Dreams of 1968

In the May 13 issue of The New Republic, Sanford Levinson and Doris Kearns plead for the creation of a third party in 1968. An independent anti-war candidate for President, they argue, could "displace" enough of the regular Democratic vote to elect a moderate Republican like Charles Percy.

Whatever the merit of this objective, their plan for achieving it is internally ridiculous. If the Republicans do nominate Percy--and Levinson and Miss Kearns concede neither Nixon nor Romney would be a meaningful improvement on the incumbent--then who is to say a third party would benefit him? Is it not equally logical that the existence of such a party would split the anti-war vote in two and deprive the Republicans of their chance to beat LBJ? Certainly Levinson and Miss Kearns are not the only opponents of the war who would prefer to see a moderate Republican win in '68. The prospective supporters of a third party movement--mostly old line radicals and staunchly anti-war Democrats--are under no circumstances going to repeat their mistake of '64: they will not vote for Lyndon Johnson. And without a third party, they might well go Republican.

The irony of the Levinson-Kearns thesis is that it could work if the G.O.P.--as seems all too probable--nominates an out-and-out hawk. In that case, with President Johnson running feebly as the candidate of "restraint," a third party could make mincemeat of the Democratic vote and deliver up Richard Nixon.

Levinson and Miss Kearns, both graduate students in Government, acknowledge the electoral risks of forming a new party. They seem to have assimilated the fact that independent candidates for President--from Teddy Roos-evelt to Robert LaFollette to Henry Wallace--have accumulated a steadily diminishing percentage of the vote. The real function of a third party, they insist, is "to demonstrate the existence of a block of voters for whose support a major party must bid; to force major parties to alter stands on certain issues and to serve as bridges for movement of the discontented from one party to another, or back to the original party after stands are altered." This is their rather lengthy way of saying a third party doesn't stand a chance at the polls.

What they point out about the effects of third parties is for the most part unquestionable. But all previous efforts have been launched in the hope of electoral success, however that was defined. To run an independent candidate with any impact at all requires a degree of enthusiasm which the Levinson-Kearns argument fails to inspire. And when the votes come in, the enthusiasm collapses in spades.

Twenty years ago, when ex-Vice-President Henry Wallace ran for President, there was reason to believe a third party could do well. New York State had been able to sustain both a third and fourth party to the left of the Democrats. California had seen, in the '30's, a remarkable showing by Upton Sinclair in an insurgent bid for the Governorship. But in '48 Wallace got two per cent of the vote and was narrowly edged out by a Dixiecrat (a humiliation which could easily recur in '68).

Since the Wallace fiasco, the two major parties have increased their already amply tight grip on American Politics. Except on the Congressional level, recent third party efforts have been soundly crushed. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. in New York, Dick Gregory in Chicago, David Frost in New Jersey, and Thomas Boylston Adams in Massachusetts have gone nowhere.

To this unpromising record, the authors of the New Republic article answer that "the intrinsic drama and importance of a challenge on the presidential level could help boost local organizing. Contacts can be made and relationships formed which would encourage a much greater sense of unity than the fragmentation and frustration that now characterize the left." In truth it is precisely "the intrinsic drama and importance of a challenge on the presidential level" which can best foster "the fragmentation and frustration that now characterize the left." The Wallace campaign, though forged in the same spirit of ostensible unity that pervades the Levinson-Kearns article, contributed to the collapse of the left in the '40's as a potent political force. Maybe it contributed as well to the rise of McCarthyism.

It is true that a presidential race is intrinsically exciting. It can easily excite frustrated radicals who want to make amends for voting Democratic in '64. But it has little to do with the price of potatoes, and the demoralizing effect of failure at the polls more than compensates for a brief splurge of excitement. To run an anti-war candidate for President in 1968 would be an act of consummate self-indulgence; most importantly, it would be a misapplication of what small energy the anti-war movement now possesses.