Sunday, May 04, 2008
Time for nation to take the party out of politics
Dan Radmacher
Recent columns
After a real "pox on both their houses" moment the other day, I've decided I've had it with both major political parties.
President Bush held a press conference to discuss the faltering economy. His solution was to blame everything on a Democratic Congress and call for the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded that the current economic situation is all Bush's fault, and she called for Bush to quit sending oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
That's the pattern on so many of the vital issues facing this nation: Point fingers, cast blame and offer up feel-good, meaningless suggestions that will accomplish nothing.
I won't bother getting into the lack of merits surrounding the suggestions to drill in ANWR, which could ease the price of gas fractionally when it gets up to full production in 10 years or so, or divert oil from the strategic reserve, which is intended for significant disasters that disrupt the nation's fuel supply.
My pique was less about the specific issue than the realization that neither party seems capable of accomplishing much beyond attempting to win the next election.
That frustration made me reflect on the interviews the editorial board has been conducting over the last six weeks or so with candidates for local office.
These are men and women who mostly seemed to have no aspiration for an office higher than town or city council member. Most ran as independents.
Roanoke was the only locality where candidates run under party labels, and even then more than half are running as independents.
Party simply doesn't matter.
Candidates for local office don't care about the Democratic or Republican party platforms. Mostly, they are concerned citizens who believe they can make a difference and get something done to make their communities better places to live.
It was refreshing.
I don't know when partisanship became so poisonous to democracy. Maybe it was when the Republicans took the House in 1994. After 40 comfortable years in power, Democrats were shocked by the defeat.
Regaining power became their priority, while retaining it became the Republican priority.
Republicans sacrificed much principle in their effort to stay in charge, most notably fiscal prudence. Democrats also lost sight of the human goals beneath their ideology as they struggled to regain control of Congress.
We've long argued that Roanoke would do well to end its partisan council elections, and I can't help but think that the nation would be better served by nonpartisan elections as well.
Of course, legislators need some way to organize themselves. Having 535 individuals attempting to craft policy would be chaos. But it says something about how the two parties have ingrained themselves in the system that it's hard to imagine a credible alternative.
Working together, Democrats and Republicans have stacked the deck against third parties. Ballot access laws and other measures help keep other parties from establishing themselves, much less challenging the dominance of the two major parties.
But as public cynicism continues to mount and the parties constantly demonstrate their inability to work together to face the nation's growing challenges, I hope the public starts looking beyond party labels -- and that more individual politicians refuse to allow their party to define them.
When you go to the polls Tuesday, think about how good it feels to vote for the individual you think will do the best job rather than worrying about the D or R after a person's name.
Then think about how good that would feel in a race for Congress or president.
Democrats and Republicans have defined American politics for too long.
Radmacher is editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.
