One of the great Rorschach tests of the current political moment is the question of whether this is a good time — or the worst time ever — for someone to break up the two-party duopoly by launching an independent or third-party bid for the presidency.
If you look at the numbers and the current political climate through the framing of “both parties are unpopular and both likely nominees are unpopular,” then the water has never looked more tempting.
Some 60% of folks in most polls this year have said they’d prefer another matchup than President Joe Biden vs. former President Donald Trump. There’s a clear plurality who express exhaustion at the current political climate.
But I wouldn’t mistake that initial enthusiasm for anything more than hitting a “like” button on social media. There’s never been an easier time to “elevator pitch” the idea of launching a third-party challenge. But the devil’s in the details about said “third” candidate, whether it’s on the issue of abortion, the fairness of the 2016 and 2020 elections, vaccines, the border, Ukraine, Israel and on and on. Once this third-party candidate fills in the blanks, those voters initially interested may have second thoughts, especially if there’s a specific issue that matters to them more than political party. Abortion is likely to be one of those issues.
That brings up the other framing of the third-party question via Rorschach test. If voters believe democracy and abortion rights are on the ballot in 2024 or that the country’s identity and what it means to be an American is the question facing the nation, the last thing they’d want to see is a third-party challenge. Someone could obviously believe all these things and still hope or wish for an alternative, but those voters who are most passionate about either using the election to send a signal about the country’s culture or using it to protect abortion rights and our current form of democracy most likely view the 2024 election as a zero-sum game. Perhaps they don’t love the two generals likely to lead their sides into this political battle but fear of the other side’s winning is just too great a risk to flirt with leaving the party.
The thinking here goes that every vote against your side (whether via third-party candidate or an indie candidate or a write-in) is a vote for the other side to win. This is certainly the argument that supporters of both Biden and Trump are starting to make.
Biden and the Democrats have been quite aggressive at trying to snuff out any third-party challenge, whether from No Labels and its proposed centrist ticket or from progressive activist (and former Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign co-chair) Cornel West — and Biden folks are ecstatic that West and the Green Party split up, making his ballot access harder.
And we saw the first signs of Republican nervousness on the third-party front after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. decided to drop his Democratic primary challenge to Biden and instead go independent. The Republican National Committee to many in the Trump information ecosystem went from promoting RFK Jr. to troll Democrats and Biden to suddenly attacking RFK Jr. as a liberal.
One thing about today’s politics — it’s not subtle. And the reason the Trump right has gone negative on RFK Jr. is simple: He’s gotten real traction among folks who also have favorable views of Trump. Most professional operatives see a third-party candidate as nothing more than a spoiler, someone who in a close race simply takes away potential decisive voters from their side.
But one of the great mistakes many political analysts make is forgetting how statistically insignificant historical precedents for presidential races really are. We still have fewer than 60 presidential elections to comb through, so it would be foolhardy to claim some sort of statistical proof that the way it worked then is the way it will work now.
And that brings me to the only path I can foresee for a potential successful third-party candidacy in 2024.
That path involves someone who successfully corners the “enough is enough” crowd. I often joke that I’m in search of someone in our current political class who can channel both Samuel L. Jackson in “Snakes on a Plane” and George Washington. To paraphrase, they’re tired of these (expletive) partisans screwing up this (expletive) country, a 21st century echo of Washington’s farewell address warning that political factions were a potential threat to the government.
This person may not exist, or the person who might fit this bill best just may not have the stomach to put themselves out there in this political environment. But at some point, the public is going to snap and demand this, right? Right?
This is why I remain convinced that there is a real path here, even if it’s narrow and unlikely — simply because the desire to turn the page on our current political climate has never been stronger.
And that brings me to one potential candidate facing an active effort to at least consider a third party-bid: retired Navy Adm. William McRaven.
A quick refresher on McRaven: The four-star admiral is most famous for organizing and overseeing the special operation that killed Osama bin Laden as head of Joint Special Operations Command in 2011. It’s an exclamation point on a stellar military career in which he made his mark and earned such trust that he was promoted enthusiastically during both the Bush and Obama administrations.
After he left the military in 2014, he spent four years as chancellor of the University of Texas system before he retired in 2018. And after he left, he has not been shy about speaking out, as he did multiple times during the Trump years when he felt Trump had gone too far attacking people in the national security space.
“As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation,” McRaven wrote in a 2020 Washington Post op-ed reacting to Trump’s dismissing an official for informing congressional intelligence committees about potential foreign interference. “When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.”
Incidentally, every time someone has tried to portray McRaven as more of a supporter of one party or the other, he has been resolute about correcting the record.
The point of this McRaven refresher is to demonstrate that he has plenty of bona fides to claim he’s an American first and foremost and not a partisan politician. But it’s also important that he doesn’t come across as someone who dislikes or disrespects folks from either party.
Of course, having a bipartisan or patriotic public service background is one thing, but the key to success of any candidate trying to bust through the two-party duopoly is charisma. (Money helps, too.) It’s what took Ross Perot from a 5% curiosity to the brief front-runner in 1992. Back then, he did something candidates hadn’t done much before then, going on prime-time TV almost weekly with Larry King and essentially convincing the public to begin a draft movement.
McRaven has had his own viral breakthrough. Watch this video of his 2014 University of Texas commencement speech and you’ll become one of more than 50 million who have seen it or other clips of it on YouTube.
The crux of the speech is his 10 lessons for living a meaningful life that he picked up as a Navy SEAL. It has been shorthanded by many as the “make your bed” speech, because that’s the first lesson: “If you accomplish the first task of the day well, then the rest of the day has a better chance of going well. Do the little things right,” McRaven said.
Much of the advice isn’t unique. Besides making your bed, the nine other lessons are: paddle as a team; don’t discount the small guys; you will never be perfect; life’s not fair and you will fail often. Don’t be afraid to fail; sometimes you have to take risks; don’t back down from sharks, but face and confront your fears head-on; it is in your darkest moments that you will need to be your best; one person can change the world by giving hope. Lift up the down-trodden; and don’t ring the bell — in other words, never quit!
The speech is short and to the point, and it is delivered with an honest and humble tone. Given the events of the Trump era, the speech feels like a tonic, which is perhaps why so many have found it inspiring. This speech certainly resonates more with me today than it would have when it was delivered, pre-Trump.
I’m usually someone who rolls his eyes at people who are searching for their Hollywood heroic fictional presidents, many of whom were created in the mind of Aaron Sorkin.
And yet, the country could use what I’d describe as a secular pastor of patriotism, someone who can remind the country what makes the search for the American ideal worth pursuing.
I’m not naive — and politics isn’t an Aaron Sorkin script. The day-one idea of McRaven would sound good to a lot of folks exhausted with the current options, but he’d have to fill in the details quickly and be ready with a governing agenda. Coming from the military and not politics, he’d have the advantage of being a blank slate on policy. Given what his résumé and launch would signal, he could frame his candidacy as the campaign that won’t duck the tough stuff, like immigration and the border, energy transition and climate and more. He could position himself as someone who doesn’t have the answers yet — but is determined to make it so. He’d need to make the case that he’ll get it done.
He could do all of that and still get ripped apart by our partisan information ecosystem, sort of like what has happened to Sens. Joe Manchin (mostly by the left) and Mitt Romney (mostly by the right).
And it’s that prospect that ultimately makes me a skeptic that McRaven could pull this off — despite all the ways one could argue that this is the perfect moment for someone like him.
The current political information ecosystem is very rough on anyone who isn’t a partisan. The reason we haven’t had a successful centrist party is that, by nature, people who call themselves political moderates or centrists aren’t dogmatic and usually are willing to compromise with one side or the other.
It’s hard to create a movement to clean up process. It’s a lot easier to build a movement on an issue. Perot got traction not because he was a centrist unhappy with the two parties but because he was focusing on an issue that made people in both parties unhappy: the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs.
In 1992, a more dispassionate media environment gave Perot the “gee whiz” coverage that gave him an early burst of attention. Today’s media environment is much more binary, and a McRaven candidacy would quickly get treated with derision, left and right. Ultimately, his success or failure as a candidate would hinge on his ability to make “dumping the dysfunction” the organizing principle.
Successful third-party or independent candidacies in history have usually happened when one of the two major-party nominees has collapsed. The handful of independent governors or senators have always benefited from one of the two parties’ either nominating a very weak candidate or not nominating anyone at all. Perot first got traction because Bill Clinton seemed like a weak nominee as he limped to the convention, ducking ugly headlines about his personal life. Once Clinton got on track, Perot’s numbers dropped in half — and fell further as both party nominees got stronger.
McRaven’s actual chances most likely hinge on whether Trump or Biden politically collapses for some reason. That’s what makes this path to the presidency so narrow. But if McRaven or someone like him believes the country needs this message, then a chance to win shouldn’t be the measuring stick used to decide whether to run.
Even a failed challenge can reform a system. The two political parties both changed because of the Perot challenge, with Democrats worrying more about the debt and Republicans worrying more about the limits of free trade, even though Perot lost.
McRaven has to decide whether it’s worth running and losing. Judging by the advice he gives others, it’s hard to imagine he doesn’t at least dip his toe in these political waters. I’ll just quote McRaven to McRaven about the idea of running: “You will fail. You will likely fail often. It will be painful. It will be discouraging. At times it will test you to your very core, but if you want to change the world, don’t be afraid of the circus. … If you want to change the world, don’t back down from the sharks.”
Let’s see what the admiral decides to do.
CAMPAIGN NOTES: The politics of Israel
Much of the world and Washington is rightly focused on all things Israel right now, which means the partisan political world is focused on surfacing anything related to Israel that can be used as some sort of political sledgehammer. But the prospect of a lot of campaign political fallout is unsure.
Individual members of Congress could see the issue show up in primaries, especially if someone said something that comes across offensive to the vast majority of that party, but I’m less convinced the issue will move many voters in a general election. The initial polling shows a general consensus behind standing by Israel. While there is more support for the Palestinian cause on the left than there is on the right, Biden’s position on Israel is so steadfast that he’s easily inoculated from its somehow affecting him at the top of the ticket.
And given Trump’s bizarre praise of Hezbollah and his petty issue with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s unclear how the GOP could exploit the issue for political gain.
The politics of Jim Jordan
“Moderates always cave.” It’s the ultimate shorthand point of much of my column about McRaven and his chances of launching a successful independent bid: Dissatisfied moderates usually find themselves settling because the constitution of a moderate or a pragmatist is to find whatever agreeable ground one can find.
And it’s exactly the scenario Rep. Jim Jordan is counting on to persuade the remaining holdouts to support his House speaker bid. Politically, it may be a bridge too far for House GOP moderates in Biden districts to rationalize supporting Jordan. He has been on the more extreme side of most of the congressional dysfunction that the public has found unpopular over the last decade. What the GOP did to moderate supporters of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi in swing districts over the last decade is exactly what Democrats believe they’ll be able to do to any swing-district supporters of Jordan.
As of this writing, Jordan has come up short. He hopes singling out these moderates publicly will get the partisan warriors in the GOP ecosystem to threaten and harass them into submission. It’s a tactic Trump has perfected, and it’s unwise to discount the ability of partisan media to spook elected partisans. But the reason I’m expecting Jordan to remain short is that supporting him for speaker is something that could haunt a politician for years to come. For any House Republican thinking about running statewide in any state that’s competitive, this Jordan brand could be not a stain but a tattoo — impossible to wash away.
