Novelty 2000 A Bust

In politics, a week is forever. And I'm not just talking about the recent surprises in the race for the Republican nomination.

We tend to look back on the big campaign years in terms of broad themes. Remember the Year of the Woman and the Year of the Angry White Male? But we categorize a race in progress - or not yet started - at our own peril.

Do you remember the Year of the Novelty Candidate? That was supposed to be this one, Campaign 2000, with Donald Trump (and his consideration of Oprah Winfrey as a running mate), Warren Beatty and Pat Buchanan redux. Maybe even Ross Perot again.

We all figured, "Hey if Jesse 'the Body' Ventura can get elected governor of Minnesota on the Reform ticket, who's to say that anyone with a big name can't run, especially in this era of smaller-than-life politicians?"

Update: Governor Ventura has bolted Reform; Trump's taken his hat out of the ring (and, presumably, Oprah's too); Beatty's been offstage for a while; and Buchanan and Perot must now be wondering, what if we threw a party and nobody came?

What happened?

The short answer is: A lot ... and not enough.

We've been electing American presidents for nearly 225 years now. But we as a nation are now more aware than ever of the process of campaigning. Instead of issues, we talk about campaign strategy, fund-raising, name recognition.

We understand that early in the game (and this year's game started earlier than most), it's this last that counts most. Look at New York's Senate race, where Hillary Clinton's outsize early poll numbers surely were due in some part to her big name. Look, even, to the Republican presidential race, where George W. Bush's "insurmountable" lead must have owed something to him sharing his ex-president father's name.

Having a big name gives you a head start in the fund-raising game. You need less cash to get your name out there if it's already out there.

When this electoral cycle started really humming, when we heard about Bush and Bradley and Gore building their war chests, things started seeming locked-in. Early. We heard the huge cash figures - especially where the Bush campaign was concerned - and thought to ourselves, "This is it. With all that dough, one of these guys will have it sewn up. Early."

What's more, we knew that river of money had to be flowing from somewhere. Special interests. Lobbyists and influence seekers of all stripe hedging their bets and getting their chits cashed in, we feared, at a later date. Huey Long, the "Kingfish" of Louisiana machine politics, once laid out the cold facts about campaign cash: Early money buys you influence. Money buys you access. And late money buys you good government.

This election season, especially in the early going, good government has seemed a remote possibility at best.

What to do? Well, we did what any rational, thinking electorate and press would do: threw up our hands, yelled for help and looked for a White Knight to come iding into the fray and to our collective rescue.

We knew we needed someone with a name, or a fortune, or both. Someone who didn't need the fat-cat donors' money.

Trump. Beatty. Perot. Powell. Buchanan, even. Names were floated. Sly hints were dropped. Events were planned and some speeches were given. Exploratory committees were formed.

We media types consulted polls, interviewed political operatives and the prospective White Knights themselves. The punditocracy interviewed each other. The upshot? Maybe ... just might ... if... With Mr. Ventura in the Minnesota governor's mansion, well, to quote Cole Porter, "Now, Heaven knows, anything goes."

What the wisest wise owls pointed out, though, was that there's more to becoming president than cash, name recognition or being well-liked. You need organization to get on the state ballots. Being an independent candidate means you need grass roots and you need them to run deep.

Sure, you could run for the Democratic or Republican nomination. But then you'd be up against seasoned pros who don't take kindly to newcomers cutting their line.

Or you could use the machinery, new and shaky though it is, of the party that would be America's perennial third party, that helped make the Ventura venture happen - Ross Perot's Reform Party.

And behind the scenes, while the pontificators pontificated and the flirters flirted, Reform (the party) was unraveling.

Politics, the old saw goes, makes strange bedfellows. Well, third-party politics makes stranger bedfellows. As Donald Trump pointed out while bowing out of any presidential bid, the Reform Party counts both Lenora Fulani and David Duke among its prominent members. You need a pretty big ballpark to contain players so far out in left and right fields.

As Reform's highest elected official, Governor Ventura should get to call the shots. He wanted Trump for president. Not so fast, said Perot loyalists. What about Buchanan? Or Perot himself?

Like the "Know-Nothing" party that formed after the Whigs collapsed on the doorstep of the Civil War, the Reform Party has always had a better sense of what it was against - politics as usual - than what it was for. And, like the Know-Nothings, Reform may not be long for this world.

While all this behind-the-scenes stuff played out, the good old Democrat-Republican contest got started in earnest. To everyone's surprise, it turned out to be a bona fide race. And it provided its own White Knight in the person of John McCain, with his crusade for campaign finance reform. Whether real or illusion, folks started feeling like they had choices again. Are you for Bush or McCain? Bradley or Gore? When the old reliables took their places at the starting gate, people forgot to ask about the horses still in the paddocks. The ones the other White Knights were supposed to come riding in on.

Like I said, a lot happened. A week is forever in politics.

Now, your reporter also wrote that not enough hapened.

What didn't happen was war. Or economic collapse. Or an overriding social issue that pushed all else aside.

"Politics as usual" may be too vague a thing to rally against - for now. In our history, third and new parties have only found a foothold when the issues are big, really big, and concrete. Slavery. The upheaval of the industrial revolution. The Great Depression. These are the sort of issues that turn third-party dark horses into contenders.

Right now, we see peace. We see prosperity. Not enough of both, many point out, but we know we've seen worse. The American electorate is not of a mood, right now, to be roused.

But as all this prosperity flows into the coffers of the big two established parties, they might do well to remember that, out of the ashes of the Know-Nothings rose the Republicans. And they seemed to catch on. Big time.

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