We all know that the current atmosphere in Washington, D.C. can be described as dysfunctional.  I’ve been giving a lot of thought to ways that our dysfunctional political system could be fixed.  Here’s what I’ve come up with.

8 Solutions to the Dysfunctional Political System in America

Today, I'll expand on solution #2:

Strong Third Party—I have long argued that America needs a strong and viable third party. I

thought we came close to that with Ross Perot back in 1992. We need a good, solid third party

that’s made up of the centrists in both the Republican and Democratic parties, the moderates as

they are called, like the Libertarian party. If we had ten or twenty Libertarians in the Senate and

eighty or a hundred in the House and the rest of the seats were fairly evenly divided, it would

force compromise to get anything done and limit the ability of extremists in each party to force

through damaging legislation.

Let’s look at the United Kingdom. They’ve got three major parties: the Tories (Conservatives),

the Labour, and the Liberal Democrats. The Tories have 305 seats out of a total of 650 seats

in the House of Commons. Labour has 253 seats and the Liberal Dems have 57 seats. The

other parties have about thirty seats or so. As you can see, no one party won a majority to

form a government, so the Tories decided to work with the Liberal Dems to form a coalition

government. The Tories can’t get anything done without the help and support of the Liberal

Dems, who don’t always side with the Tories. It makes for an interesting working relationship

and lots of compromise. Wouldn’t this be a good thing in Washington, D.C.? It seems like a

lot more would potentially get done for the American people and less time wasted in bickering

between the two parties. Sadly, the two main parties aren’t going to let a third party be

successful and will work against any third party candidate. And it seems like the media is against

third party candidates as well. When was the last time you heard CNN or Fox News or CBS or

NBC or ABC mention a Libertarian candidate? I seem to recall as well that Ralph Nader when he

ran for President with the Green party wasn’t even invited to most of the debates. Why doesn’t

the establishment and the media want a viable third party?