Platform Change: Never Mind the What, Focus on the How!

by Kristan Overstreet

Posted January 29, 2006

Everyone has been asked the question: "What would you do if you had a million dollars?" It's a fun pastime, thinking of all the things you need to do, the things you'd like to do. Some of us even itemize the expenses and make detailed plans. It's a nice stretching of the imagination.

Unfortunately, unless you have some reasonable expectation of getting a million dollars, it's a waste of time.

The same thing applies to platform changes. The bulk of this caucus website is taken up by proposals for changes to the platform and essays on why the changes need to be made. Well and good- very few people who come here disagree that the Libertarian Party platform is more hindrance than help- yet not one word comes to my eye on actually making the changes once we decide on them.

Here are the hard cold facts:

• Most platform change submissions sent to the platform committee by outsiders will be quietly buried. As a general rule, platform committees are made up by people with their own agendas to advance, with no time for anyone else's efforts.

• Proposals made by committee members will have to compete against those proposals from other members- who, as mentioned before, have their own agendas. Furthermore, these are likely to be longtime LP activists, which is another way of saying anarchists; moderate Libertarians tend to burn out fast.

• Proposals which make it into the committee report will have to face the convention... a convention which will concentrate the power of the devoted purists and anarchists and dissolve the power of the less committed, less enthusiastic moderates and reformers. Any group which makes up more than one-quarter of the delegates in attendance has the power to stop new proposals dead... and although simple deletion only takes a majority vote, there tends to be greater enthusiasm for scheduling votes on adding new proposals than taking old proposals away.

• Proposals made from the convention floor must be heard... but only if there is spare time in the convention. Anyone who has attended a political convention can tell you this: there is NEVER free time in the convention. Odds on a floor proposal even coming to a vote, much less passing, are very, very long indeed.

That's what we're fighting against. We moderates and reformers accuse anarchists and purists of wanting to keep the LP as a debating society, not a political party. We need to apply that critique to ourselves- we need to quit talking about change and start planning how we're going to do it. If change could be brought about by empty talk, the only limit on Libertarian success would be a shortage of candidates for office!

Here are my personal recommendations for action. It's already too late to implement some of these proposals on the national level, but most of this applies to your state affiliate party as well. Get involved as much as you can, where you can.

1. Get involved with the platform committee. If possible, get ON the committee. If not, sit down with any and all committee members you can find who are willing to listen. Put your proposal before the committee as early as possible. Bring it up as often as possible. Get action. Support committee members who support your views...and fight to bring down committee members who oppose them. Politics is not a nice business; if someone opposes you, you either get them out of your way or give up.

2. Get reform-minded people named as voting delegates to the convention. The anarchists and purists don't need to turn out the vote- their vote is guaranteed! We, however, need to organize to overcome their opposition to our reforms. That means going to local conventions and getting named as delegates to state conventions. That means going to state conventions or executive committees and getting named as delegates to the national convention. This should not be difficult; most states routinely fail to fill all their delegate slots.

3. Get reform delegates TO the conventions. Those of us who can't go to the conventions for lack of free time need to provide funds for those who have the time but not the money. Those with time but no money need to get themselves named delegates and then find people to fund the trip. This is done on a routine basis by the Democrats and Republicans, and by the various caucuses within those parties. They do it because it works. We need to pack the conventions, one way or another, or else our reforms just won't have the votes.

4. Change the rules. As things currently stand, we as reformers are playing the purists' game. They set up the rules specifically to prevent people like us from making the LP less pure. We need a sunset provision, such as was enacted in Texas in 2004, to wipe the platform clean at each convention. We need to lower the supermajorities to make changes to the Statement of Principles and for specific planks. The place to do these things is NOT the Platform Committee, but the Rules and Bylaws committees at state and national level... and this needs to happen before anything else, and as soon as possible.

Remember, in politics talk is cheap. We can announce our position on one thing after another, shout it out to the world. However, if we aren't the ones who actually make the decisions, our words count for nothing. Elected officals- be they Congressmen or convention delegates- are not obligated to listen to the people except at the ballot box. Once elected, they can do whatever they wish.

If we want to succeed, we have to be the ones in power. That holds true for reforming government; it is equally true for reforming our party.

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