already seen it, as E.J. said, with Gore, we'll see some of it with Bush. And we'll hear more about the Supreme Court, even though most voters don't make second order choices, than we would have otherwise by far, because Al Gore wants to convince liberal voters that it does make a difference if you pick one of these two major candidates, and the Supreme Court is the sine qua non of that. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Thank you, David Gillespie, Norman Ornstein, E.J. Dionne, and thank you. We at Think Tank encourage feedback from our viewers via email, it is very important to us. We recently received a letter from Kirk Perot (sp) who writes, Think Tank is very interesting and informative when it concerns itself with ideas, religion, sociology, esthetics, et cetera. It is also interesting when it discusses politics, but there's so much else that's centered on politics out there that I change the channel instead of watching. That's an interesting point, Kurt, that you actually turn off the channel. Thanks for writing. I wonder what the rest of our viewers think about that, let us know. Unfortunately, Kirk will have already turned off the channel on this one. But, so be it. One final note, to learn more about the history of third parties in America, please be sure to watch the upcoming Think Tank historical documentary entitled, A Third Choice. Please check your local listings for air times starting on August 18th. Thanks again for watching. For Think Tank I'm Ben Wattenberg. ANNOUNCER: We at Think Tank depend on your views to make our show better. Please send your questions and comments to New River Media, 1219 Connecticut Avenue, Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20036, or email us at thinktank@pbs.org. To learn more about Think Tank, visit PBS Online at pbs.org. And please let us know where you watch Think Tank. This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, in association with New River Media, which are solely responsible for its content. Funding for Think Tank is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Donner Canadian Foundation. (End of program.) Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
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