A breath of fresh air
Rob Price

A lively third-party candidacy is a breath of fresh air in a fundamentally dull campaign season. And so it was I found myself smiling broadly outside the Bath VA this week, as New York's Green Party gubernatorial candidate took a few minutes to call just about every major political actor working the national stage a boob and scoundrel.

Malachy McCourt, brother of Frank McCourt, who wrote the bestselling "Angela's Ashes," came to Bath to have a little fun in the midst of his campaign for the governor's office. McCourt - let's be honest - doesn't have a chance of winning, but he seems to have a shot at garnering 50,000 votes - a critical number in New York politics because it would secure the Green Party a position on future state and national ballots. It would give the party some clout and respectability. And who knows? The Green Party may eventually evolve into a genuinely progressive power in American politics.

The county's political landscape could use such a development, as McCourt and his campaign advisor argued last Wednesday outside the VA. The gist of their charge was this: National - and state - elected officials, both Democrat and Republican, have become for the most part instruments of powerful corporate interests. In turn, the corporate community's political influence has become so great, the typical non-corporate citizen has found himself and herself marginalized from the democratic process, which in truth is no longer a democratic process.

As McCourt put it, corporations receive an array of corporate tax breaks; meanwhile, a U.S. citizen can't deduct "a knee operation."

Now, just to be fair, I should point out recent federal tax receipts - if I understand all this correctly - are surging in part due to a boom in corporate tax revenues. And the politically powerful interest groups are not limited to corporations.

All the same, it's not unreasonable to complain the American political process is dominated by special interests whose power stems from their capacity to donate money to political campaigns. Do you want political clout? Pick your favorite special interests and organize your affiliations accordingly. And get out your checkbook.

This is not a new complaint, though, and McCourt's candidacy is not limited to this criticism. McCourt says his first official act as governor would be to withdraw New York's National Guard from the war in the Iraq.

Not only is he not a supporter of that conflict, his opposition leaves the more mainstream criticisms of national figures such as Hillary Clinton and John Kerry in the dust. He is also an unabashed opponent of the death penalty and jokingly proposed making Eliot Spitzer Lord High Executioner, since Spitzer himself has endorsed executions. Abortion rights? If McCourt wins, he told me, he would appoint anti-abortion rights candidate John Faso to some job "caring for unwanted children."

But back to the main issue: Do we agree with McCourt that there really is no big difference between Republicans and Democrats? At least on the level of rhetoric, there would seem to be many differences: Rhetorically, the national Republican Party supports low income taxes, especially for highend taxpayers; Democrats don't. The Republican Party in general has allied itself with a national conservative religious coalition; Democrats haven't. And let's face it: most Republicans are more comfortable than Democrats around corporate elites.

But McCourt seems to argue those differences don't really matter, or at least are so minor as to be negligible. Basically, he suggests, Republicans and Democrats have all agreed to swim in the same creek, with the same big fishes, and the water is green - although not that attractive Kelly shade. Looking for some big changes in Albany and Washington this year and in 2008? Don't hold your breath.

So McCourt and his fellow Greens tell us they'll have none of it, and while they are purposefully working from the political margins, they are good people with big hearts. I hope they go on working; I may even vote for them on the grounds their campaigns have a better sense of humor than the mainstream efforts.

And speaking of humor, when I asked McCourt what his first official act as governor would be, he answered, without missing a beat, he would petition Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for political asylum. That line, I told him, was almost as funny as William Buckley's 1966 response to a reporter who asked what his first act would be upon his election as mayor of New York City. "Demand a recount," Buckley said.

McCourt laughed; he knew the story.