This is the first in a series of articles on politics and election issues, leading up to the 2000 U.S. national elections, featuring discussions by Cornell faculty members and staff with expertise on the political process.
If Pat Buchanan becomes the Reform Party's presidential nominee, watch out, says Theodore Lowi, Cornell professor of government, who has long been an outspoken advocate of a responsible three-party system of government.
"If Pat Buchanan succeeds in getting the Reform Party nomination, this could be the most significant event in this decade, if not since the beginning of the Reagan era, which is coming to an end," said Lowi. "If they nominate Pat Buchanan, that's big."
Lowi, the J.L. Senior Professor of American Institutions, says there's good reason to think so, and not just because Lowi helped found the Reform Party.
"It would mark the beginning of a new era. They don't have a chance in hell of winning the presidency, but they can significantly alter the calculus, because Buchanan would be converting the Reform Party into a Christian party."
That would raise the stakes for both Republicans and Democrats, because it could draw in the powerful Christian Coalition.
"If Buchanan became a spokesman through that kind of flanking movement -- around the Christian Coalition through the Reform Party -- it may leave the Christian Coalition no choice but to join in, and they may welcome it because they've been having trouble keeping their ranks together."
The Christian Coalition isn't quite ready to give up the Republican Party, said Lowi, and with Buchanan as the Reform Party nominee, they wouldn't have to.
"They can support him without having to move entirely out of the Republican Party," Lowi explained. "They can elect delegates to the Republican convention and they can influence the platform, even if they can't influence the [Republican] nominee. They are only bound as delegates through the first ballot to nominate the president. And they know the guy that's going to get nominated is a mainstream guy like George Bush."
However, while Christian Coalition delegates must vote the way the primary directs them to on the first ballot, once that nomination is over, they can vote strictly according to their own beliefs. That could directly influence the selection of a vice presidential running mate and the Republican platform, as well.
Lowi offered the example of the elder George Bush to illustrate the influence of the Christian delegation.
"The platform of George Bush Sr. was much more right wing than Bush himself, because there were so many Christian delegates in 1988 and in 1992," he said.
This puts third parties in an entirely different light, Lowi said. Only once in the history of American politics has a third party put a nominee in the White House. That was the Republican Party in 1860, and their man was Abraham Lincoln. But the Republican Party grew out of the crumbling Whigs, who eventually disappeared. Within a decade, American politics was back to the two-party system, looking much as it did in the 1830s.
Other than Lincoln's election in the 19th century, and some good runs by Theodore Roosevelt, George Wallace and Ross Perot in this century, third parties have not been a great electoral threat. But third parties exist for other purposes.
"They use the electoral process as an opportunity to advance policies neglected or ignored by the complacent and risk-adverse major parties," said Lowi, adding, "Third parties have usually been a social movement that seeks to use the electoral process as a platform to advertise ideology and policy. And from that standpoint, they work very well."
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