by Jeff Bloomfield
was once described
in an article in this paper as a "man without a party." And, while
I still maintain a degree of party affiliation, I cannot totally dispute
this characterization -- particularly not when fund-raising abuses by the
two major parties are dominating the headlines.
Those recently publicized and all-too-human venalities are not the only -- or even the main -- reason for my standing apart, however. Nor, as almost all polls about party preference these days indicate, am I alone. Many people, including a number who are active in politics -- but who for "political reasons" would not articulate this publicly -- have become disillusioned with the abandonment of common sense and moderate thinking and the concomitant increase in dogma and intolerance in both parties over the last number of years.
My short-lived stint in active politics was spent with the Democratic Party, and I still identify with many of that party's declared principles. For example, I agree that there are certain areas in which the federal government must be involved. These include environmental protection, an assurance that all citizens have fundamental civil rights, and protection for those in our society who are the most economically vulnerable.
I generally applaud the party for its past efforts, so many of which -- long before the GOP's George Bush came up with the phrase -- aimed at producing a kinder, gentler nation. But many holdover ideas and policies are no longer valid, or have proven to be either ineffective or actually counterproductive. An example is the welfare system.
Despite its good intentions, over the years welfare succeeded mainly in trapping within governmental dependency the very people it was designed to help. But too many in the Democratic Party's liberal wing still refuse to admit that the system was a failure, and -- President Clinton's recent reasonableness on the issue notwithstanding -- they keep waging rear-guard attacks on real reform by accusing its proponents of being mean-spirited or, worse, racist.
Then why not simply change parties? Because I find many policies of the Republican Party, particularly those of the party's far right, to be as unreasonable as those of the Democratic left. An example is the GOP's effort to dismantle environmental protection, which in my view can only be entrusted to the federal government.
After all, is the habitat of an endangered species determined by state political boundaries? If left up to the zealots of the Republican right, all of this country's natural riches would be turned over, on the cheap, to the sacrosanct "private sector," without any concern for future generations.
The problem is that both parties are dominated by their extremist core constituencies. Each party has established a litmus test on issues such as abortion, the death penalty, school prayer, minority quotas, etc., etc., that must be passed by any candidate seeking to run under the party's banner. And being a "good Democrat" or a "good Republican" is established only by a candidate's having the correct views on each issue.
The problem with this is that most issues can't be so neatly pigeonholed. One can have divergent views and still remain logical and consistent. (Why can't I be both socially liberal and fiscally conservative, for example?). But the extreme elements of each party increasingly demand obedience to a hard and comprehensive line, with any deviance from it denounced as heresy and besmirched with red-herring labels -- "racist" or "mean-spirited" from the Democratic left, "un-American" or "anti-family" from the Republican right.
The rigid partisan dogmas of the left and right have simply buried tolerance and common sense. And when party leaders owe their personal political power to their respective core constituencies, and thus cannot challenge this dogma without being chastised or losing support, change is almost impossible.
What both parties have lost is the notion of the golden mean -- the idea that extremes should be avoided in favor of a middle way. Until compromise is once again considered a virtue instead of a sellout, more and more people will join the ranks of those of us without a party.
And, by the way, the price is right. There aren't nearly so many financial shakedowns over this way.
Jeff Bloomfield, who was a Democratic nominee for the state senate in 1988, practices personal-injury law in Memphis.