The persistent American fascination with third parties and fringe candidates defies every lesson of history, logic, human nature and common sense. No minor party candidate has ever won the presidency or, for that matter, even come close. For the most part, these ego-driven “independent” adventures in electoral narcissism push the political process further away from their professed goals, rather than advancing their agendas or ideas.

Nevertheless, a clear majority of Americans (58%) in September, 2007, told the Gallup Poll that the two major parties “do such a poor job that a third major party is needed”, while only 39% agree with a statement that the established parties “do an adequate job of representing the American people.” A Rasmussen Survey (May, 2007) produced similar results, with 58% agreeing with the statement that “it would be good for the United States if there were a truly competitive third party,” and only 23% disagreeing. Among religious conservatives, prominent leaders talk openly of backing a kamikaze candidate if Rudy Giuliani becomes the GOP nominee, and a Rasmussen telephone survey shows a striking 27% of Republicans willing to back a “Pro Life Third Party” in the event that the former New York Mayor heads the ticket. In his illiterate and all-but-unreadable new book “Independents Day,” CNN’s fatuous fraud Lou Dobbs expresses similar eagerness to abandon the traditional two-party system. “Now I don’t know about you,” he harrumphs, “but fundamentally I don’t see much of a difference between Republicans and Democrats…The creation of a third, independent choice, one that has the concerns of American working people as its basis, is the way we must proceed.”

This unquenchable enthusiasm for new parties and marginal, ego-driven candidacies rests on a foundation of profound ignorance and unassailable historical illiteracy. Even a nodding acquaintance with the American past reveals uncomfortable but incontrovertible facts about independent or minor party campaigns.

1. ON A NATIONAL BASIS, THIRD PARTIES ALWAYS LOSE – AND RUIN THE CAREERS OF THE LEADING PARTICIPANTS.

Consider the fate of the Bonkers Billionaire, Ross Perot, the most formidable minor party candidate of the last 95 years. In 1992, against Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush, he invested millions of dollars from his personal fortune and drew an impressive 18.9% of the popular tally (though he failed to win even a single electoral vote). Four years later, he tried again but more than half of his former supporters abandoned him, and he polled a scant 8.4%. The “Reform Party” he had assembled as a personal vehicle for his quixotic quest quickly collapsed when Perot lost interest in it: in 2000, “Pitchfork Pat” Buchanan claimed the party’s nomination and drew a spectacularly pathetic 0.4% -- even fellow-fringie Ralph Nader topped his vote total by an astonishing ratio of six-to-one. If anyone today recalls Ross Perot and the Reform Party they do so only as a punch-line, or as a factor in allowing Bill Clinton to win the White House twice without ever winning a majority of the popular vote. Perot’s credibility as a political commentator all but evaporated in the wake of his campaigns --- and Buchanan’s stature also suffered major damage even after his return to the Republican fold to back Bush in 2004.

Other conservatives similarly destroyed once-promising careers with their third party obsessions. Howard Phillips, twice elected President of the Student Council at Harvard, qualified as a rising Republican star when he headed two federal agencies in the Nixon administration. In 1992, however, he succumbed to the temptation of running for President as candidate of the “US Taxpayers Party” (later re-branded as the “Constitution Party.”), and then ran again in ’96 and 2000. Each of these pompous and preachy campaigns drew less than 0.2% and made him an irrelevant (though incurably self-righteous) annoyance to the conservative movement.

Time and again, prominent leaders wasted their time and shattered their reputations with their third party misadventures. Henry A. Wallace, the supremely charismatic and widely admired Vice President of the United States (1941-45), ran as the standard bearer of the leftist “Progressive Party” in 1948, and won a surprisingly paltry 2.4% -- not nearly enough to damage the re-election drive of his arch-rival, Harry Truman. Former President Martin Van Buren drew a humiliating 10% as a “Free Soil” candidate in 1848 (eight years after leaving the White House), and in 1856 another former president, Millard Fillmore, drew 22% as the anointed champion of the anti-immigrant “Know Nothing” or “American Party”; as a result of their fringe-party escapades, both one-time chief executives ended their careers in embarrassment.

Even Theodore Roosevelt, a wildly popular ex-president and war hero, damaged his national standing when he launched his ill-fated “Bull Moose” campaign in 1912. Yes, TR managed the best showing for any third party candidate in American history—with 27% of the popular vote and 88 electoral votes. But he still finished 15% behind the victorious Woodrow Wilson (a man he thoroughly despised), while falling a full 177 votes short of earning an electoral college majority. After his long, bitterly frustrating campaign to return to the White House (capped by receiving a bullet in the chest from a would-be assassin during a campaign speech in Milwaukee), TR dropped his association with the “Bull Moose” Progressives and scuttled back toward the Republican Party. Fuming with impatience during eight years of Wilsonian rule, he dreamed of making a last run for the White House – as a Republican—and might well have won his party’s nomination in 1920 except for his untimely death at age 60 in January, 1919.

While not even a larger than life, Mt. Rushmore figure like Teddy Roosevelt could shake the third party curse when it came to a presidential race, some prominent independent candidates have defied the odds and won state-wide elections from time to time. Professional wrestler Jesse Ventura came to power as Minnesota’s governor in 1998, winning a three-way race as the “Reform Party” (and later, “Independence Party” candidate), but his stalled, ineffectual governance (with no party colleagues in the legislature to support him) made him a one-term wonder. On a similar note, James Buckley (brother of the great conservative intellectual William Buckley) won a stunning electoral upset in 1970 as the Conservative Party candidate for US Senate against a liberal Democrat and a liberal Republican. Buckley, however, also lasted only one term: he lost his re-election bid (even though he ran this time as candidate of both the Conservative Party AND the GOP) in a crushing landslide to moderate Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Other minor party “success stories” in races for Governor, Senator, House of Representatives, or mayor, proved similarly short-lived – even among the surging Populists of the 1890’s. In 1896, they reached a high water mark with 21 seats in the House of Representatives (compared to 204 Republicans and 113 Democrats), but just two years later their representation plummeted to four. By 1902, just six years removed from their glory days, the Populists elected not a single member of Congress—and never again made serious races for federal office.

2. NO, THE REPUBLICANS NEVER CONSTITUED A THIRD PARTY

Whenever I take the time on the radio to discuss the obvious and inevitable futility of minor party campaigns, some smug caller will try to play “gotcha” by reminding me that my own beloved GOP began its political life as a minor party, and managed to elect an underdog nominee named Lincoln in the fateful election pf 1860. It makes for a good story, and I know it allows misled minions to feel better to believe that it’s true, but the Republicans never operated as a third party. By the time of the first Republican County Convention (in Ripon, Wisconsin, on March 20, 1854) the Whig Party had already collapsed and shattered, hopelessly divided between its Northern anti-slavery branch and the Southern “Cotton Whigs.” Refugees (including numerous Congresmen, Senators and others) from the Whig debacle determined to fill the vacuum and, joined by a few anti-slavery Democrats and former Free Soilers, they launched their new national organization.

The first time candidates ever appeared on ballots with the designation of the new Republican Party came with the Congressional elections of 1854 and the fresh organization won stunning success from the very beginning. That very first year the Republicans won the largest share of the House of Representatives (108 seats, compared to 83 for the Democrats, along with fifteen Senate seats (including the majority of those contested in that election). In other words, the Republicans began their existence not as a third party, or even a second party, but as the instantly dominant party on the ballot. The future “Grand Old Party” showed itself a Grand Young Party not only with its Congressional candidates, but with its first-ever Presidential nominee – John C. Fremont – in 1856. Rather than making the traditional, pointless and masturbatory third party gesture and winning 2% or 10%, Fremont made a real race of it against the Democrat James Buchanan: losing the popular vote 45% to 33%, and the electoral vote, 174 to 118. The real third party candidate was former President Fillmore, whose anti-immigrant Know Nothing campaign drew a few remnants of the Whigs and took just enough votes away from Fremont in New Jersey and Pennsylvania to give Buchanan narrow victories and the electoral majority. By the time they nominated Lincoln four years later, Republicans commanded clear majorities in nearly all the northern states and fully expected to sweep more than enough of those states (especially in light of Democratic divisions) to put him in the White House.

. In the pre-Civil War election of 1860, the Republicans hardly represented an upstart third party effort: they won a clear majority of 59% of the electoral vote and a comfortable plurality (40%) of the popular vote. The real “third party” in this election involved the Southern Democrats who abandoned their national nominee, Stephen A. Douglas, and campaigned for Vice President (and future Confederate general) John C. Breckinridge, winning 18% of the popular vote and 72 electoral votes. Meanwhile, former Cotton Whigs and pro-union Democrats from border states launched a fourth party campaign, winning 13% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes for their man.

In other words, the one election in which the traditional two-party system broke down, and the Untied States most resembled a European multi-party system (with four different parties drawing substantial support and electoral votes) happened to be the one election that provoked the bloodiest war in US history.

In short, the election of 1860 hardly offers proof of the positive value of third (and fourth) parties, but rather illustrates their dangers. The four-way competition in the Presidential race contributed to the splitting of the union and the explosion of the national party consensus that had previously kept a divided assemblage of very different states from flying apart.

3. IT’S EASIER TO BUILD A MAJORITY WITHIN A SINGLE PARTY THAN TO WIN OVER THE WHOLE COUNTRY

The essence of political success – whether based in the real world of the electoral mainstream or even in the fantasy land of third party purists – involves persuading enough people to vote for you or your point of view so that you’re actually able to win elections.

In this context, it makes no sense whatever to believe that it’s somehow easier to reach and convince the large number of voters in a general election than to convince the relatively small number of voters in party primaries.

In general elections, any new party faces huge challenges getting on the ballot, raising money, earning press attention and competing with the established parties in terms of substance or credibility.

Primary elections, on the other hand, provide far more openings for challenging and orthodox candidates and ideas. In part, it’s a simple matter of arithmetic. Typically, primaries draw only about one fourth the voters as general elections. The self-identified partisans typically represent only about one-third of registered voters (with another third in the other party, and another third unaffiliated or independent). Meanwhile, general elections always draw much higher turnouts than primaries – so the same number of committed supporters who could bring victory in a primary will fall far short of a majority (or even a plurality) in the general election.

This simple but obvious logic obliterates the most frequent justification for third parties: the claim that we’re “shut out” of one (or both) of the established parties so we have no choice but to run an insurgent, independent campaign. But the question is if you don’t have enough support to win a party primary, how will you ever draw enough backing to beat the far more formidable competition (among a far larger group of voters) in the general election?

If you can’t mount a persuasive campaign for the Republican or Democratic nomination, how can any rational politico expect to conduct a successful campaign among the voters at large?

These questions count as particularly pertinent concerning presidential campaigns. Because of the disproportionate importance of small state contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, a candidate can conceivably assure himself the nomination with a tiny number of votes: in a split field, a combined total of 100,000 backers can easily carry the day in either major party. In 1992, Ross Perot almost certainly could have won the Democratic (or perhaps even the Republican) contest in independent-minded New Hampshire, and gone on to become the nominee of a major party and (heaven help us) President of the United States.

If you mean to mobilize an army of committed activists to advance your political prospects, it’s inarguably more plausible to do so in specific primary states than in general election contests in fifty separate states all across the continent.

Consider the baleful example of Pat Buchanan, who enjoyed some primary success as a protest candidate against President George H.W. Bush in 1992, and then actually won the GOP New Hampshire primary (in a tight three way race with Bob Dole and Lamar Alexander) in 1996. As a Republican, Pitchfork Pat managed to mobilize “The Buchanan Brigades” and to draw literally hundreds of thousands of supporters (if not a majority). When he left the party in 2000, however, his appeal quickly disintegrated, and the hard-core of enthusiasts that had made him competitive in Republican primaries counted for nothing in the general election (and yes, 0.4% -- despite taking $12 million of federal campaign funds – counts as just about nothing).

4. RECENT CHANGES IN THE NOMINATION PROCESS HAVE MADE THIRD PARTY CHALLENGES LESS NECESSARY, NOT MORE SO

The classic justification for any candidate to walk out of his party and to launch an independent bid involves the charge that arrogant bosses have blocked his path to the nomination and thwarted the will of the people.

That claim clearly animated Theodore Roosevelt’s powerful Third Party challenge in 1912. The former president had become disillusioned with the conservative policies of his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, and battled him in all available primaries. TR won handily almost everywhere, with majorities in Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, California, Maryland and Pennsylvania. He even won a landslide victory in Taft’s home state of Ohio. Nevertheless, Taft loyalists controlled the credentials committee at the GOP convention in Chicago and seated just enough of their supporters to re-nominate the President. Furious at the transparent defiance of the clear popular preference for TR, the former president walked out of his party and summoned his own “Bull Moose” convention to seal his third party nomination some six weeks later, instantly assuring easy victory for Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

Fifty-six years later another Chicago convention raised similar issues for Democrats at the height of the Vietnam era. Anti-war candidates Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy had won every primary between them; Vice President Hubert Humphrey, the loyalist choice of embattled president Lyndon Johnson, never bothered to contest a single one of the primary states. Nevertheless, after Kennedy’s assassination, Humphrey won the nomination (while bloody riots convulsed the streets of Chicago) because of his solid support from the party establishment.

After this nightmarish experience in 1968, the Democrats chartered “the McGovern Commission” to open up and reform the nomination process, and the Republicans soon followed suit. Never again could a candidate become his party’s standard bearer without competing in primaries; never again could a group of bosses in a “smoke filled room” (or even today in a politically correct fern-filled room) choose a nominee who hadn’t battled his way through dozens of well-publicized electoral battles in various corners of the country. The new openness of the primary process provided a number of bizarre surprises: like the 1976 nomination (and ultimate election) of an obscure, one-term Governor of Georgia named Jimmy Carter.

The new importance of primaries also facilitated the abrupt ideological shifts that third party advocates invariably demand. In 1964, for instance, the process had loosened up enough to allow conservative grass-roots activists in the GOP the throw out the “Eastern Republican Establishment” and nominate outspoken conservative Barry Goldwater. To signal the depth of the change he heralded, Goldwater’s acceptance speech explicitly rejected the party’s traditional centrism, with its ringing declaration: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Eight years later, the Democrats experienced a similar transformation, when the anti-war left took over the party with the nomination of George (“Come Home, America!”) McGovern and trumpeted its thoroughgoing contempt for the moderate establishment. Continued...