A Third Way In '08?

Dick Meyer: Unity08 Party May Be Just The Ticket

(CBS)  What bugs the Unity08 gang is how the polarization and small-mindedness of the political elites has consistently made solvable problems go unsolved. This is the same thing that motivated H. Ross Perot, Lead or Leave and the Concord Coalition, to name a few random examples over the years.

What the petty party duopoly has become skilled at is avoiding big issues and blowing hard on hot air issues. "Isn't it ironic that the week after we launch, the Gay Marriage Amendment to be followed by the Flag Burning Amendment takes up the time of the Senate," Rafshoon wrote to me. "Kind of makes our case."

Unity08 is primarily an effort to fix this problem, to help the government perform better. It is not, I think, a trendy attempt to revolutionize politics. It is not American Elections 3.0. It is not the kind of stuff the 2004 version of Howard Dean and hardcore Internet democracy advocates talk about.

Unity08 is not primarily an Internet story, though the media tends to paint it that way. The Internet is a tool for this project — and an entirely logical one. It is the most efficient and effective way to organize mass group communication. It is an absolutely viable way for people to be active and heard without joining political teams they don't believe in. Voting on the Internet can be safe and makes all the sense in the world; smart people have been pushing it for years. My strong sense is that if these guys get better ideas about how to proceed, they'll use them. And that is a very Webby thing to do.

Unity08 does not have an issues platform, which bugs some people. Not me. How could it? Is there any American who believes the parties' platforms have been important documents for government anytime in the past 30 years? Presumably, the candidates who compete for the Unity08 nomination will express their views, positions and basic worldviews and that's what people will vote for or against.

Will good candidates emerge? Will characters like Michael Bloomberg, Sam Nunn, Colin Powell, Bill Bradley or Warren Buffett be interested? Who knows? Could the movement get hijacked by a rabid right Nativist tsunami or a fringe left PC posse, thereby defeating the whole mission? Sure. If one party nominates a centrist, semi-maverick like Mark Warner or John McCain, is Unity08 a waste? Perhaps.

It's easy as pie to bite holes in this adventure. But I'm not going to do that. Of course, Unity08 isn't a completely flawless and realistic tactical masterpiece like my Independent Party's strategy of nominating Michael Bloomberg that would fund a huge movement, field a full slate of Senate candidates and then announce a full Cabinet in early 2008. But this group is onto a good thing.

Andrew Ferguson, a smart conservative, wrote that Unity08's attempt to break the two-party grip is just the latest "recurring fantasy of U.S. politics." Fine, there are worse things than fantasies. Besides, as the mid-20th century American philosophers E.Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen once said, "The dreams that you dare to dream really do come true." So there.

That number again, 1-877-UNITY08.

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Dick Meyer is the Editorial Director of CBSNews.com.

E-mail questions, comments, complaints, arguments and ideas to
Against the Grain. We will publish some of the interesting (and civil) ones, sometimes in edited form.

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