Openness of Process: Eliminating Smoke-Filled Rooms
Party politics have traditionally been associated with Party Bosses and back room deals. Whether it is those shady alliances between the Democrats and Big Labor or between Republicans and the "Christian" Right, the unholy bargaining that binds the two major parties is what ultimately makes the process tainted and closed. The average voter really has nothing of value to the two major parties; rather they are loyal pawns to be used and abused every election cycle and convinced that a particular candidate will best serve their interests once elected. The special interest groups who elected officials actually serve spend millions of dollars every year to persuade the electorate to vote for their guy, usually without much disclosure, and generally by campaigning against "the other guy."
Similarly, most party operations are conducted behind closed doors, or at least doors that are only slightly open. Far from believing that the government should regulate parties, it is my firm opinion that the people of this country should vote with their feet, by consummating a mass exodus from the two major parties for their improprieties in this area. James Dobson and Jesse Jackson are not truly representative members of the Republican and Democratic Parties, respectively, and as a result, they should not be allowed to dictate the direction of the major parties. Of course I use them as merely metaphors for all of the other nefarious power brokers that help shape and control the partisan process, far apart from the will of the majority of Americans, and most of the time, even without their knowledge.
Building on yesterday's comments, it would be important to note that a successful, and truly representative third party movement would harness Internet technology to achieve genuinely open processes by publishing all relevant information concerning the party online, conduct online feedback gathering, as well as potentially even conducting much of party business online. The Internet is the most easily and universally accessible medium in the country. Unlike television or radio, one does not have to be present at the time of broadcast to receive the information, and unlike newspapers and other physical publications, there is a ready archive of all past information that can be filtered and searched by even the less sophisticated user. Anybody with access to a public library (which is far and away most people in the United States) can therefore access and process information provided by our third party via the Internet.
Little "D" Democracy and Party Elections
Having previously served on the State Committee of the Arkansas Republican Party, I have seen the kind of dealings that occur to elect State Party Chairmen, National Committeemen/women, etc. A couple hundred party hacks from across the state gather twice a year to make decisions that ultimately affect the lives of millions. These party hacks are not elected by the public; they are not accountable to the public; they are not even really accountable to the rank-and-file members of their own parties, but rather to the County Committees (read: Local Party hacks) that elect them. These party organizations go on to set the platforms of the parties, disperse the millions of dollars collected from the average party member's hard earned funds, and decide which candidates are worthy of their support in general elections. In such a way, they create a system where good candidates who might disagree with a particular area of policy are financially blacklisted by the party in a general election. For example, there were a couple of Republican candidates in Arkansas who didn't receive any help in the general election because they backed the wrong candidate for State Party Chairman, or because they didn't have an extreme enough of a view on abortion. Putting such power in the hands of these sorts of people is irresponsible, and is part of the reason the two party system no longer serves the mainstream of America, regardless of ideology.
Registered party members ought to be able to vote, by mail or electronic ballot, not just on the leadership of the party, but also on the adoption of the platform (after providing all of the input on its content first), the nomination of candidates (there are much better systems for choosing candidates than currently exist. I will write more about these issues in a later series), and in other important party matters. Because of the real-time nature of 21st Century technology, parties can interact on an almost hourly basis with their members, so that "party" and "party member" are no longer distinctions, but rather the organization functions organically as a representation of its constituent members.
No Financial Chicanery
This section won't take much time. An emergent third party will open its finances up to the world. Genuine transparency necessitates it. All contributions and expenditures must be disclosed to the public on a quarterly basis, just like a public company. Such a party will have no trouble raising money, and will be respected by all for its honesty. (Open books also REQUIRE honesty. That's the beauty of it.)
Dumping the Rhetoric from Party Platforms
Our hypothetical third party movement should develop platforms that are straightforward and not political in nature. Such platforms should also be remarkably fluid, and change in a real-time fashion along with the will and opinions of the party as a whole. This is one of the best ways to ensure that the third party truly represents the interests and concerns of its constituents and members. Such platforms will tackle actual policy, rather than ideology. Rather than talking about a theory of government and taxation, it will talk about what we do about our phone book-length tax code and oppressively enormous Internal Revenue Bureaucracy. Rather than discussing the ethics of the death penalty, it will talk about how we actually intend to reduce crime in our communities. Rather than extolling the virtues of public education, it would discuss what to do with our corrupt educational bureaucracies and failing schools. I could continue...
Tomorrow we'll look at how a third party can, and should, shift to genuine dialogue on policy and away from "sound bites," in order to effect meaningful change in our political system.
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