Solomon
Two
years from now, the national committee of the Green Party will make a big
decision: Should the party run a candidate for president in 2004?
To
hear many Green leaders tell it, the choice is a no-brainer. In a recent news
release, Mike Feinstein, a party member who’s the mayor of Santa Monica, Calif.,
made it sound like a done deal. Green Party candidates "will challenge Democrats
and Republicans at every level of government," he said.
A key
strategist for the Green Party — newly restructured as a nationwide
organization — seems to be on a similar wavelength. "I think there’s a general
presumption that we will run a presidential candidate in 2004, if we find the
proper candidate," Dean Myerson told me. "I have not heard any opposition within
the Green Party to running a candidate for president in principle."
But
when I spoke with another organizer in the party, the signals were a bit
different. "It is not a foregone conclusion that we will run a candidate for
president in 2004," said John Strawn, who is slated to play a major role on the
party’s presidential exploratory committee. "We will have a very deliberate
process to make that decision."
The
publicity bonanza in store for another Green presidential race may be a
compelling attraction for party activists — despite the fact that much of the
news coverage and commentary about Ralph Nader’s campaign last year was
decidedly negative. Most hostile of all were liberal pundits eager to see George
W. Bush defeated by Al Gore.
In
one of the more gentle attacks on Nader to appear in the New York Times, the
newspaper editorialized midway through 2000 that "he is engaging in a
self-indulgent exercise that will distract voters from the clear-cut choice
represented by the major party candidates." The year laid bare the arrogance of
commentators who seemed to be saying, one way or another, that wide-ranging
political debate would be a distraction from the serious business of choosing
between two thoroughly corporate candidates.
At
the same time, the Green campaign often gave the impression of aloofness from
the very real dilemmas faced by Americans eager to keep Bush out of the Oval
Office. Such grassroots concerns were legitimate — and when the Nader campaign
came off as dismissive, it lost credibility.
Overall, the strategic rationales for the Green Party’s 2000 presidential
campaign (which I supported) were hardly airtight. Sometimes, we heard claims
that a strong showing for the ticket of Nader and Winona LaDuke would push the
national Democratic Party in a more progressive direction. Nine months after
Election Day, that theory is on shaky ground. The Nader campaign had a historic
effect on the presidential election — but since then, the Democratic Party’s
hierarchy has retrenched. If anything, it seems more deeply entangled with
corporate fat cats than ever.
Looking ahead, media attention to a Green Party presidential drive in 2004 would
be substantial. That high-profile scenario alone may make fielding a national
ticket seem irresistible. But one of the worst mistakes that the Green Party
could make in the next few years would be to glide, as if on automatic pilot,
into another campaign for the presidency.
If
the Green Party enters the next presidential race, it will largely appear to a
lot of prospective constituencies to be a political party locked into a
counterproductive tactic. Those constituencies will weigh the benefits of such a
campaign against the obvious danger that it could help return Bush to the White
House. If the Green Party seems contemptuous of such concerns, many progressives
are likely to perceive it as a party too impractical to merit support.
That
would be a shame. The Green Party has gained strength from a grassroots approach
while fighting against the consequences of anti-democratic corporate power, in
great contrast to the two major parties. "The official Democratic Party has
ossified into a Washington-based financial service," loyal Democrat Robert Reich
noted in the American Prospect magazine last month. "It’s become ever more
efficient in seeking out likely donors but has forgotten how to inspire local
crusaders. As a result, there’s a large and growing political vacuum at the
local and state levels."
Reich
added: "That vacuum is being filled by Green Party activists, labor organizers,
students campaigning against sweatshops and for a living wage, Latino community
organizers, and church-affiliated community activists, none of whom are
especially interested in a resurgent Democratic Party."
Ironically, a Green Party presidential race in 2004 could alienate much of the
party’s possible base. For many potential supporters of Green candidates in
local races across the country, such a national campaign would evoke images of a
nascent party so lacking in pragmatism that it remains willing to help the right
wing win the White House.
The
way things stand, most observers assume that the Green Party will be waging a
campaign for the presidency in 2004. The main disagreements, they say, will
revolve around who should be on the ticket. But the party might be better off,
in the long run, if it can resist the media glitz and short-term sizzle of
another presidential run.
Norman Solomon writes a weekly syndicated column on media and politics. His
books include "False Hope: The Politics of Illusion in the Clinton Era,"
published in 1994.