Beatty vs. Buchanan?
For David Plotz's "Assessment" of Warren Beatty, click here.
Third parties, as the saying goes, are like bees: They sting and then they
die. Independent presidential candidates succeed in America not by winning
elections but by influencing the two major parties to adopt their positions.
Thus Teddy Roosevelt, who lost the election of 1912 as a Progressive, was
nonetheless effective in the sense that both the Democrats and the Republicans
borrowed his policies. Another example of this phenomenon is George Wallace's
1968 presidential bid, which encouraged the GOP to woo disenchanted Democrats
in the South.
Ross Perot conforms to this pattern as well. His big issue in 1992 was the
budget deficit. By raising the topic relentlessly, he encouraged Bill Clinton
and George Bush to address it during the campaign. The fact that Perot received
19 percent of the vote was an inducement to Clinton to stick with deficit
reduction once in office. For this reason, Perot deserves a share of the credit
for the healthy condition of the economy today.
But Perot chose not to declare victory and go home. In 1996, he ran again,
this time putting his opposition to free-trade agreements front and center. As
a result of his strong performance in '92, he was eligible to receive $29
million in public financing. Perot did far less well the second time around,
getting only 8.5 percent of the vote. But that percentage still entitles the
Reform Party nominee to a federal subsidy of $12.6 million in the 2000
election.
"It's a huge pot of honey that's going to attract a lot of flies," says Russ
Verney, the outgoing national chairman and a close Perot ally. Among those
buzzing around recently have been political oddballs who seem to hail from
altogether different planets: Pat Buchanan, Ralph Nader, Donald Trump, Lowell
Weicker, and Warren Beatty.
If none of them has yet taken the plunge, it may be because there's a small
catch to the cash, namely the Reform Party itself, which has come to resemble
the British Monster Raving Loony Party without the self-conscious
theatricality. Reports from the Reform Party's recent convention in Dearborn,
Mich., conveyed a fragrant whiff of Bedlam. The party's delegates included
followers of the Marxist Lenora Fulani, members of the right-wing Patriot
Party, no-tax libertarians, and other miscellaneous extremists and wackos.
According to the Washington Post , the party's chairman-elect, Jack
Gargan, is stockpiling weapons at his home in a remote part of the Florida Keys
in anticipation of the global depression he thinks will result from a Y2K
catastrophe. In short, the Reform Party is both run and overrun by people who
make Ross Perot look sane and rational.
As Verney says, it's unlikely that the $12 million will be left on the
table. But in this unstable environment, no one can predict whether that stake
will be used to whack the Democrats from the left or the Republicans from the
right--or to squeeze a Weicker-type centrist into the narrow space between an
Al Gore and a George W. Bush. For potential candidates, the only vague
requirements are a commitment to political reforms like term limits, a belief
in fiscal discipline, and skepticism about free trade. Even these points may be
negotiable.
At last month's convention in Dearborn, Perot lost control of the party and
thus the implied power to be or choose its nominee. Gargan, who encouraged
Perot to enter the presidential race back in 1992 and subsequently fell out
with him, defeated Perot's candidate, Pat Benjamin, to replace Verney as party
chairperson.
Gargan won with the endorsement of Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, the Reform
Party's only elected official and Perot's rival as unofficial leader. Ventura's
interest is in keeping a seat warm until he's ready to run for president
himself. To stand as an independent in 2004, he needs to make sure the Reform
Party gets at least 5 percent of the vote in 2000, which would entitle it to a
public subsidy once again.
Press reports have portrayed Gargan as the Body's man. But Micah Sifry, who
is writing a book on third parties, tells me that Gargan isn't simply a Ventura
shill. This means that while Perot probably won't be able to rig the results of
the nominating process as he did against former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm last
time around, Ventura isn't automatically the kingmaker either. What's likely is
a bitter battle between Perot and Ventura, conducted through proxies, their
respective stand-ins for the Reform Party presidential nominee.
Perot's favorite candidate at the moment appears to be Buchanan, who has
made noises about bolting the GOP and joining the Reform Party. Buchanan was
the hit of the United We Stand Convention in 1995 and enjoys good relations
with Perot. Buchanan also traveled to Minnesota in June to kiss Ventura's ring.
The two said nice things about each other after their session, but Buchanan
didn't win Ventura's blessing. Ventura is a libertarian on social issues. He's
not only strongly pro-choice on abortion and sympathetic to drug legalization
but has come out in favor of gay marriage, which would seem to rule out
Buchanan as his candidate. He has since criticized Buchanan directly and
encouraged Weicker to run for the Reform Party's nomination.
Weicker has yet to declare his intentions. In the meantime, Ventura is
pursuing the Bulworth option. A source knowledgeable about the Reform
Party tells me that media consultant Bill Hillsman, who made Ventura's clever
TV spots in 1998, is meeting with Beatty this week on the West Coast. It's a
savvy choice of emissary: Hillsman, who made ads for Minnesota Democrat Paul
Wellstone before signing on with Ventura, is even closer to Beatty's
liberal-populist politics than Ventura is. Hillsman couldn't be reached for
comment. But I'd wager he's telling Beatty about how the disaffected voters who
turned out to elect Ventura might be mobilized in a national campaign.
If Perot successfully woos Buchanan and Ventura convinces Beatty to run,
next year's Reform Party nominating convention might be the most entertaining
sideshow of the 2000 campaign. How do you describe the ideology of people
trying to decide whether they want Pat Buchanan or Warren Beatty to be
president? I'd call them mad as hell--in more senses that one.
