An intelligent independent candidate in the U.S. presidential
race could force the two main guys to step up.
Eventually the circular firing squad that is America's
Republican primary will be over and the last man standing will be
the party's nominee for president. If that candidate is Rick
Santorum, I think there is a good chance a third party will try to
fill the space between the really "severely conservative" Santorum
(or even Mitt Romney) and the left-of-center Barack Obama.
It would be fitting. After all, this is the 20th anniversary of
Ross Perot's independent candidacy. Perot won close to 20 percent of
the vote, and his success was instrumental in making deficit
reduction one of Bill Clinton's top priorities. An independent
candidate in 2012 who was a little more, shall we say, "normal" than
Perot could have an equally big impact on the winner.
I still don't know if I'd support an independent. Like others, I
worry about electing the wrong person by accident. (See: Ralph Nader
and George W. Bush.) But I know what I'd pay good money to see: an
intelligent independent candidate just taking part in the
presidential debates, because it would make both Obama and his
Republican opponent better. One independent I'd like to see play
that role is David Walker.
Walker was the country's chief auditor, serving from 1998 to 2008
as the U.S. comptroller general. He is currently the chief executive
of the Comeback America Initiative (www.tcaii.org), a nonpartisan
group dedicated to getting America's fiscal house in order. Walker -
- who came in second to Hillary Clinton in a reader poll that
Politico conducted last October for favorite Third Party candidate -
- told me that he has no desire to run but that he's been speaking
across America, trying to do what Perot did.
"He did three things," says Walker. "He woke up the American
people to the truth about our fiscal situation in clear, concise and
compelling terms. He made the presidential debates much more
substantive, and he helped to set the next president's agenda, and,
as a result, we made great progress in reducing the deficit from
1993 to 2000. Now we have lost all of that and more."
Walker's view is simple: "We are not Greece, where the government
grew too big, promised too much and waited too long to restructure,
but we're making many of the same mistakes." Because of the size of
the U.S. economy and the dollar's role as a global reserve currency,
we "have some time" to get our house in order, "but we are not
immune from the laws of prudent finance."
Alas, both of our major parties behave as though we are. The
Democrats, argues Walker, "are still in denial about the need to
renegotiate our social insurance contract." Walker praises Obama for
focusing on the right metric -- our overall debt-to-G.D.P. ratio --
and in offering short-term ideas to enhance economic growth and
address unemployment, like investments in infrastructure. But these
ideas, he says, have to be "coupled with a credible and enforceable
plan to address the structural deficits that threaten our nation's
future position in the world and our standard of living at home" --
and there Obama continues to fall short.
"He is not talking about the fundamental reforms in Medicare and
Medicaid that we need, and he is not ready to touch Social
Security," says Walker, referring to Obama's latest budget. Also,
Obama "talks about tax reform, but it is not comprehensive, and he
is using creative accounting to get to his budget numbers. His
proposals don't come close to stabilizing our debt-to-G.D.P. ratio
at the level we need."
Walker says the president's budget cuts discretionary spending
programs by 1 percent over 10 years, but mandatory spending programs
-- like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and interest on debt -
- will be left to grow by more than 96 percent over the same decade.
As a result, in the year 2022, more than 77 percent of total
government outlays will be on auto-pilot, "which is irresponsible
and unsustainable." There will be little left for defense or
infrastructure, education and research that build our future.
As for Republicans, says Walker, "they don't have a plan to
restore fiscal sanity either. They're in denial that we can solve
our structural deficit problems with either our current level of
taxation -- between 15 and 16 percent of G.D.P. -- or even with our
historical average, about 18 percent of G.D.P. We need more revenue.
Our deficit problem is primarily a spending problem, but it is not
only a spending problem."
We need $1 in new revenue for every $3 in spending cuts,
excluding interest, says Walker -- and that should be accomplished
through tax reform that makes our system "simpler, fairer and more
competitive," while generating more revenue. "The Republicans are
simply in denial about this."
The American people are "starved for three things," concludes
Walker: "truth, leadership and solutions." Unfortunately, the two
parties are just offering "laggardship -- waiting for something to
hit the fan" so they can again just react "without adequate due
diligence."
After months of nutty, gravity-free Republican primary debates,
how great would it be to have presidential debates in which a smart
independent like Walker was in the middle to challenge both sides
and offer sensible solutions?
