What is a Political Platform?

by Carl Milsted Jr.

Submitted Dec 22, 2004

What is a political platform? This looks like a dumb question. But it is not. The answer is not trivial, and it is an answer that many Libertarian Party members fail to grasp. There are important subtleties.

To answer this question, we have to answer the more basic question: what is a political party?

What is a Party?

A political party is a caucus taken from the whole of the voting population. That is, people of similar mind form an organization that agrees to run one candidate for a particular seat. By forming such a caucus, they concentrate their core concerns at the cost of having to compromise among themselves.

That is, consider if 2 fascists and 55 libertarians were on the ballot. Under such circumstances, a fascist is likely to win, even in a heavily libertarian district. For this reason it is in the interest of libertarians to get together and decide on just one candidate to support. And once the libertarians do so, the fascists need to do likewise in order to have a chance at winning.

Note that this process has a price. Each of those 55 libertarian candidates may well have been the favorite of some of the libertarians in the district. However, in order to have a libertarian, supporters of 54 of the candidates must surrender their favorite choice in order to ensure that a fascist does not win. (And the same goes for the other side.)

We could imagine more than one libertarian grouping. If the district is sufficiently libertarian, two such groupings might be viable, or even three. But the more groupings there are, the more likelihood of a non-libertarian winning. A smaller tent allows more purity at the price of less chance of winning.

In some parliamentary systems, smallish minorities can still win elections due to proportional representation. In the U.S. system, a party has to include enough factions so that it can be the majority somewhere. When I say "include enough" I mean both activists, fellow travellers, and swing voters.

It's the Consensus

So how do we define our parties? This is the job of the platforms of each party. Just as each party compromises within itself to produce a consensus candidate from within, each party also produces a consensus statement of its political values to help define the party.

Because this must be a consensus position, fuzziness is necessary. Strong positions taken on every issue can shrink the coalition. Activists can storm out and swing voters can look elsewhere.

But note that we do not need to have consensus on every issue to have a party. We just need enough positioning to define those of similar mind. Diversity must be tolerated for the coalition to be politically viable.

It's Now

People move between parties. Independent voters and ticket mixers move from one year to the next. As such, it makes sense for a political platform to reflect the consensus for what needs to be done now, vs. some excessively longterm vision. More importantly, this is the case for the mainstream parties in the U.S.

Even if you prefer that a platform talk of ultimate visions, this is a bad idea because this is not the popular semantic definition of a platform. To put in longterm visions into a platform is to cause confusion; many people will misinterpret forward looking statements as calls to implement such actions now. This shrinks the coalition!

Does the LP Have a Platform?

The Libertarian Party does not have a platform in the sense of the major parties; the LP has an ultimate vision of the ideal government. Yes, it has some statements of what should be done now, but it also has statements that are intended to be done later. By mixing the two, the LP causes confusion and loses votes.

Further, the LP Platform is not a realistic attempt to build a coalition of like-minded people that is big enough to actually win elections. There are few within the party who think that Americans are ready for what is in the platform. Instead, there are two "wishful" victory scenarios:

1. The LP and related organization can educate the people where they will eventually fine pure libertarianism acceptable. This is to happen even though the government controls most of education and statists own most of the media.
2. Statism will eventually cause economic and/or social collapse. At this point people will be desperate enough for change that they will try anything. Our job is to be there and be organized when this happens. (This is how the Bolsheviks took power.)

A real political party (in a democratic system) tries to win elections... now. This means balancing ideology with reality. This means polling and focus groups. This means "listening tours." "Party of Principle" is a contradiction in terms.

So how many real issue polls have libertarian commissioned? Sad to say, my polling at www.quiz2d.com is about as good as we have, and that ain't very. This is because too few Libertarian activists care about such things. This needs to be fixed.

Does the Platform Matter?

One of the main arguments that I have heard from those who want to keep the platform pure and visionary is that "no one reads political platforms." To this I point out:

• The very political do read platforms. These are just the kind of people likely to become activists in a new political party.
• The political press reads platforms, and their stories about our candidates reflect this.
• The opposition reads our platform. When a moderate Libertarian threatens to win a significant number of votes, the major party opposition usually runs negative ads in the last weeks of the election quoting our platform.
• The LP national staff reads the platform and strives to make all press releases and literature conform to the platform. They are legally required to do so by our bylaws. The results hurt our candidates and our recruitment efforts.

Having a real platform is important.

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