Partisan Gamesmanship - July 2006

This month, I was asked to write about whatever political issue was most bothersome to me these days. And that would be my concern about the partisan games being played in Washington. Even nationally hyped books about liberalism, or movies about the environment and 9/11 have become partisan tools. Is it time for a viable third party to break the tug of war in our nation’s capital?

The battle against terrorism, immigration enforcement, corrupt Congressmen – one was recently caught with $ 90,000 in his freezer, and taxes are among the many important issues of the day that have become more about strategic positions for this November’s Congressional elections than about the current and future needs of our country. And the American people are suffering because of it.

For the first time since I became active in politics while growing up in D.C., I am actually starting to tune out much of the political fracas and focus only on those candidates who represent my views. I am so disappointed and embarrassed by the big spending and grandstanding of the Republican House and Senate that America might be better off without them in control.

Of course, I cannot imagine today’s Democratic House leaders in control either. Can you? The thought of Charlie Rangel running Ways & Means, John Dingell running Energy and Commerce, John Conyers running Judiciary, or Nancy Pelosi as Speaker certainly motivates me to vote Republican again.

But has our political system become too partisan? Has it become too petty? Or is the behavior of today’s politicians and their political parties the same as it has been since the days of the Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Democratic-Republicans, Whigs, Unionists and the various derivations of each which have become the modern day Democratic and Republican parties?

From my understanding of history, political campaigns have always been nasty and politicians from different ideologies have always bickered and traded favors and votes for power. And there have always been power brokers behind the scenes. It was only a few decades ago that the bootlegging, rum running father of one candidate supposedly bought the Presidency for him with some help from special friends in West Virginia and Illinois.

So where do we go from here? Could a faction of Republican or Democratic office holders break off and form a new party as happened during our country’s early years? Could the special interests that currently bind the Democrats to big labor and trial lawyers and the Republicans to business and religious groups force a splintering of one or both parties and the formation of a new party?

Or could a charismatic national leader with vision - and access to money - materialize and capture the White House as an independent? Ross Perot captured enough votes with his Reform Party in 1992 to put Bill Clinton into the White House and preclude Herbert Walker Bush from winning a second term.

Only time will tell. But I am rooting for a third party to help tame the partisanship in Washington.