We Need More Independent-Minded Voters

The national conversation about the possible need for a third-party presidential candidate is growing increasingly loud, and there's a strong rationale behind it. Twenty years ago this week, Ross Perot launched an issue-based third-party candidacy that tapped into a deep desire within the American public. He ran on four key issues other than NAFTA -- fiscal irresponsibility on the part of both Democrats and Republicans, political dysfunction in Washington, lack of trust in government, and declining confidence in the future. Today, we are worse off on all four counts.

Based on my extensive travels across the nation, most Americans know we face serious challenges. They want their elected officials and candidates for office to speak the truth without party spin and ideological rigidity. They also want people who offer sensible solutions, that make economic sense, are socially equitable, culturally acceptable and politically feasible.

Given the serious challenges facing our great nation, we need something much greater than a third-party or independent candidate for president. We need a nation of independent voters. More precisely, we need a nation of people who take the time to fully understand issues like taxes, social insurance programs, national defense, health care, immigration, education, energy, infrastructure, and the other key challenges that we face.

The truth is no political party has a monopoly on the best people or the best ideas. That is one of the primary reasons why I became a political independent 15 years ago. In my view, Americans should not vote for any candidate who fails to offer sensible solutions to important public policy issues, even if he or she belongs to the party they've always considered their "political home."

With regard to fiscal issues, Republicans correctly argue that we need to reform social insurance programs before their staggering costs bankrupt us. Democrats correctly recognize that we will need revenue in excess of historical averages to put our nation's finances in order. Furthermore, we must recognize the differences between our current challenges and the structural ones, both of which require attention and action. In my book, Comeback America, I examine social insurance, taxes, along with other major domestic policy and political issues, and offer common sense approaches to keep America great and restore fiscal sanity.

These solutions don't reflect a Republican agenda or a Democratic agenda. They reflect an American agenda. That is why Democrats like Robert Rubin, Republicans like Paul O'Neill, and independents like Ross Perot and Paul Volcker have encouraged people to read the book.

My efforts to educate the American public about fiscal responsibility during the past nine plus years have drawn a lot of comments. The overwhelming majority show that my work is tapping into a new type of American -- the nonpartisan American who seeks truth, leadership and solutions. Americans who value progress over partisanship and results over rhetoric.

For example, when I was changing planes late in the evening last week in San Francisco, a young man stopped me. He said, "Aren't you Dave Walker?" I said, "Yes." Then he said, "I'm running for Congress primarily because of you." I don't know his party and didn't ask, and he didn't think it important enough to tell me. I wished him luck, then he disappeared into the crowd.

Other comments I have received remind me of the journalists' credo: "If we're not drawing fire from both parties, we're not doing our job." Stated differently, if you aren't drawing heat you're not making a difference. For example, take some of the reactions to the Comeback America Initiative's Fiscal IQ quiz (a five-minute quiz to test your awareness of important fiscal issues at www.fiscalIQ.net). One quiz taker recently slammed us for advancing a liberal agenda. Moments later, another fired off a missive complaining that our answers were clearly informed by Republican talking points. In truth, the quiz's correct responses were developed based on a consensus of federal budget experts with different political affiliations, including members the Comeback America Initiative's Advisory Council, as well as the results of various bipartisan deficit reduction commissions, including the Bowles-Simpson Commission, and the Domenici/Rivlin Commission.

As a nonpartisan voter, I've supported and voted for both Democrats and Republicans. I don't make many political contributions but I have donated to candidates from both major parties in the past. I'm the founder and CEO of the Comeback America Initiative, whose independent Board and Advisory Council is comprised of highly respected individuals from varied backgrounds and political histories. They all, however, come together to help support speaking the facts, the truth, the tough choices that we face and the need for sensible, non-partisan solutions that can achieve bipartisan support.

As a former public servant, I have declined overtures to run for office from Republicans, Democrats and several other political parties in the past. In the past two months, for example, I have declined overtures from two minor parties to run for president.

I was honored and humbled that syndicated columnist Tom Friedman this week suggested I consider running for president, putting me forward as a third choice to voters. But our need is bigger than for me -- or any other third-party candidate. And his column taps into a need that goes far beyond my work on fiscal responsibility and government transformation. Every day, I talk with people around the nation who take their vote seriously enough to not align themselves with one particular party. They are the new independent-minded voter. And we need more of them.

Although Perot's candidacy faltered, the issues he raised resonated in a big way. There are striking comparisons between the state of the country in 1992 and today -- and a recognition that, once again, Americans and federal elected officials need to wake up to critical challenges facing our nation and start taking steps to address them. Let's hope they do so that we can keep America great and help ensure that our future is better than our past.

 

Comments

[tjohara2012]

03:00 PM on 04/03/2012

As an independent candidate for President, I concur.

Partisan rhetoric is polarizing our Nation, and the Parties have erected barriers to secure a political oligopoly. Their monetary influence over the media impedes equal exposure to independent thought, and the cost of ballot certification is exorbitant.

Is it so far-fetched that an independent candidate, free from a politically-biased platform, might advance superior solutions? Is it beyond reason that a candidate, who is not obligated to denigrate an opposing opinion, might be able to achieve consensus? Is it incomprehensible that an individual, who is not required to devote a significant portion of his time to attending Party fund-raisers, campaigning on behalf of other Party candidates, or running for his own reelection (almost all at taxpayer expense), might accomplish more as a full-time President than one who must accede to Party demands?

Envision an America in which the President is guided by what is in the best interests of the People rather than a particular political Party. Consider the progress we could make with a leader who is dedicated to fixing the problem rather than the blame.

The question is whether organized media will exercise the responsibility associated with Freedom of the Press, or if it will continue to pander to the Parties’ revenue streams. As Eldridge Cleaver once said, "You're either part of the solution or part of the problem."

In the interim, I’m easy to find. Help me help return America to the People.

[jerdan25]

04:56 PM on 02/28/2012

We need David Walker to run for President

[wiseapple]

09:24 PM on 02/21/2012

In 2000, we were looking at a 5 trillion dollar surplus over the following 10 years. That was the time to pay down the debt and cut back the money supply. But the Big Money Party torpedoed the stable future for ourselves and our children.
Any remedial course going forward begins with clawback of the extravagant and useless Bush tax cuts. They failed to create jobs, stimulate the economy in a beneficial way and impeded our ability to pay for the unwarranted wars that that president whimsically involved us in.
No realistic solutions will attack the safety net programs before correcting the tax code folly that underfunds our government while lavishing special interests with exemptions.
Mr Walker, this is the kind of reasonable response to our problems that you should be championing.

[Poppa70]

09:13 PM on 02/21/2012

Great Article! It took BOTH Parties to mess things up this badly, yet they seem consumed with bickering with each other and trying to prove the other party is at fault for all the problems.

Now, like an emotional argument that has gone too far, we are stranded in a largely fact-free no-mans land except for some reasonable few and far between people like Mr Walker.

If the two parties will not sit down and fix the problems, it is time for SOMEONE to. Neither Party is Entitled to be in office. If they are not doing their job, they can be replaced!

[rbwinn]

10:27 AM on 02/24/2012

Replacing them is not as easy as you think. It will take a majority of independent voters to do it. Well, seven percentage points to go.

[gwenmand]

01:38 PM on 02/21/2012

Of course it would be great if there were more independent-minded people, but the fact is that 40% of the country consider themselves independents (and independent-minded), not at all an insignificant number, and recent history shows (2008 in support of Obama's change campaign; 2010 overturning the Congress) they've attempted to express their dissatisfaction with the political process with whatever means are at their disposal. The problem is that those tools are few and unless we restructure politics and open it up to all voices through political reforms like top-two open primaries, non-partisan governance and redistricting, appointing independents to regulating bodies, the FEC on down, partisanship will continue to make it difficult for us to move forward. The notion that getting politicians to reach across the aisle and work together (as if it were even possible in our current state of affairs) means empowerment of ordinary voters assumes that assumes that the current structure would allow for such a thing, but while the political landscape has changed (more and more people are saying no to the parties), the parties are holding on for dear life. Independentvoting.org has been on a campaign to urge Congress to hold hearings into all of the various ways that independents are locked out of the process and thousands of independents have been participating by sending postcards, writing letters to the editor, and meeting with their Congresspeople (For more info, check out the website).

[richardwinger]

11:25 AM on 02/23/2012

If the U.S. had a top-two system for president, the general election ballot would list only President Obama and Mitt Romney (or possibly one other Republican, like Rick Santorum) and the efforts to get an Americans Elect candidate into the race would be impossible. There is nothing worse for independent voters than a top-two system.

[rbwinn]

02:34 PM on 02/23/2012

Amen

[scottehredt]

12:30 PM on 02/21/2012

We're just going to continue getting the same poor results from government until we change the process. If you are tired of the results we're getting, check into the work No Labels is doing with their "Make Congress Work" plan, which includes their signature legislation, No Budget No Pay. This legislation is actually scheduled for a Senate hearing March 14. Only about 10% of bills get that far. In this bill, if Congress doesn't pass a budget on time, they stop getting paid. If you support this idea, you can apply pressure to your legislators to become co-sponsors of the bill by getting signed up with No Labels.


Recently, 60% of Harvard Business School alumni said the American political system is worse than in other developed countries. But we can change that, if we're just willing to contribute a trivial amount of time, even just 10 minutes a week.

[Bernard Poggi]

12:17 PM on 02/21/2012

When No Label was first rolled out I was excited at the prospect of viable third party emergence: " the answer to the quagmire and grid lock of our government today. So i eagerly participated in the phone conversations to get answers on the principles of the no label platform: I asked about trade deficit, balanced budget, ending the electoral college, ending primary caucuses, term limits for Representatives and Senators, a uniform educational standard and the answer was always the same: "not within the scope of the No Label movement".
Now No Label is floating the David M Walker flag to see who will salute: not me! the chairman of Blackstone and former Comptroller General of the United States under Clinton and Bush doesn't not impress me as a reform candidate , as a matter of fact No Label has nothing to offer to an independent like me.

[Countess]

09:18 AM on 02/21/2012

We need new parties and not just new third party candidates and I want a third party candidate to endorse the Glass-Steagall Act to regulate the wall street banksters, is willing to break up the too big to fail banks and force them to write off the underwater motgages for a start. They should propose a real system of universal health care to completely replace the immoral and inefficient for-profit system that is playing a big role in the skyrocketing deficits. They should propose a massive infrastructure program putting people to work and a reform of the tax code to eliminate loopholes for the wealthy and make them pay their fair share. They should support an end to corporate lobbying and gerrymandering and propose a system of public financing of elections and term limits. They should renounce and begin unwinding the overseas empire and support at least a 50 percent cut in defense spending. There is room for such a party or candidate because the two right wing parties refuse to offer anything near such progressive policies but to just add another right wing party to the two that are already in place is to offer nothing.

[rbwinn]

02:57 PM on 02/23/2012

Terry Goddard got rid of all minor parties in this state except Libertarians and the Green Party. Independent voters have never been allowed to run for office in Arizona, prevented from becoming candidates by un-Constitutional state election laws that require them to obtain five times as many nomination petition signatures as a Republican or Democrat. Since part-appointed federal judges habitually uphold these obvious violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Supreme Court of the United States has refused to hear a case brought by a minor party or independent voters for more than twenty years, we are about where Italy was in 1920 or Germany was in 1932 or where Russia was in 1918. The judicial branch of government puts us subject to political party members who have an exclusive right to participate in government.

[AndKoolaidForAll]

09:14 AM on 02/21/2012

Until we first start talking about closing HALF our world-wide military bases and quit out-spending the rest of the world 'combined' on defense, or paying private prisons to house political marijuana prisoners, this life-long Independent will have no part of discussing cutting a Social Security system that's in no trouble now and solvent for more than 2 more decades.

You do NOT speak for this life-long Independent. So much here doesn't even begin to speak to the influence peddling corruption causing huge waste, the bribery middlemen (lobbyists) keeping CONgress corrupt - or even discuss their inability to deal effectively with a runaway insurance industry that seemingly owns Senators and CONgressmen. Those are the folks really trying to destroy OUR country's economy and where we need solutions first.

[standard]

08:28 AM on 02/21/2012

No thanks.

"The truth is no political party has a monopoly on the best people or the best ideas."

Perhaps. But today's Neo-Conservative stranglehold on the Republican Party has left it with a monopoly on most of the very worst ideas: the Patriot Act (which undermines our Fourth through Eighth Amendment rights), deregulation (which made the 2006-08 financial crisis possible and necessitated a very costly fix to avoid economic meltdown), and destroying unions and outsourcing jobs (which undermines the upward mobility that has made our middle class, America's backbone, possible). Meanwhile, President Obama (one man, not the entire Democratic Party) has cast himself not as the counterbalancing partisan leader we need, but mediator-in-chief: a "bipartisan" who has promoted capitulation masquerading as compromise. It's like having a trial with a judge sympathetic to the prosecutor but with no defense counsel.

"There are striking comparisons between the state of the country in 1992 and today . . . "

There are also striking comparisons between today and 1936. It took partisanship--Franklin Roosevelt and a Democratic Party willing to try a bit of social democracy and a good deal of sensible regulation--to preserve our country.

America needs more and better partisanship, not less!

[rbwinn]

12:14 AM on 02/21/2012

You should consider making your political donations directly to

Bureau of the Public Debt
P.O. Box 2188
Parkersburg, W.V.
26106-2188

instead of to party politicians the way you say you do. This is the most worthy cause in politics. It is the best way to stimulate the American economy to recover, the best way to interact with party politicians, and the best way to promote independence in the United States.
Anyway, if you cannot resist sending money to party televangelists, why not send an equal amount to the United States?

[RJROW]

11:41 PM on 02/20/2012

I have no problem with sinsible thinking on economic issues. first however, we need to plug the holes in the sinking ship, and keep American's from falling into dispair. This is short term and necessary, however painful. Then absolutely, we need sound economic policies, tax policies, and budget policies.

Defense needs to be addressed. Social security and medicare ned to ba addressed. A quick fix for both is setting financi llimits for qualification for either of them Millionares and billionares do not need to draw a check and they can afford their own health care.
Keeping corporations from sending jobs overseas, and require them to pay fair taxes. Taxes are a neccessary evil, they are needed to fund government and pay for infrastructure. Health care needs fixing. Either by adopting a single payer solution, or by requiring insurance companies and providers to adopt a sliding scale so that low income can afford to pay for their own.
As for defense, do we need to continue thecorporate welfare to the military industrial complex? We spend more than the next 5 largest military spending nations combined. Cutting it by half still ensures we out spend every nation on earth.
Energy-Break-up the giants and allow more competition. Expand investment in new tecnologies. Break up the banking empire and big oil, monoplies hurt competition.
Their are a lot of things we could do. Smart amd fair practices, not deep cuts that hurt only the poor.

[richardwinger]

09:15 PM on 02/20/2012

It is wildly impractical to expect the average voter to "fully understand taxes, social insurance programs, national defense, health care, immigration, education, energy, and infrastructure." Probably not one U.S. adult citizen in 10,000 would meet that standard. People have their own jobs, their own family responsibilities, and their own need for recreation, and that consumes most of most people's lives. The vast majority can't be policy wonks. The reason political parties exist in every nation in the world (if that country has a population of at least 100,000 people, and if that country doesn't outlaw parties) is to make democratic government policy even though most people aren't policy experts. Strong political parties are the tie between people and their government. Political scientists from all over the world have been studying political parties for 150 years, and they are unanimous about the need for parties.

The U.S. desperately needs more political parties. And we should use proportional representation so all of parties with worthwhile ideas can have members of legislative bodies.

[standard]

08:32 AM on 02/21/2012

Exactly right. Fanned.

[rbwinn]

04:46 PM on 02/23/2012

Well, the Nazi Party was certainly a strong tie between the people of Germany and their government, except maybe for the ones who were Jewish. George Washington was not a political scientist, but he was in a position to see the effect political parties would have on elective government. His idea was that political parties were unnecessary and would destroy free elections and that independent voters were necessary in elective government.
Well, now we are in a position to find out if he was right. 43% of Americans are now independent voters. When they have gained seven percentage points in numbers, they will outnumber members of all political parties in America. I am taking into account the fact that both major parties are decreasing in numbers. Wouldn't it be wonderful if it happened before this Presidential election takes place?

[ckdogs]

09:13 PM on 02/20/2012

Unfortunately, the Republican party has decided not to participate in an intelligent conversation about how to solve our myriad of problems. Their only goal is to make Obama look bad. I am in favor of a strong 2 party system, representing different points of view, but it doesn't work if one party wants an anti science theocracy, and is supported by special interests. Voters have to start thinking, listening, and making wiser choices when they vote. Only a cataclysm will make that happen, I fear, and dysfunction will go on.

[standard]

08:47 AM on 02/21/2012

"Unfortunately, the Republican [P]arty has decided not to participate in an intelligent conversation about how to solve our myriad of problems."

That, combined with a President who has decided to be "bipartisan", is exactly the problem.

(As a technical matter, a two-party system COULD work even if one of the parties is anti-science and supported by plutocrats: it just wouldn't work in ways that benefit anyone but the plutocrats--or the other party. But I think that's what you were getting at.)

[rbwinn]

11:07 AM on 02/22/2012

I am in favor of free and open elections instead of national parties. National parties did not work out too well in Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union. When 43% of the people are denied ballot access because they are not members of parties, we can see what the problem is.