America's search for a third option

Michael Bloomberg. Photo / Bloomberg.

It is billed as a bid to steer American politics back on to a central course, freed of the bitter partisan strife that has made the 111th Congress, now in its lame duck stage before power passes from Democrats to Republicans in January, one of the most dysfunctional in US history.

But when over 1000 people from across the US gather at a Columbia University lecture hall in New York City on December 13 to launch the "No Labels" movement, it is unsure if they will be heralding a new day in US politics, or paving the way for a third party candidate who will challenge the existing duopoly in a 2012 White House run.

What is certain is that public frustration with the political status quo - demonstrated when over 200,000 people flocked to the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear", hosted by comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, in Washington last October to protest against extremists who "control the conversation" - has reached fever pitch.

And in Utah, local mayors, plus business, community and religious leaders, have floated the Utah Compact which advocates a moderate response to illegal immigration, in contrast to the hard line taken by the Tea Party and other conservatives.

"More and more Americans feel politically homeless," says John Avlon, the author of Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America, and a founding member of No Labels.

The movement's website sounds a clarion call for moderates of every political strip to do "what's best for America". Its vision looks beyond red versus blue states, and the vituperative Congress, to calmer waters. And, says No Labels, the centre, marooned by party discord, is the key.

Supporters say rancorous special interests threaten governance in desperate times and that extremists have neglected moderate voters. Politics abhors a vacuum.

The idea for No Labels surfaced earlier this year when Democratic fundraiser Nancy Jacobson, who helped propel the Clintons into the White House, met Mark McKinnon, a strategist for Senator John McCain, President George W. Bush, Bono, Lance Armstrong and Fortune 500 corporations.

The pair were introduced, reports the Wall Street Journal, by Kevin Sheekey, an advisor to Michael Bloomberg, the multi-billionaire mayor of New York City.

Supporters include the US senators from New York, Connecticut, Indiana and Michigan, plus a handful of business leaders, including Loews Corporation co-chairman Andrew Tisch, and Dave Morin, an ex-Facebook executive.

"What brings us together," explains William Galston, a No Labels adviser and Brookings Institute fellow who was a policy adviser to President Bill Clinton, "is one simple observation and a judgment derived from that observation. The observation is that we are more polarised than we have been in a hundred years. The judgment is that this is not good for the world's oldest democracy. So we're going to try and do something about it. Stay tuned."

Inevitably, No Labels' very existence - and the prospect it may attract disillusioned moderates from the Democrats and GOP as well as Independents, now 40 per cent of US voters - has sparked talk that supporters will form a third party.

Such initiatives have a chequered US history. Third parties streak across the political firmament, often in time of crisis, only to vanish into Stygian blackness like lonely comets.

A century ago President Teddy Roosevelt launched the Progressive, or Bull Moose, Party. Like the Populist movement in the late 19th century, it failed to find a home.

Subsequent third way bids, notably by Ross Perot in 1992 and Unity '08 in 2008, but also by the Socialists, Libertarians and the Greens, went nowhere.

While past third parties failed to come in out of the cold, flickering briefly as fringe dwellers, the moribund duolopy has created opportunities at the heart of power for upstarts like the Tea Party, now right-wing kingmakers.

The bitter political climate, growing disgust with both main parties, and a sense the Obama Administration has failed despite a sweeping mandate, have resurrected dreams that a third party will emerge to challenge the duopoly.

But No Labels insists it has no third party ambitions.

"This is not - repeat not - an effort to form a party. It's an effort to start a different kind of conversation," says Galston. Such denials fail to quash US media speculation.

"Our two-party system is ossified," writes New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. He believes the duopoly is corrupted by decades of special interest pandering, and predicts a revolution that starts in the political centre.

At least two groups, one on the West Coast, one on the East Coast, says Friedman [he doesn't identify them] are "developing 'third parties' to challenge our stagnating two-party duopoly that has been presiding over our nation's steady incremental decline". He foresees a run in 2012.

The most intense gossip is focused on Mike Bloomberg. The 68-year-old mayor, who owns Bloomberg News and is worth US$18 billion ($24 billion), has incited persistent rumour that he seeks the presidency. Some pundits believe a Bloomberg run in 2012 could dash President Obama and benefit Republicans.

Bloomberg insists he will not run - "I have the best job in the world," he told the Wall Street Journal - but Chinese whispers persist. Could he use No Label as a platform?

Yes, according to the Huffington Post, a liberal website, which says No Labels is "suspect" and will help Bloomberg. His win would ensure "four more years of Wall Street".

"The press always want to write a story about Mike Bloomberg running for President," says Avlon.

"That's not what No Labels is about. We're not a stalking horse for any individual's ambition. We're happy to count the mayor among our supporters but we haven't taken any money from him. This is a citizens' movement that appeals to many mayors."

They include Antonio Villaraigosa the mayor of Los Angeles. Avlon, who used to be speechwriter for Big Apple mayor [and failed presidential candidate] Rudy Guliani, points out that mayors "have to solve problems and have responsibilities that go beyond an ideological debating society. As Fiorello La Guardia [perhaps New York's most famous mayor] said: 'There is no Democrat or Republican way to clean the streets'. And we've kinda forgotten that as a country."

While the recession exacerbated political divisions, the common assumptions that underlay consensus politics - shared anti-communism in foreign policy, accepting the fundamentals of the New Deal at home - vanished long ago.

Divisive social issues, from homosexuality to affirmative action, the so-called "Culture Wars" and fundamentalist religion have also widened party divide. At the same time, says Galston, US parties are "more European", taking a stronger ideological line and striking big tents that once tolerated many more shades of opinion. Thus, fiscally conservative Democrats and socially liberal Republicans feel increasingly ostracised by extremists.

The obvious beneficiaries are the Independents, who took the governorship of Rhode Island in November and almost clinched Maine.

Avlon wants No Labels "to be the last big tent standing in American politics" as moderates wrestle their parties back from extremists. "We want to put out a welcome sign at a time when our parties seem to be kicking people out."

No Labels will release an agenda at its launch which will be relayed by a live webcast (nolabels.org).

There is certainly public hunger for change, fuelled by pervasive anger and frustration with political gridlock. And social networks provide a tool to reach people who, says Avlon, "are fundamentally not joiners". He sees a tectonic shift in US politics, away from industrial age parties, such as the monolithic Democrats or the GOP, as the information age gives people "multiplicity of choice".

But the key to real reform is structural and located at the grassroots. It must focus on primary elections, in which parties choose candidates, and with the way in which boundaries are fixed for state and federal districts.

The latter is rife with gerrymandering, in which parties manipulate boundaries to favour themselves, a corrupt process that can evoke the excesses of 18th century Britain's rotten boroughs.

Avlon believes gerrymandering is "huge" and gets to the "heart of why our politics are so artificially polarised". At the same time extremist candidates have begun to dominate primary contests.

Galston says No Labels intends to "organise all 435 congressional districts", with citizen groups monitoring local, state and national primaries to offer support to candidates "interested in civil conversation", as against those "dead set" on not co-operating with other parties.

Which is good news for Bloomberg. The Journal quoted an anonymous Bloomberg adviser who said structural reform was "invaluable," should the mayor run for President in 2012.

Last month the mayor donated money to California's Proposition 20, which shifted the power to draw up congressional districts from politicians to citizens.

Meanwhile, The Committee to Draft Michael Bloomberg has said it will try to persuade the mayor to seek the White House in 2012.

While No Labels may have no interest in that the movement's centrist goal could give Bloomberg his best ever shot at becoming America's next President.