Election year is here – check out third parties By Warren Bluhm News-Chronicle As we move into the presidential election year of 2004, it has been a long, dark winter for someone whose political philosophy came into focus when I sat in the bleachers and heard Lee S. Dreyfus say those immortal words, "The government should defend our shores and deliver the mail and stay the hell out of my life." We have an incumbent whose response to an attack on our shores was to create a new federal department, ostensibly to consolidate the efforts of numerous security agencies, which of course will end up spending more money than the various agencies combined. He's an incumbent who claims to pattern himself after Ronald Reagan, who often said, "Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem." And yet faced with the crisis in the cost of prescription drugs, his solution was to get the government more involved. And that's the Republican alternative. The Democrats lining up to try to defeat him are falling over themselves to see who can provide the biggest and brightest government solutions to what ails us. Folks like Reagan and former Gov. Dreyfus tapped into the general inkling many of us have that the government is a tad out of control. But their successors have offered little in the way of taming the leviathan and, in fact, their own administrations in many ways disappointed those who thought things would be different with them in charge. It seems like the presidents of the past 30 years have become better known for their lies than for their accomplishments. "I'm not a crook." "I'll never lie to you." "Read my lips: No new taxes." "The era of big government is over." Since Reagan's incredible success in getting elected, slowing or reversing the growth of government and getting the bureaucracy off our backs has been a constant theme for many candidates. And that's the biggest lie of all, because the government keeps growing and the bureaucracy has become more and more intrusive. In the January issue of Liberty magazine, a nifty little periodical for quixotic minds like mine, Greg Newburn writes convincingly that Americans in general are content with the two major parties, and he argues that third parties such as the Libertarian Party will never be able to make significant progress. He points out that by hitching their stars to the Democratic Party, "marginally relevant" candidates like Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich automatically receive a national platform to make their cases. He notes the success of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who barely made a ripple when he ran for president as a Libertarian but has become an effective voice as a Republican congressman from Texas. Those are sobering thoughts for someone like me, who votes for the best person regardless of party and in recent years has come to consider any vote besides Libertarian as a waste of my conscience. The Democratic Party is clearly a lost cause for someone with my perspective, but Republicans have let me down so many times it becomes harder to believe they offer much of an alternative. Ed Thompson resonated with at least 10 percent of Wisconsin voters a couple of years ago by linking up with the Libertarian Party. That's a good start, good enough to get the party on the map and, more importantly, on the presidential primary ballot next month. Two Libertarian candidates for president, Michael Badnarik and Gary Nolan, will actually appear in Green Bay and debate the issues at 7 p.m. Jan. 12 at the KI Convention Center. I hope to be there to listen, and Feb. 19 I plan to vote for the one who's closer to what I believe. There's an overwhelming chance neither will be able to generate enough traction to win in November. But there was an overwhelming chance the Arizona Cardinals couldn't come back from a 17-6 Minnesota lead and give the Green Bay Packers a championship a couple of Sundays ago. It never hurts to hope. And the alternative is a long, dark winter. Bluhm is editor of the Door County Advocate and former managing editor of The News-Chronicle. His column appears Tuesdays. Contact him via e-mail at [email protected] or call 920-743-3321