Afterword
It's Your Battle to Win
September 14, 1998 Cleveland State University is a commuter school, blue collar, in a union town. During my college years, most of the students here would have been Democrats. I am speaking to a class of 150 political science majors, How many of you are Republicans? An awkward silence. Ten seconds pass. Two hands push up through the vacuum. Okay, how many are Democrats? Three hands. Three hands? I think, incredulous. Any more? I ask. More silence. Five students out of 150 align themselves with the two main parties.
Cleveland is the second city on a tour to promote the release of this book, A Reason to Vote, and this is my first college class. I scan the class looking for some kind of a reaction. Interest, maybe? Instead I find glazed eyes. I am, by my own admission, a passionate, political "junkie," a baby boomer who grew up caring about politics. I realize that far more than ten feet separates me from the teens who sit sprawled out in chairs in long, wide rows before me.
I am distanced by a generation, by 30 years of partisan scandal, big-ticket political payoffs, and vicious, campaign attack ads. I read the headlines in the newspapers today and shake my head at how far politics has fallen since I was a kid. These kids have no comparisons. For them, I am told, national politics is a fraud, politicians are fools. They grew up with that. Do you want to know who bears the brunt of all the mean-spirited nonsense that goes by the name of partisan politics these days? Where the damage is being done? Right here in this classroom and classes like this one-in this entire next generation. Students don't care, and few of them vote because, as they see it, their vote doesn't count for anything anyway. Are they wrong? Republican and Democratic recruiters don't bother showing up on college campuses anymore because there's no interest. Our democratic foundations are eroding and no one seems to know what to do about it.
Florescent lights beat down from the ceiling. I tell the students my story. I say that I grew up in a political family believing that politics could be a channel for positive social change. I believed that, I tell them. I say that I knew I wanted to be a U.S. senator as a young kid, that I worked for Bobby Kennedy as a high school senior, that I lost faith in politics after four years at U.C. Berkeley (a '60-style "War College," I tell them, drawing scattered chuckles) and that I got back into politics only a few years ago when I thought I could make a difference with a new political party. My fire had been rekindled and I wanted to help educate the American people about substantive issues. Instead I was the one who got the education. I got a wake-up call in how our democratic rights have been usurped.
Do you know much about third parties? I ask the class. Blank stares come back at me. I tell them that they are not alone. Few Americans do. I tell them why. I tell them about Florida and the 250, 000 signatures you need if you want to run for statewide office as a non Republican or non Democrat, a total that far exceeds the signature requirements if you wanted to get on the ballot in every country in Europe, as well as New Zealand, Australia and Canada combined. I tell them about how the signature requirement for a new party to get on the ballot in North Carolina had been 10,000 until 1982 when a new party got on the ballot and the North Carolina state legislature increased the requirement to over 51,000. Eyes widen a bit; there are a few muffled gulps. I tell them about Pennsylvania where a new party has to collect 25,000 signatures to get on the ballot, but still has to register over one million voters in the state as new party members to stay on the ballot for the next election, or else it is thrown off the ballot and has to go out and collect those 25,000 signatures all over again for the next election. This burdensome exercise happens for new parties-but not Republicans and Democrats-election after election, until they give up hope and quit, which many often do.
I talk about some issues that are not being debated: preventive medicine, the genetic engineering of our food supply, renewable energy technologies to keep our world both fueled and clean. These are issues that are ignored by the two parties as the substantive differences between them disappear. The electorate has been kept divided by hot-button, talk-show topics such as abortion and gun control, issues that are most certainly valid, but certainly not more so than health care and food supply and the education of our young people.
I am immersed in these ideas but it strikes me that most of the students have never heard them discussed by a political party until now. There is a stirring in the undercurrent. I start getting interrupted by questions-eager, intelligent questions; after a few minutes it's like a dam is bursting and the hands go up and they want to know!
What do the courts say about these unfair ballot laws? one student asks. Well, I say, judges are appointed by the Republicans and Democrats and many judges, maybe even most judges, do not want to change the system that got them their jobs, so overturning ballot access laws is tough. But third parties are working hard to force the changes anyway.
Isn't a vote for a third-party candidate a wasted vote? a girl in the back corner asks. After all, the candidate is not going to win, she says. I agree that this is the spin we have been hearing about third parties for decades. But remember, 64% of the people who could have voted in the last election did not vote for either a Republican or Democrat. That means the two parties are in the minority. I say that I believe that a vote for someone you don't believe in is the wasted vote, that a "knee-jerk" vote for a Republican or Democratic candidate is the wasted vote. But a principled vote for a candidate who supports what you believe in is never wasted. And if enough people vote that way, your candidate will win.
Another student interrupts me and says, But won't votes for a third party candidate steal support away from a major party candidate and ensure that the "wrong" candidate gets elected? Didn't Ross Perot take 20 million votes away from George Bush in 1992 and give Bill Clinton the election?
I hear this question a lot. First of all, we live in a capitalist, competitive society. Everyone-you as students, your parents in the workplace, professional athletes, musicians, artists, your professors-all of us face competition from all directions all the time. And as a society we consider this to be a good thing. It makes us stronger, more competent, better at what we do. So how come the Republicans and Democrats can exempt themselves from this sort of competition? What is it that lets these lawmakers, who enforce antimonopoly laws against a Microsoft and an Intel, pass regulations that basically outlaw any serious competition from outside their own ranks? And regarding Mr. Perot, if he did indeed take all those votes from the Republican Party, then do not blame him. Shame on the Republican Party. Shame on the GOP for being so out of touch, so arrogant, that 20 million of its followers would jump ship and support a man that nobody really knew anything about-that is how desperate the American people were for change. Make no mistake about it, Ross Perot's candidacy served this country and our political debate well. It was he who forced the issue of a balanced budget on the Republicans and Democrats, and it was he who introduced campaign finance reform into serious debate. I tell them our country needs more genuine political debate, not less, but we won't get it if we allow the two parties to sterilize the political process.
Someone asks, How does the Natural Law Party platform differ from the Republicans and Democrats? I say that right now U.S. public policy is up for sale to the highest bidder. America has an agricultural policy that serves the short-term economic interests of the agrochemical industry, not the long-term health, environmental, and economic interests of the nation. In the same way, we have an energy policy that serves the short-term economic interests of the oil and gas industry, not the long-term interests of the nation. And we have a foreign policy that is largely dictated by defense contractors; it serves their short-term economic interests and not necessarily the interests of the American people and the world.
America's public policies are not only up for sale; they are disjointed. The problem is that life is not disjointed, life is not fragmented. Life is a seamless whole. We know from science that everything is connected together, everything influences everything else. What we do to the water supply in the wheat fields of the upper Midwest influences the soil and forests and air in New England, Canada, the whole world. The Natural Law Party recognizes the wholeness of nature and believes that public policy must be based on this integrated platform of life, not broken up into bits and pieces and sold off to special interests. That is why, if you look at our platform, you will see the constant themes of sustainability, prevention, renewability, natural. These ideas may have sounded "new age" twenty years ago, but today they are informed, practical, down-to-earth, common sense. And you and your generation, I say, if you agree with this, then you have to work to make sure that these are your public policies, because no one is going to hand them to you.
With class time running out, I'm asked a final question, What can we do?
Vote, I implore. Get involved. Find out about the Natural Law Party and America's other parties. Read about them on the Internet. Demand that your local press give coverage of their platforms. But do not believe that just because the economy is good and crime is coming down that what those lawmakers are doing in Washington does not effect your life. It does. It most certainly does. And if you and I are not casting our votes to shape public policy as we see fit, then who is making those decisions? Thomas Jefferson said the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. While we are sacked out on our couches, surfing through 500 channels, there are special interests at work who are "helping" lawmakers to shape public policy in their own best interests. It is up to you to act, I say. Other generations at your age fought for American independence, fought principled wars for freedom and peace in the world. You don't have that burden. But you do have the responsibility to take back democracy. It is your battle to fight. The battleground is in the courts, the media, and the ballot box. It is your battle to win and I believe deep in my heart that you will win it.
I am surprised and pleased by the applause. I find myself looking deeply into the eyes of the kids sitting in the front row, and thinking rather disheartenly about my own generation-a generation which once held such promise to do good-and how we have grown too busy and too distracted to even vote. It is your generation's fight, I think to the students before me. And it looks like you may have to win this one on your own.
The Spell Is Broken
February 12, 1999 It is Abraham Lincoln's birthday and I am sitting on a sofa in my office, watching the final moments of the "Trial of the President" and doing a lot of talking back to my television. I have been talking back a lot to the television these days, addressing my remarks to Bill Clinton and Ken Starr, to the Republican and Democratic party leadership-and to the media, which has been making me feel very embarrassed.
I keep asking, in disbelief, What are you doing to the country? The pettiness, partisanship, leaks, lies, and obsessiveness over this one issue at the near total expense of other crucial issues facing the nation. I'm tired of you, I say, gesturing at the principal players on the screen. I must not be alone. Polls show most other voters are fed up with them, too.
For years, reporters have asked me what the Natural Law Party and other third parties were going to do to break the Republican and Democratic stranglehold on the voting public. It was a good question. Now I have the answer. Nothing. The Republicans and Democrats are doing it for us, more thoroughly than we ever could. I say that Hollywood could not have written a more outrageous script than the one that has been playing out in the back rooms of the White House and on the floor of Congress during the past many months. There is no press release that I could have written, no court case the Natural Law Party could have filed, no speech that John Hagelin could have delivered that would have done more to undermine the precious thread of trust that has kept the electorate tied to the Republican and Democratic parties for generations. But the two parties have done it, and that once inviolable trust has been broken.
Here is some evidence from the 1998 election:
Nineteen-ninety-eight was outstanding for the Natural Law Party as well. The party's several hundred candidates tallied a total of several million votes, three to four times higher than in 1996, with some candidates receiving as much as 30 percent of the vote.
It is clear that when voters do get a viable choice, they are ready and willing to cast their vote that way. It is also clear that they want that choice. In Florida, voters overwhelmingly passed Revision 11, a constitutional amendment, to open the ballot to independent candidates and third parties. The revision eliminated all signature requirements for ballot access, including the 250,000 signatures for an independent or third-party candidate to run for statewide office. Most impressive, the revision passed by a stunning margin of 65 percent to 35 percent, despite stiff opposition from the Republican and Democratic parties who fought to maintain the status quo.
This is our time, I now tell reporters. The window of opportunity is open, the spell has been broken that had somehow bamboozled voters into believing that only the Republicans and Democrats had the capability to solve our nation's problems. It is only right that there be more genuine competition in the political arena, that there be more serious new ideas open for debate, that voters have more legitimate choices on election day.
I recently heard a news spot on the radio that said the Republican and Democratic leadership were feeling anxious to put the Clinton impeachment trial behind them and get their parties together, otherwise they were sure to lose even more races to independent and third party candidates in 2000. It was a very truthful and candid comment on their part. I remember thinking that if only they were that honest in all of their dealings with the public they would not be in the bind they are in today.
There are seismic shifts underway in the political landscape of our country, and all of us are in the enviable position, perhaps for the first time since Abraham Lincoln, to give a powerful new voice and a profound new direction to the political leadership of this nation. It is a day that millions of people have worked hard for in their own way for years, and now it is here. The old adage is a true one: strike while the iron is hot. Well, when it comes to the 2000 election, that iron is very, very hot.
The Stakes Just Got Higher
April 8, 1999, Washington, D.C. My mind has been absorbed in other battles: ballot access, genetic engineering, fundraising for the party. So I, like most Americans, never saw this one coming, at least not on this massive, horrific scale. My country has joined NATO in a battle that threatens the lifebreath of the world. I am hot and tired and standing in the lobby of the National Press Building, three blocks west of the White House. Cut into the sleek white marble wall in front of me is a bank of six television screens. Each one offers the same sad sight: footage of homes torched, towns leveled, and hordes of people herded through rocky mountain passes towards ramshackle refugee camps.
I am weary because I have spent the past several evenings writing a thick packet of press materials and, with the help of a team of volunteers, walking the streets during the day hand-delivering these materials to hundreds of media outlets throughout the city. Tomorrow morning at ten thirty, John Hagelin will hold a news conference, upstairs on the 13th floor of the National Press Club, in the same room where presidents and prime ministers have stood for decades to announce their grand plans and parry questions from the press.
John Hagelin will deliver the same message he has delivered countless times on the campaign trail about crises in Iraq, Israel, Somalia, Rwanda, and The Sudan. We can no longer expect to create peace through war, he will say. Maybe in the past we could stop the march of evil through airstrikes and ground forces, pointing to Nazi Germany, but not anymore. Not with devastating, destructive weapon systems in the hands of virtually every country. Not with the boiling over of centuries-old ethnic tensions so that even small nations turn a deaf ear to all manner of superpower threats-military, economic, and social. Today, with airstrikes and ground assaults you can destroy the people, you can destroy the land, but you cannot destroy the hatred that fuels the conflicts. But, he will say, again, there is an option. We'll see who listens. But this is what the Natural Law Party does-actually this is what third parties do: We bring out new ideas, we bring them out again and again and again. If the ideas are good ones, hopefully over time, people listen-and act.
An open cardboard box sits at my feet, stuffed with stacks of news conference reminders that will be slid under the doors of more than a hundred of media outlets represented here in the National Press Building from throughout the country and around the world. Kosovo has spread a bunker-like mentality over the D.C. press corps and, in my classic media paranoia-and my fatigue-I doubt whether reporters will take the time to read my materials,whether anyone will come.
Suddenly a young man in his mid-twenties appears beside me. He points to the box. "Is that Hagelin thing today or tomorrow?" he wants to know. Press credentials dangle from a chain around his neck. I look down at the box. Only a partial headline is visible: "Presidential Candidate to Offer..." Excuse me? I ask. How did you know about the press conference? "I've been reading the releases you faxed to us. It looks interesting. I want to come." His name is Brad and he is a reporter for the Detroit News. He asks for more information and I hand him a copy of my book buried at the bottom of the box. He is on his way out the door, telling me over his shoulder that he will be at tomorrow's news conference. Thanks, Brad. I needed that. I pick up the box of press reminders and, with two friends, step into the elevator and punch the button for the second floor.
April 9, 1999 National Press Club Not bad. Quite good.
A success. Those are my thoughts as I stand behind the podium, getting ready
to open the news conference and introduce John Hagelin. The room is packed with
about 80 people-reporters, representatives of several embassies; and local Natural
Law Party leaders. Time is tight for reporters these days, so Hagelin gets right
into it. He starts by voicing serious concern over NATO's military campaign
in the Balkans. He says the airstrikes have only inflamed the region, brought
a very real threat of terrorist retaliation back home to the U.S., even moved
the whole globe towards war. There is a solution, he says, one that may be new
to many people, but has now been proven effective in trouble spots throughout
the world. On an overhead projector he shows color graphs pulled from research
studies published in some of the America's top scientific journals showing that
reducing high levels of social stress through group meditation does, in fact,
dramatically reduce violence in war-torn areas.
In Hagelin's plan, NATO can keep its military campaign going, and it can continue its efforts at negotiations. But, he says, NATO should also incorporate this new approach as well because it alone will address the underlying cause of the conflict: extremely high levels of social stress and ethnic tensions that pervade the region. "Without it, all military efforts are ultimately doomed to failure. With it, peace can come to the Balkans within days."
It has taken some time, but now a growing number of scientists have carefully studied the research and endorse the approach. Hagelin introduces John Davies, Ph.D., Research Director at the Center of International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland. Davies says that his Center investigates alternatives to military engagement as a means of conflict resolution. Of all the alternatives, research shows stress-reducing collective meditation is by far the most effective.
Hagelin compares costs. His proposal to train, house, and feed one thousand Kosovo Albanian refugees in this peace-keeping technology will cost far less for one entire year than what the U.S. will spend for just one day in the Yugoslavian war. In fact, it will cost less than a wing and a tail-fin on a B-2 Bomber.
Hagelin closes the news conference and everyone files out the door. I scan the list of media covering the event. The news will go out all over the world: CNN, Time, the Chicago Tribune, Detroit News, the Financial Times of London, other major newspapers throughout Europe and South America, as well as in Japan, China, and India. I have been doing Washington news conferences for years, and each time I have grand dreams of hitting the network evening news. It didn't happen, but still I am feeling pretty good. For a moment at least. Just then a friend motions me out the door and leads me down the hall to the room next door. There's a wall of camera crews. I ask a woman standing in the back with me what's going on. U.S. Rep. Frank Wolfe (D-Virginia) is holding a news conference. He has just returned from Kosovo, and he is pronouncing his solution: more airstrikes and send in the ground troops. I shake my head. Bombs sell, not peace. Weariness sets in again. Then suddenly, Brad from the Detroit News pops up again. "You had a great press conference," he says to me. "Very impressive. John Hagelin was brilliant. Everyone should hear this." Thank you, Brad.
Why I Do What I Do
"Why are you doing this?" The reporter is a young woman, a journalism graduate student from Northwestern University who is on leave to intern at the Portland Oregonian newspaper. There is an unmistakeable tone of incredulity in the question, polite but disbelieving. "You're not going to win, not in this election, maybe not even in 2000. Why are you doing this?" It is two weeks before the November 1998 election and she is interviewing me about my book and the Natural Law Party. She has done her homework and we are having a good, wide-ranging, in-depth discussion about key platform issues, from abortion and foreign policy to nuclear power and urban renewal. The interview is wrapping up and I am collecting my papers and heading upstairs for a photo shoot when she stops me and asks me the question. She was not asking me as a reporter, her notebook was jammed in her tote bag. She was asking for herself.
I guess because I believe in it, I tell her, somehow surprised at the question. I believe in all of it-preventive medicine, organic agriculture, renewable energy, meditation in the prisons, everything. I feel I have to add weight to the answer. In 1848, I tell her, some people stood up for a woman's right to vote. They did it because they believed in it. It still took over seventy years before that commonsense idea became law, but if someone hadn't stood up for it then who knows what would have happened? People stood up for the abolition of slavery in the 1840s, people stood up for child labor laws in the 1900s. People stood up and they changed the world.
I agree with her that the Natural Law Party may not win seats in 1998, but we will win. And it won't take seventy years. The times are on our side. Read the papers. More and more research is coming out about the hazards of pesticides, there is growing consumer resistance to genetically engineered foods. Our prisons are overcrowded, costs are skyrocketing, and corrections officials are finally talking seriously about the need for effective new crime prevention and rehabilitation methods. Our students are falling further behind the world in test scores, and educators are desperate to find new ways to expand the learning capacity of students. And I, and hopefully millions of other Americans, do not believe that dropping bombs on countries and slaughtering innocent people is a sensible, long-term way to promote a peaceful world, particularly as we move into this very volatile new century, particularly when there may be a better way.
The stakes got higher in the past few years, and the consequences of our actions are more immediate and more profound. America needs leaders who are willing to look at better ways for doing some pretty basic things, like growing our food, fueling our cities, treating our sick, rehabilitating offenders, and promoting peace in the world.
The Natural Law Party stands for those better ways, and more and more Americans are willing to stand up for them, too. So, I tell the reporter, it is just a matter of time before we win. She listens carefully, focusing intently on my eyes and then smiles and thanks me. I head upstairs for a photograph. Twenty minutes later, still bouyed from the interview, I sort of bounce through the revolving front door out into the warm Portland sunshine. Why do I do this? Because I love it. The article in the Oregonian the next day is a good one. Yes, I know that they're not all this good, but I sure appreciate them when they are.
I have a flight to catch to Chicago. I am speaking in a couple of college classes, doing some media interviews, and giving a talk at a fundraising dinner. Yes, I do love it.