by Bobby Watson

Created on: November 10, 2008   Last Updated: November 12, 2008

The U.S. actually has many groups who call themselves third parties, but none of them are viable. I, for example, am a registered Independant. Do Independants have their own platform that clearly defines their belief system? No they don't. I am an Independant because I am not comfortable designating myself as either Republican or Democrat. Neither of them speak for me or my views enough to do that. I am my own person, with my own views. I have never voted for someone because they were a member of a certain party. I vote for the person I believe in and identify with. But is my status as an Independant, or third party make me part of a viable group or platform? I don't think so. I vote for both Democrats and Republicans or anyone else I can believe in. I refuse to make myself part of a group that typically just votes on their own party line.

Democrats and Republicans are this country's main parties, and I think it's probably for good reason. There are a huge number of Americans that have belief systems that would be considered as way to the left, or way to the right. Members of Congress and the U.S. Senate rarely produce legislation that are any kind of a compromise with one another. They very rarely meet in the middle for anything, and can rarely pass anything at all unless one of them happens to have a solid majority.

Making third parties even less viable is the fact that there are so many different one's. Most Americans just can't identify with people who have such fringe beliefs. It's just too easy for us to identify with one or the other two major parties. And most third party members only became that way because the two party system, for whatever reason, no longer represented them, and they were angry about it. I guess the current balance of power come is much too strong at this point to produce another political group that would be able to challenge them. And when things go wrong in this country, we have the tendency to blame one or the other, but almost never blame them at the same time.

The most influential and promising 3rd party candidate in recent history, or perhaps ever at all, was Ross Perot. His popularity continued to grow as the election grew nearer. He was unique because he was able to break down the country's problems in a way that most could understand. I don't remember any other time in history when pie graphs and charts were able to excite anyone. But Ross Perot ended up prematurely dropping out of the race because he was just not ready to play the dirty game of politics. Although he decided to later re-enter the election, his reputation with quite a few of his former supporters had been had been so diminished, he ended up with a lot less of the U.S. vote than he was capable of getting. His last run for presidency was over 12 years ago, and since then the most memorable accomplishment for any third party candidate since was Ralph Nader's ability to change the stakes for the year 2000 presidential election.

I guess anything is possible, but I just don't see an environment in this country that could ever produce a viable third party in the numbers that would be necessary to change the way this country has always been run...by Democrats and Republicans, and of course their voters.

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