Why the Reform Party Shouldn’t Confuse Reform with Radicalism

Sure, a political party doesn’t haveto live up to its name. The German Democratic Republic, after all, was East Germany under the communists. In Mexico, the Institutional Reform Party (PRI) has been the protector of that nation’s state of high corruption for the better part of a century. But it sure helps — and this election year the Reform party has a chance to begin living up to its very purposeful name. There is perhaps an equal chance that the infant party will turn instead down the path that leads to the electoral deep dungeon where all hot-air revolutions go to die.

Radical or Reform?

The Reform party is split between those who relish the taste of populist bile in their mouths and those who believe the party can one day gain the influence to help fix what is broken in American politics. The first half has hailed pundit-cum-politician Pat Buchanan with a lusty come-aboard; the latter group, led by grappler-turned-governor Jesse Ventura, has begun to throw candidates at the would-be GOP ship-jumper, in the hopes that someone else — anyone else — will carry the Reform flag toward higher political ground, and not downhill. Someone who will help keep the party from becoming a mockery of its name.

Perot’s Legacy

Ross Perot had it half right; he wanted to fix American politics but chickened out, sacrificing his credibility for a protectionism that went out of style and for love of his own ego. The better half of Perot’s posse spawned Jesse Ventura; the failed half degraded into the acid populism that is the stock-in-trade of Pat Buchanan. It plays well in iconoclastic New Hampshire, and with farmers and union men, but if a party aspires to one day leave the fringe in the cause of reform, it is a poison pill. Buchanan is no reformer; he is a radical by convenience and a scavenger by nature. Why would he change the system that has paid him the salary of the limelight — on TV and in bookstores — as a rabble-rouser for hire? Besides, times are too good for an agrarian uprising anyway; those who are simply disenchanted with the system far outnumber those who truly despise it. Buchanan claims to want to change what government does; his call to arms is that the government does wrong. Ventura’s is only that the government does too much for itself and too little for everyone else, and on top of that does it poorly.

Opportunist Alert?

Now Buchanan, who makes such a fine meal of the scraps of the Republican and Democratic feast as a pundit — but precious little as a wannabe pol — wants to switch. The battle is on for the soul of Ross Perot’s brainchild, and the question being asked by the more serious elements in the Ventura camp is whether Pitchfork Pat has a reformist bone in his body. “I haven’t heard his political reform agenda,” Minnesota Reform party chairman Dean Barkley told the Washington Post. “I still see him having that abortion issue and that social agenda on the front burner, and I still say if he continues to do that, he’s not going to sell well with a number of the people in the Reform party.”

Beware Strange Bedfellows

Only in the Reform party could Buchanan’s be a big tent. His would-be candidacy has already won the support of New York far-leftie Lenora Fulani, who is militantly pro-choice and pro-gay rights but told CNN she thinks she can come to terms with Buchanan, the man who is currently embroiled in a war of words with fellow Reform flirter Donald Trump over whether the U.S. should have gotten involved in World War II (Pat seems more than a little against it). According to Fulani, Buchanan “can play a role as a unifier, bring everybody together.” Come again? Fulani herself ran for president in 1988 and 1992 on the New Alliance ticket, but this year has thrown in her lot with the Reform party in New York. She is a supporter of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and has been criticized for a statement she made saying that some blacks seem willing to “pander to Jews” (Fulani is black). Buchanan, meanwhile, is a virulent protectionist and anti-immigrationist (and ex-Nixon speechwriter) who never met a panderer he didn’t like (though not to the Jews — he once called Congress “Israeli-occupied territory”). Just the fact that Pitchfork Pat can make this type of alliance should warn the Reform party away from him.

It’s a Vision Thing

And it’s not as though Buchanan and Fulani’s far-out philosophies are filling a particular vacuum — Ventura has lit a clear way ahead. He has got Minnesota’s Democrats and Republicans talking, and its legislature functioning. Despite the chuckles, Ventura has not disgraced himself, and he has lent his party what must be considered a legitimate — and respectable — intellectual identity. He is for a small government that loves tough, and that ordinary folk get to participate in — namely, for campaign finance reform. He is for fiscal conservatism (a balanced budget and low taxes) and social libertarianism. He has based a so-far-successful governorship on the idea that government can be better, smarter, smaller and more accessible — that it can be reformed. And he has the credibility that any reformer needs; at a time when globalization has made America and its citizens the richest and most powerful nation in the world, Ventura is a free-trader who will not court the protectionists for easy votes. At a time when the morality hawks are looking desperately for a Faust, Ventura is resolutely pro-choice. He also knows that in the eyes of the larger electorate, Perot and Buchanan are men to stand apart from. He does not want them taking control of his party and relegating him to the Valley of the Cranks.

Jesse’s List

But Ventura is also intent on staying in his Minnesota laboratory awhile, and so he is looking for a front man. His initial candidate for the 2000 nod was former Connecticut senator and governor Lowell P. Weicker, a thoughtful type who was the kind of maverick, reformist governor Ventura tries to be (except that Weicker is several dollars short on charisma). Weicker uses the R-word a lot, and means it; as a liberal Northeast Republican, he is a conservatives’ answer to Bill Bradley (maybe he would have really caught on had he been better at basketball…). More recently, Ventura has been prodding New York real estate mogul (and tabloid fixture) Donald Trump to step forward. The Donald has the celebrity and the brains to be a businessman’s Ventura, a perfect placeholder for The Body because he’s unencumbered by a demanding constituency or ideology, and might at least grab enough press to keep the dream alive until 2004. Then there were whisperings about Warren Beatty. If he ran as single-issue gadfly (campaign finance reform) and not as an ultra-liberal, his star power could light up a few election booths. But the actor, a long-time Democrat, didn’t respond to calls.

Here’s Pat

These, at least, are sincere men (with judgment pending on the apolitical Trump), and they all fill what for Ventura is a necessary bill for the party: They’re a breed apart. Buchanan, for all his posturing, is a political animal, a politician’s politician. He happens to be a grassroots rabble-rouser because it keeps him on TV and sells books, and because no one else much wants to be one. He has the give-’em-hell attitude to excite the Reform party’s lunatic fringe, and comes with his own built-in constituency — a rabid band of anti-abortion, pro-prayer protectionists who are fightin’ mad over the Republicans’ slow-but-insistent move back to the center under George W. Bush. With a Reform party nod, Buchanan gets a brand-new pan-partisan forum for his populism — in his third go-round, his act is wearing thin with GOP voters — and a brand-new war chest. (Thanks to Perot’s 9 percent showing in 1996, the Reform nominee is guaranteed $12.6 million in federal money, far more than Buchanan has been able to raise this year.) But what does the Reform party get? A candidate who, undeniably, has a shot at mobilizing not only far-right Republicans with his social conservatism but also labor-union Democrats with his insistent immigrant-bashing and mind-boggling trade protectionism. Those within the Reform ranks who support a Buchanan candidacy tout Pat as the man to take the party to “the next level.” But to Ventura, Buchanan is a “retread,” and to Weicker, Pitchfork Pat’s “next level” is the end of the line. “Look at their track record,” Weicker told CNN on Monday, referring to the far-right Buchanan ilk. “They took over the Republican party and made a shambles of it.”

The Time Is Ripe

A word on third-party politics: It’s possible. Voter turnout in the U.S. has sunk below 50 percent. Distaste for the current state of Washington politics is tangible; a generation of young voters is convinced — perhaps rightly — that they needn’t worry about elections until they’re rich enough to buy a politician of their own. Campaign-finance reform is being championed by both John McCain and Bill Bradley, and is actually starting to catch on as an issue, yet each finds the movement opposed to varying degrees by their major-party compatriots. The party in power never wants reform, and the party in the minority only pushes for it because they know it will never pass.

And the Issue Is Clear

Campaign finance reform is the best argument for a American third party in years, maybe ever, and it gets to the heart of what the Reform party needs to be to find the voters and constituencies that are sick of the system: issue-driven and intellectually inviting. The debate over reform has advanced beyond Ross Perot’s jug-eared, wild-eyed peek under the hood; it has also advanced beyond — or, rather, never really included — Buchanan’s willful, calculated ignorance of the rules of economic and political success in the modern world. We are up to specifics, up to intra-system mavericks like Bradley and McCain pressing real plans for campaign finance reform, and beyond pitch-perfect radicals like Pat Buchanan, who play to the angriest elements of our electorate because they reliably come out and vote. The key to a successful third party is igniting the interest of those who think but do not vote, not pandering to those who vote without thinking.

TIME Daily poll: The Reform Party’s Candidate