Political Reform, Democracy and Third Parties

With the countdown to the French presidential election at D-6 and the US presidential campaign heating up more each day, there are two nationally known politicians - one French and the other American - who are strangely on the sidelines even though they were presidential candidates themselves and command media attention.
Francois Bayrou is the leader of the French centrist party - Movement for Democracy, called the MoDem in France. He was a long-time moderate conservative Gaullist who broke away before the 2007 election of Nicolas Sarkozy to form MoDem because he believes that the real power of government can be harnessed by forming a coalition of the center that governs by acting reasonably and compromising to get things done.
Bayrou has been courted by both the Socialists and the Gaullists in France, and he was a MoDem candidate in both the 2007 and 2012 French presidential elections and took 15% and 10% of the first round votes, respectively. He is unwilling to join either side and clings to the idea that his party can unite the French in the political middle.
Jon Huntsman is a moderate conservative Republican who did a commendable job as GOP governor of Utah. He is an expert in Asian affairs and was US Ambassador to Singapore and Indonesia before taking on the job of being US Ambassador to China under Democratic President Barak Obama. This move alienated many Republicans who saw it as a form or “treason” and when he resigned as Ambassador to become a GOP presidential candidate in the 2011, many party loyals voiced the opinion that he could not possibly gain the support of enough GOP voters to win the nomination. They were right, for many reasons, and Huntsman withdrew and threw his 2-3% support to Mitt Romney with a lukewarm enthusiasm that one journalist described as “the spontaneous pleasure of the star of a hostage tape.”
Huntsman is now suggesting that he may start a third party in the US. He first voiced the idea in April and was promptly dis-invited as the speaker at two GOP National Committee events. It prompted Huntsman to say, “My first thought was, this is what they do in China on party matters if you talk off script.”
Within hours, websites were reporting the quote with headlines like “Huntsman compares GOP to Communist Party of China.” Jon Huntsman has tried to explain his hastily made remark, but the GOP is not amused or listening.
And, as did Francois Bayrou before him, Jon Huntsman is now talking seriously about a third American political party. The message he delivers is that both Democrats and Republicans – the “duopoly,” as he calls it —are paralyzed by polarization and inertia, and that the Republican Party is pursuing an “unsustainable” course in pursuing the 100% attack against Obama that made them the majority party in the House of Representatives in the 2010 election. Huntsman summarizes the GOP tactic as being unsustainable because he believes it “can’t last more than a cycle or two. ... With the political center hollowed out, the American people are going to say, who’s going to populate the center where you’ll get things done?”
When both Huntsman and Bayrou talk, they raise similar issues - limiting national legislative terms or otherwise controlling their make-up, campaign reform and national legislative redistricting to more accurately reflect population groups.
The sad truth is that none of these goals is feasible. Term limits cannot be supported by incumbents who must make the initial decision to enact them. Campaign reform is always on the table but what gets past the legislature is often window dressing. And, in the US, California has legislative term limits but is a state whose government is bankrupt and almost out of control…so much for term limits. As for redistricting, in the US, it is done routinely after every national census with no result except for even more bizarre shapes to the districts because the party in power has the job of redistricting and, like term limits, is not likely to be taken on as a serious reform project by either party.
So, what do Huntsman and Bayrou really want? Bayrou, the professor whose knowledge of the legislative and government process is deep, and Huntsman, whose knowledge of the Asia-Pacific Rim is vast and overshadows any other politician’s grasp of the region.
Power? I doubt it because if they really were seeking power they would stay in their parties and climb to the top.
What both men probably want is for the system to work better. Don’t we all? And, if they were the standard bearers of the new era, that would be fine, too, I suppose they are thinking.
But, in the United States, third parties have never taken hold. They tend to rise around a personality or idea and when the person or idea is dead, they vanish into the night. So, Jon Huntsman can form a third party and he may get as much as 10 to 15% of American voters to join him, as Ron Paul has done. But, Ron Paul was smart enough to see that he needed the GOP as his platform, not his adversary and his “third party” is actually a wing of the GOP.
In France, the system is parliamentary, so there are many smaller parties which collect around personalities or ideas and survive…until one or the other dies. So, Francois Bayrou can remain a national political figure in France without ever becoming the head of a majority party. And, when he fades away, someone else will take on the political center, without any hope of being elected president of France.
What both Bayrou and Huntsman miss is the fact that political reform in stable democracies comes from within. There is no need to force change because when party members begin to lose elections, they will get the message and do what it takes to save themselves and their party.