The hunger for change is evident on both sides of the political spectrum -- from the meteoric rise to power of an outsider candidate like Barack Obama to the lightning in a bottle creation of the Tea Party -- both the result of grassroots, anti-establishment movements. The American people clearly want alternatives.
On practically every level, potential nominees in each party are running away from the establishment label and desperately trying to show their independence from the establishment wings of the two parties that are held in such low esteem.
And the Internet and social media are making the shakeup of the two parties much more likely, with young people less and less aligned with large, established institutions -- and more empowered than ever to connect with each other and cut through the spin perpetrated by politicians and special interests.
In my closing statement, I summed things up by comparing the two-party system to a stale marriage. Democrats and Republicans need something to spice it up. They need to go on Craigslist and find a third party. (And if that third party isn't wearing a shirt, they really should do a background check, because he might turn out to be a member of Congress... and you don't want to go there.)
Interestingly, right from the start, the other side basically conceded the issue, admitting that the two-party system isn't working, but arguing that, to paraphrase Churchill, the two-party system is the worst political system, except for all the others that have been tried. What, they wondered, would work better?
The rules of the debate held that the winning team would be the one that changed the most minds over the course of the evening. Before the debate, 46 percent of the audience said they were for the motion (i.e. agreed that the two-party system was making us ungovernable), 24 percent were against and 30 percent were undecided. After the debate, 50 percent voted "for", 40 voted "against" and 10, despite two hours of heated argument, remained unsure where they stood. So even though the majority of the crowd agreed with David and me, P.J. and Zev were the winners. I instantly understood how Al Gore felt in 2000.
But P.J. and Zev were more than worthy victors, having kept everyone -- including David and me -- in stitches during the debate.
But, on substance, I'm still with Thomas Jefferson, who said: "I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."
Look around: It's clear our two-party system is not taking us to heaven. In fact, it's rapidly taking us in the other direction.
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