An incumbent Democratic president, running for re-election during a bad economy, is up against a crowded field of Republican contenders. One candidate stands apart from the others with his leftward leaning stance on social issues and anti-war rhetoric. He distinguishes himself early on in the Republican debate in Iowa by mocking the Republicans' approach of lowering taxes, increasing defense spending and balancing the budget as impossible. Denied the nomination but gaining in visibility and momentum, the candidate runs as an Independent, appealing to the Democratic president's disillusioned former supporters, many of them college students.
Sound familiar? More under the orange gnocchi-doodle.
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The year was 1980; the candidate, John Anderson; and I was briefly among his idealistic supporters.
I don't remember which trusted friend in my political science cohort convinced me that Anderson was not only cool, but the only moral candidate who was not ideologically in the pocket of his party.
John Anderson had been an outspoken and controversial critic of Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War. Alone among Republicans, he backed Jimmy Carter's grain embargo against Afghanistan. His innovative signature campaign proposal during an agonizing energy crisis was easy to understand: A 50-50 plan enacting a 50-cent a gallon gas tax with a corresponding 50% reduction in social security taxes. He talked about shared sacrifices today for a better tomorrow. In New Hampshire he suggested that gun owners should be licensed to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of convicted felons and the mentally incompetent, a fairly straightforward proposition to me but one which got him booed off the stage and garnered him a reputation for political courage. To this pre-law student his Harvard Law degree was equally attractive.
When he decided to run as an Independent against Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, neither of whom were generating much enthusiasm, he initially polled at 22% in a three-way race without having even campaigned. Among his liberal supporters were Gore Vidal, Norman Lear, Ted Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Even The New Republic and the Doonesbury comic strip treated him favorably.
My brief support of Anderson's bid was based on ignorance, an inability to take our former California Governor Ronald Reagan seriously as a potential Presidential threat, and a sort of frisson of rebellion based in defying the two party system and voting my (sadly uninformed) conscience. That conscience was in for a rude awakening as the details of Anderson's past conservative views came to light. The deal-breaker was when I discovered Anderson had introduced a constitutional amendment to attempt to "recognize the law and authority of Jesus Christ" over the United States. His popularity plummeted over the fall and winter as he lacked campaign funds to compete with the two major parties. In the end, he won 7% of the vote, didn't carry a single precinct, and Ronald Reagan won in a landslide.
Anderson's campaign turned out to be "simply another option for frustrated voters who had already decided not to back Carter for another term. Polls found Anderson voters nearly as likely to list Reagan as their second choice as Carter."
It was my first and last fling with a third party candidate. My conscience since then has only hardened in its inexorable opposition to Republicans holding any elected office.
Have you ever had a fling with a third party candidate? How do you look back on it now?
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January 11, 2012
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