Political Science

There are several patterns and outcomes that are fairly common in the realm of political science. Similarly, there are some subjects and points of study that are more common than others. Just a few that come to mind include the ethics of congressional staff, whether third party candidates could or should be a viable option and the demarcation that could or should exist between federal and state authority. For each of these three major examples, there will be an example given of such a thing and an analysis of the overall paradigm and question. While there are some ideas and concepts that make a lot of sense to the common voter, the people in Washington seem to be less than inclined to listen.

One member of Congress that has been accused of ethics violations would be Charles Rangel, the former Democrat member of the House of Representatives. It would seem that he was most certainly guilty as he was convicted of a total of eleven different ethics violations. These violations ran the gamut but mostly related to fundraising violations and his personal finances. An example of the latter would be his failure to pay taxes on rental property that he owned. He had a villa in the Dominican Republic that he did not pay taxes for renting out. Beyond that, he held campaign and party functions in his rent-controlled apartments in Harlem, New York. Of the eleven charges that he was convicted for violating, the verdict was unanimous on ten of them. That trial was chaired by fellow Democrat Zoe Lofgren. Rangel is no longer in office. In terms of how much this does or does not impact the trust in Congress for the author of this response, it is tempting to say that it is “typical” or “pervasive” that members of Congress do such things. Indeed, that is not the case as most Congress members, from what is really known, do not break the law. Even so, some members of Congress (current or former) seem to break (or bend) the law without being prosecuted. One example that many would cite is Hillary Clinton. To be fair, there are plenty of Republicans that are charged with similar crimes, if not worse. The current eruption of sexual harassment and assault charges is a good example. Both Republicans and Democrats are being ensnared by such accusations. Just a few names of candidates or current elected officials include Al Franken, John Conyers, Roy Moore (Senate candidate) and a few others. As was explained by Representative Charlie McCaul in light of what happened with Rangel, there is a hope of many that there is a new era of increased transparency, honestly and compliance. The current uproar going on in Congress, the media the corporate world would seem to be a bad thing. It is bad that people are being victimized. However, a new era of accountability is hopefully on the way. If it happens the right way, the devious and degenerates that would deign to run for Congress will go back into their rat holes (Kane, 2010).

The next primary topic of conversation to be covered in this report would be why no third-party candidate has not been successful to date. There is probably a rather long list of reasons, but there are some that stand out more than others. Before getting to that, some third-party candidates have actually done fairly well. In other cases, independent candidates have don well. For example, Lisa Murkowski lost the GOP primary for a prior election. However, she won as a write-in in the general. Something very similar happened with Ned Lamont and Joe Lieberman in 2006. Lamont won the primary but Lieberman prevailed in the general election. In the 1990’s, third-party candidate Ross Perot actually did quite well, even if Bill Clinton took home the victory without a majority (Healy, 2006).

In any event, one major reason that third party candidates don’t do well is that the voters tend to stick with the two major parties. For many people, voting on a third-party is a waste and one should probably just stay home rather than vote for a third party. There are those that do “protest votes”. They presumably know that the person will not win. However, they can still say they voted yet they will not vote for any of the major candidates. This was actually quite common in the 2016 presidential election. There were several third-party candidates and they actually garnered a few percentage points each at the state and/or federal level. Another reason third-party candidates don’t do well would surely be money. Indeed, there are massive amounts, into the millions and billions of dollars, that are spent on, for or against the candidates in the two major parties. It should not be a huge surprise that even though Donald Trump is by no means an “establishment” Republican and even though he clearly was not desired as a victorious candidate by a good share of the GOP base, he still ran (and won) as a Republican. A third, and ancillary, reason why third-party candidates are often derided and hated is that they seemingly (at least to some) “split” the vote of the candidate that is closest to them. Indeed, this was said quite a bit when it came to the third-party candidates in the 2016 election. Another example is that Ralph Nader was the bane of the Democrats’ existence when he was able to gain a nominal number of votes during the presidential elections of ten to twenty years ago. Even with the above being said, there would seem to be a lot of people that are willing and ready to vote for a third-party candidate. The rub, of course, is whether those people will actually do that and whether a third-party candidate will be able to surmount the money mountain that Democrats and Republicans are wont to use. The emergence of Trump took a lot of people by surprise. It is possible, albeit unlikely, that the same could happen with a third-party candidate in a way that exceeds what Perot was able to do. It should be noted that Teddy Roosevelt, the very same man that is on Mount Rushmore, was himself a third-party candidate at one point. He still holds the record for most votes obtained as a third-party candidate, nearly ten percent more (27.4 percent) than Perot did in 1992 (“Why Third Parties Can’t Compete”, 2010).

Finally, we come to the federal versus state counterbalance that often happens when it comes to the law. Rather than just use one, the author of this report will use two examples so as to show and prove that they’re handled in different ways depending on the opinion of the people in power. Marijuana, for example, is technically illegal at the federal level (and in many states) but is tolerated for both medicinal and recreational use in many states. Conversely, there is the presence of immigration law. The Trump administration is currently battling “sanctuary cities” while the Obama Administration was quick to invoke what is known as the federal supremacy clause when Arizona tried to pass a law that supposedly just allowed them to enforce federal immigration law. In short, there is the ability and presence of some instances where the federal government puts the kibosh on states doing their own thing when it comes to items that are commonly or primarily handled by the federal government. On one hand, it would presumably make sense that the states honor what is demanded by the federal government since the Constitution would seemingly support that. On the other hand, the government is seemingly picking winners and losers when it comes to what is enforced and that pattern seems to vary depending on who is in power. It would seem to make more sense to update the laws so as to make it clear what all states should follow and/or to make a rule that defers to the preference of the given states (Bolitho, 2015).