THE UNEXPECTED QUEST

Actor Warren Beatty better hurry up if he wants to run for president on a third-party ticket, because conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan is already stealing themes from Beatty’s fat-cat-baiting “Bulworth” for his expected bid forthe Reform Party presidential nomination.

The convergence of the onetime left and the onetime right on a whole string of populist economic and reform issues--Buchanan and Beatty may have a 50% overlap--already ranks as one of the big surprises of this pre-2000 politicking.

It used to be that third parties didn’t mobilize until it was clear that the two major parties were disappointing a major constituency. The explanation for all this early activity may simply be that such disappointment is presumed: After the last three or four years, political cynicism and boredom are epidemic. On top of that, new political alignments are screaming for new vehicles.

This could be the start of something big, though, for the moment, nobody should get too enthused, or too worried. Current polls give Buchanan only 16% in a three-way race, and he still doesn’t have the Perotista nomination sewed up. Beatty’s sole experience in running for president--in running for anything--comes from his recent movie about a populist senator, Jay B. Bulworth. Yet, third parties could surprise us next year. Washington’s self-proclaimed “vital center” is really a “venal center,” molded by campaign contributors, not the public, which gives independents and third parties the political equivalent of a Goodyear blimp to shoot at.

The current major-party front-runners, Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore, are part of the mainstream’s weakness. Gore has no charisma, and Bush has no national experience. This is part of what makes third-party candidacies so plausible.

Meanwhile, the potential third-party support base is considerable. Some 40% to 50% of voters want a third choice, even though they disagree on what kind of choice they want. In 1992, all the minor-party nominees together got about 20% of the total vote for president and in 1996, about 10%. Ross Perot was the major independent candidate in both races, winning 19% in 1992 and roughly 8% in 1996. If he had run a hard-hitting campaign in ’96 instead of catching up on his sleep, he would have done somewhat better.

Besides Perot and Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, a sizable group of former governors and former U.S. senators--including Lowell P. Weicker Jr. of Connecticut, Richard D. Lamm of Colorado and even (several years back) Bill Bradley of New Jersey--have expressed support for the third-party idea or some interest in running on such a national ticket themselves. When GOP Sen. Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire left his party earlier this year, he said he was thinking of a third-party presidential race. Three campaign managers or chief pollsters for major-party presidential nominees and former presidents have also supported a Perot campaign or spoken for a third-party bid in 2000: Edward J. Rollins (Ronald Reagan), W. Hamilton Jordan (Jimmy Carter) and Patrick H. Caddell (George S. McGovern and Carter). Buchanan himself was a speech writer for President Richard M. Nixon.

This could be significant. The 20% for combined third parties in 1992 and the 10% in 1996 represents the first back-to-back double-digit support for a new alternative since the emergence of the Republican Party in the slavery debate of the 1850s. The number of Republican and Democratic politicos who have gone to independent status or expressed new-party interest represents the biggest loosening since the 1920s, even if none of them expected to see Ventura, Buchanan and Beatty climb on stage first.

At this point, it’s appropriate to ask: What are the issues behind all this outsider interest? What could appeal to voters enough to push the two major parties down to 70% or 75% of the vote?

Let’s begin with the issues that, in recent years, have brought together what nervous Washington lobbyists call the “Halloween coalition,” an ad hoc alliance of supporters of Perot, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader and Buchanan. They have been able to unite on such populist issues as campaign-finance reform, tougher lobbying laws, a crackdown on corporate “welfare” and multinational corporations, reform of the Federal Reserve Board and International Monetary Fund, opposition to bank and investor bailouts, and elimination of “fast track” and other backdoor devices for getting controversial trade packages through Congress without meaningful debate. These are all threads in a populist ideological fabric that says it’s time to take back politics from the rich and the big corporations. This is key to the Buchanan-Beatty partial convergence.

Even the hint of such an alliance rattles the business, financial and international interest-group structure that dominates both parties. Like President Bill Clinton and “centrist establishment” Republicans, they like to claim their policies represent a “vital center” of compromise and progress.

Wrong, reformers and outsider groups say. It’s really a “venal center,” a corrupt politics that survive by satisfying campaign contributors, rather than the public, and block reform and competition at every opportunity.

This is probably true. But, in practical terms, the various left and right outsiders and reformers can’t unite behind one presidential nominee because they wouldn’t agree on many cultural and social issues.

In fact, only one of the factions looks likely to field a moderately strong third-party nominee for next year: the Reform Party, if it follows Perot’s apparent thinking and nominates Buchanan. As for the Green Party, Nader’s “campaign” three years ago seemed only halfhearted, and no serious nominee is on the 2000 horizon.

Beatty could be an interesting contender, if he has the moxie to run like his movie protagonist Bulworth, who starts telling the truth about how corporations and the rich control everything. Candor like that could infuriate just as many fat cats in the Democratic Party as Buchanan is offending in the GOP.

International parallels also offer some insights. If the Republicans look at party politics elsewhere in the Group of 7, they’ll find chilling precedents. Ten years ago, establishment politics dominated virtually all these governments. But the rise of right-wing and populist parties split most of the conservative, business-led coalitions and ultimately led to their defeats. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s anti-immigration front played this role in France. In Italy, neo-fascists and northern separatists helped do in the Christian Democrats. In Canada, the governing Progressive Conservatives were routed in a sectional splintering that saw leadership on the right pass to the populist Reform Party, whose leader, Preston Manning, is called the Ross Perot of Canada. A Buchanan candidacy on the Reform Party ticket could play a similar role in the United States, conceivably leading to the GOP’s defeat in both the presidential and many congressional races and raising doubts about its future.

One plausible scenario is for Buchanan to win the Reform nomination despite the opposition of Ventura and his followers, who maintain a libertarian attitude on social issues. Buchanan might then run a hard-line campaign that included many cultural themes designed to woo the religious right out of the GOP presidential coalition. If so, his conceivable 9% or 11% of the November vote would probably be drawn from the Republicans by a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio, and so jeopardize the GOP nominee.

Buchanan, however, may be capable of something bigger and better, despite his tendencies to support anti-abortion constitutional amendments, flat taxes that zap the middle class and save-the-Confederate-flag rallies in Columbia, S.C. Those shenanigans have made him peripheral in the past and may do so again.

Suppose Buchanan could content himself on abortion by telling activists that because the Republican Party failed them--he’s more likely to say “betrayed” them--the political climate is unfriendly verging on impossible, and the focus for 2000 should be on the economic and reform agenda. This could be the biggest test of his practicality: Stay philosophically pure, sure; just put abortion on the back burner. Who knows, he could even start recognizing that single mothers trying to raise a family on $23,000 a year are just as deserving as South Carolina textile workers whose jobs have been moved to China.

Such a broadened outlook would widen Buchanan’s appeal. The Halloween coalition could resume informal relations. The Green Party, Beatty and others could offer these shared populist themes to left and liberal constituencies ready to join the new-party march. The combined third-party vote could get back up to 20% again or higher.

That would shock Washington. It would take a can opener to the two-party system. It could even do for the new economic and reform agenda what Perot’s 1992 campaign did for budget balancing.

Buchanan and Perot have a lot to think about.