There was interesting national news last week.
First, a Gallup Poll showed that almost twothirds of American adults believe that the Republican and Democrat parties do “such a poor job” of representing the American people that “a third major party is needed.”
That’s 63 percent, which is seven percent higher than a year ago and the highest since Gallup began asking that question in 2003, according to Reuters news service.
Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the likely presidential nominees for the two major parties, are two of the most disliked candidates in decades.
There certainly seems to be a hunger among the electorate for better choices.
Second, just when it seemed unlikely that Republicans in Congress could embarrass themselves any further, Oklahoma’s junior Senator, Markwayne Mullin, offered to fistfight Teamsters Union president Sean O’Brien during a Senate hearing.
This was just weeks after House Republicans historically voted out the Speaker of the House and then took three weeks to elect a new one.
In the meantime, the business of the House languished.
We’re tempted to say this is the kind of political news you’d expect to hear from Italy or maybe Brazil, but that would be a gross insult to the Italians and Brazilians.
We, the American people, deserve better than what we’re getting from the Republicans and Democrats in Washington and Oklahoma certainly deserves better than the schoolyard immaturity shown by Sen. Mullin.
Americans have shown a past willingness to support third parties, most recently when Ross Perot ran as a third-party candidate in 1992 and when George Wallace broke with the Democrats and ran for president in 1968.
Neither of those were able to effect permanent change and the third-party movements were tied to the popularity of Perot and Wallace themselves. Once they were off the scene, so were their parties.
But this might be the time for a new third party to create long-term change for the betterment of America.
At the national level, the Republicans and Democrats have precious little in common with their historical roots, and they have marginalized themselves by jumping in bed with the far right and far left.
They have slipped their moorings and there is no one at the wheel to steer them back.
Most Americans, meanwhile, remain in the middle, less interested in partisan politics and ideology and more interested in bringing sanity back to the governmental process.
If people were honest in their answers to the Gallup Poll, the time might now be right for levelheaded middle-of-the-road leaders to create a third party to represent the majority of Americans who have been abandoned by the traditional political parties.