MAYBE IT seemed like a great idea a few weeks ago: Why not bring together a group of venerable politicos and the very wealthy at the University of Oklahoma to discuss the importance of bipartisanship in Washington, perhaps as a prelude to a self-financed independent campaign for president by multibillionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But even if some of the major-party contenders for the presidency hadn't injected a good bit of civility into the campaign, an independent or third-party candidacy would likely do more harm than good.
Political parties, for all the nastiness between them, have proved essential to bridge the regional divisions in the United States. It has been that way since modern political alignments developed in the 1830s, when the Democrats forged a coalition of Southern planters and Northern immigrants. The Whigs, and later the Republicans, linked Northeastern reformers with Northern and Midwestern business interests. A narrowly focused third party, or an independent campaign, lacks the breadth of shared interests to govern a nation of 300 million people.
The US Constitution, written without a thought to parties, inadvertently encouraged their dominance of presidential elections. The Constitution grouped presidential votes by states, and most state Legislatures mandated winner-take-all systems for their electoral votes. Once two major parties became entrenched, one of their candidates almost always had enough support to gain a plurality in a state and secure its electoral votes.
Over the last century, the greatest threat to two-party dominance came in 1912, when former president Theodore Roosevelt, running on the Progressive ticket, outpolled Republican William Howard Taft, the incumbent, and received 88 electoral votes. But Roosevelt had split the Republican vote and was swamped by Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat, who received 1.1 million more popular votes and 347 more electoral votes. Closer to our own time, Ralph Nader of the Green Party got only 2.7 percent of the more than 105 million popular votes, but may have cost Al Gore the electoral votes of Florida and New Hampshire in 2000. The younger George Bush, a loser in the popular vote, achieved a majority in the Electoral College. Third party candidates for president are spoilers.
The Oklahoma meeting produced little more than a recommendation for a bipartisan Cabinet in the next administration, a good idea but one best assembled by a Republican or Democratic president, not a political lone wolf. While independent candidates have failed miserably in presidential races, they have fared better in some elections for governor. If Bloomberg wants to stay in politics beyond Jan. 1, 2010, when his mayoral term expires, he should look not south toward the White House, but north toward Albany.
