Partisan Politics: Do We Need More Parties, or None?

Partisan Party Politics: Is it Really the Best Way to Determine Leadership?

(More recent revision reposted 8-16-2008)

So true, generally speaking, even though I think partisan politics has, in spite of that, produced some good leaders who were good thinkers. I also believe many politicians were obviously drawn to public service out of a sincere desire to improve our cities, states, nation and world, and in many respects many of them have made great improvements. However, many have not, and I am quite sure that is because our divisive partisan political system has enabled individuals and their partisan parties to gain power, be corrupted by it, and abuse it to the detriment of the people, the environment, and humanity as a whole.

Unfortunately, most people think there is no better way than partisan party politics to determine who shall have the power and authority of leadership. Each party chooses a competitor-candidate and hopes their "best person" will win the "throne," and even the losing party hopes they will win "next time." Consequently, the divisive, polarizing, winner-take-all contest for monarchial presidential power continues.

One of the things that most Americans don’t realize, however, is that it continues even though very few people actually determine who the winner is. After all, consider the following facts.

In America, only 60 percent of eligible voters in the U.S. voted in the 2000 presidential election, and far less than half of them voted for George W. Bush. In fact, Democratic candidate Al Gore won the popular vote by at least 400,000 votes in 2000, and he surely would have won more electoral vote (and even more of the popular votes) if all the ballots in Florida had been hand-counted as the law called for. But, Bush got five right-wing partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule the democratic Florida Supreme Court in order to halt the vote count and put him in the White House. And, even in 2004 when he won with a little less controversy about the election process, only 64 percent of eligible voters voted, which means that only about 32 percent of eligible voters re-elected Bush.

This is not the way to run a country. That has become painfully obvious to many people in the world, and it is even becoming more and more obvious to most people in America.

But, of course, most good, liberal progressives still think our problems can and will be solved by having a Democratic president and having enough Democratic members of Congress to really control it.

But is that really true?

Granted, having progressive democratic leadership would certainly be far better than having right-wing conservative Republicans like George W. Bush and John McCain in power, because Democrats are by far the "lesser of two evils." After all, most right-wing Republicans deceptively claim to serve all the people while they actually serve the interests of the wealthiest few and their huge corporations, while most Democrats are somewhat more fair and at least still try to serve the vast majority of people and advocate for those who need help.

Moreover, even though John McCain has a past record of being more willing than most Republicans to reach across the isle to establish bi-partisan support for some common goals, he has increasingly shown that he is no better than George W. Bush with respect to wanting to continue Reaganism, Reaganomics, corporate globalism, and global U.S. militarism, which have increasingly widened the already huge income gap between rich and poor, shrunk the middle class, increased the working poor population, exploited people, created a third cold war with Russia, and wreaked terrible conflict, division, havoc, violence, death and destruction.

There are some implied reasons to suspect that McCain is also like George W. Bush and his right-wing, bigoted "Christian" advisors like Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson, who call Islam a "gutter religion," and an "evil religion." They do not understand that true Muslims understand that the prophet Muhammad knew and respected the teachings of Jesus, and he stated that killing is always evil, and that indiscriminate killing is especially evil. Moreover, like Jesus, he advised against retaliation and against force or coercion in religious matters, and he commanded Muslims to "be very courteous to Jews and Christians because we all believe in the same God."

Unfortunately, it seems that McCain, like Bush, the Christian Right, Christian Zionists, and Jewish Zionists, believe that Islam must be wiped off the face of the earth. They do not realize that they are as bad as the misguided Muslim extremists who want Israel and the U.S. to be wiped off the face of the earth. They are all wrong. Dead wrong.

Having said that, I should clarify that even though I am very much against right-wing Reaganites, Bushites, and the so-called Neo-Conservative Movement in general, I do not have anything against political, social and fiscal conservatives who are reasonable, caring, and honest, and who are willing to sit down with liberal progressives and work together, find common ground, and come up with needed solutions for the common good. Reasonable and honest conservatives should have a place at the table, to provide their perspective.