I love reading the New Year’s edition of The Economist.  The sensible thing to call this year’s issue is The Year in 2005.  2005 is an exciting year for me, both on a personal, political, and philosophical level.  It’s the year I head out on my own, a legal adult, into the world of the living.  Finished will be the prenatal fantasy that is high school, and whether for better or worse I’ll leave all these familiar faces behind to explore this new territory that holds infinite possibility.  Politically and philosophically, I’ll gain the credibility that I deserve from this move.  That’s a lot more exciting than I think a lot of people realize.  I’m energized and ready to meet that brave new world.

The Year in 2005 is filled with hopeful – but thoughtful and practical – input for the everyday reader, the world leader and the young thinker alike.  I read its sober but heartening predictions and plans, plans that promise the perpetuation of humankind, the halving of world poverty, the major issues that will face the leaders of the developed world, and the things that will concern the everyday citizens that comprise The Economist’s main reader base.  But the editors and guest columnists of The Economist know that the eyes of the world are watching – and reading.

I don’t feel like the eyes of the world are watching and reading me.  Maybe they should, and although a lot of what goes on is very mundane and not really worthwhile, but 2005 is going to be a truly great year.  2004, wrote a Time columnist, was the Year of the Insurgent.  2005, if I have anything to do about it, will be the Year of the Revolutionary.  We’re done with insurgency – the disorganized complaint of the restive millions.  We’re ready to move on to full-fledged revolution, and I don’t mean the transfer of power from one political party to another.

The Republicans and the Democrats are peddlers of men, not philosophy.  Perhaps it’s better this way – if these groups peddled philosophy like they peddled men, then the line between them would disappear altogether.  Truthfully, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see the real difference between them.  Fiscal responsibility, for example, has been in the Democrats’ court since the Clinton Presidency, and before.  Government intervention in trade and personal affairs has become the realm of the Republicans, with the proposal of a federal “Marriage Protection Amendment” and President Bush’s recently repealed tariffs on foreign steel.  On an even more fundamental level, both parties support the republican system embodied by the federal government and state government structures.

I get the feeling from talking to people that they’re fed up with these aging, dogmatic parties.  They’re not alone: I couldn’t agree more.  I guess we’re all sick of dogma and rhetoric and men as the product.  I can’t impose myself so much to say that I think that everyone wants philosophy and principle to be the product that political parties are selling to the masses, but I do think it’s a very practical and necessary shift that looms in the future.

The road leading to – and the events that transpired on – November 2, 2004, proved to me that both the Democrats and the Republicans are busy selling men and women to the citizens of the United States.  George W. Bush’s tight but legitimate victory in the Presidential race stood out to me as the exemplar of this product.  Voters, when polled, seemed to like Mr. Bush’s confidence and security record, seeing in him someone who was willing to put himself on the line in the international community in order to keep his country safe.  They didn’t see the same kind of thing in Mr. Kerry, and personality was often cited as the main complaint against him.

Would John Kerry make a better President for the United States?  That “what if…?” question was asked time and time again on November 3, and undoubtedly Mr. Bush himself pondered the question, if briefly, while celebrating his victory.  By the time the results from Hawaii rolled in, that question was rendered irrelevant.  The foremost question in my mind was, what did Mr. Kerry do wrong?  Answers abounded – his lack of stage presence and flair, his patrician New England demeanor, his apparent inconsistency on matters of great consequence to the American voter, and poorly handled challenges to his credibility.  So many of these points raised an even better question in my mind – is the American voter too preoccupied with the man?

My answer, that I have only now been coming to realize, is yes.  The preoccupation with the man is not necessarily the fault of the American voter: it is the fault of the system he has been thrust into, and the fault of the political parties that control the status quo.  It’s been said that the job of political parties is to sell a product to the public, and that could not be more true.  What, then, is the product that the parties should be selling?

As I mentioned earlier, the Democrats and the Republicans both can be blamed for selling men instead of philosophy and principle.  Even the purported “values” of the so-called neo-Conservatives are less about actual philosophy or principle than about the supposed “moral integrity” of the candidate that the party is fielding.  In the case of George W. Bush, this strategy apparently worked – instead of turning the man into the embodiment of the issues, the Bush team marketed the “values” as an embodiment of the man, and carried the election.

The American voter, as a result, has been misled to place the importance not upon the philosophy behind the party, but upon the men that each party chooses each year: seemingly less upon intellectual importance but upon star power, as it were.  Does your candidate have a face for television?  A voice for the radio?  Does he possess a kind demeanor but a strong set of the shoulder or jaw?  How is his hair?  What “moral” dirt can the other party bring against him?  Does he look too old or too young?  Does he seem dangerous to the status quo?  A man of intellectual importance will be dangerous to the status quo, but that’s not the platform that the man of intellectual importance runs on.  Certainly, charisma will help this man succeed, as it will any man in any profession, since he cannot expect the average voter to fully understand the heart of his philosophical message.  In comparison, the men that are chosen by both the Republicans and the Democrats – and even the men who choose themselves – are transient.  A character is but a fleeting player on the national stage, but a profound philosophical shift is a change of lasting importance.
It’s those fleeting players who have left the more lucid portion of the American population jaded and cynical, doubtful of the integrity of the system, and their fellow voters within the system.  They’re tired of choosing sides.  That says to me that they are tired of the rhetoric and the dogma, sick of choosing between petty men and women who come and go with each election and all sound very similar to one another.  Yet, point out the party stooges, they fail to elect a third-party candidate to consequential offices like the Presidency.

Quite frankly, there are very few third parties that truly represent a philosophical break from the Democrat-Republican continuum that has so fixated this country that even the independent-minded men and women of the United States Senate cannot really break away.  If these parties do represent a real change, they do not, at the same time, have the resources or the solid intellectual firepower to represent a realistic threat to the status quo.  I can guarantee that the hardliner party animals with both the Democrats and the Republicans don’t mind one bit.  It will take an effort of epic proportions to field the first of a generation of New Candidates who stand for something substantial, and that do not need the endorsements of pop culture icons to win elections – let alone galvanize voters.  Not only does the first New Candidate have to emerge, and soon, but the electorate needs to recognize his importance, too.  Without the help of substantial support, the New Candidate cannot succeed.

Why do I seem to think that 2005 will be the Year of the Revolutionary, then?  There are no elections for this New Candidate to sweep.  I really don’t think that 2005 will not be about electing new leaders, but about resurrecting the doubtful from the graves of their potential for participation.  It will not be about the issues of the day that transfix the vapid, but about growing a new philosophical crop to challenge the Democrat-Republican bloc.  It will be less about 15-second sound bytes than hashing out the intellectual basis of a challenging, honest third party.

I know that the real America is ready to forget things like the Dean Scream, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, and Vote for Change.  The real America spent this election looking – in vain – for something that really represented a revolution, more than liberal reactionaries or conservative hardliners.  They were looking for a revolution that wasn’t a side.  They were vaguely conscious of the fact that they’re bigger and better than the dichotomy they’re trapped in.

The World in 2005 predicts a more moderate second Bush term.  The President has nothing to prove anymore.  In his first term he laid down the law, and those who weren’t with him were against him.  The sides returned – this time, they were even more about the man than the issues, as Mr. Bush and his enemies painted him as a lone cowboy laying down the law.  What side we picked will prove unimportant in the long run.  In fact, this emphasis on sides has so many truly intelligent American voters and future voters alienated and lost.  Mr. Bush presented a gunfight as his challenge.  What The Economist should be calling for is an intellectual challenge, because an intellectual challenge is not a “side.”  An intellectual challenge is an answer, and in 2005 I’m throwing down the glove.  Who’s with me?