By Franz Schurmann

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Prediction #56 for Tuesday, April 18th, 2000

Perot and Buchanan's Main Aim is the Destruction of the Republican Party

No political party is made in Heaven. All are born, live and die. And when one dies another is ready and eager to take its place.

Is the current American election campaign a life-and-death struggle? That's what lessons from American history during the last two centuries suggest. America once again has come to a historic crossroads. Whichever party wins decisively on November 7 will shape America's destiny for decades to come. The other party will die or age prematurely.

From the first Wednesday of February 1789 when George Washington became president to January 20, 1969 when Richard Nixon was inaugurated one party always predominated. The Federalists predominated until the "Revolution of 1800" when Aaron Burr's and Thomas Jefferson's new Democratic-Republican Party ousted them.

Jefferson became president. The party came to be called Democratic because, like Jefferson, it was against entrenched power. One of his best known quotes is "the tree of liberty must be watered every 20 years by the blood of tyrants." The Democrats predominated till 1860 when the radical Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president and America fell into its Civil War.

The Republicans predominated until November 1932. From 1870 on Republican capitalism brought great growth and prosperity to America. But in 1932 capitalism became a bad word. In the terrible Depression year of 1932 one quarter of America's labor force lost their jobs.

In November 1800, 1860 and 1932 three great presidents ----- Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt ----- and their parties came to power. The electoral battles were about deeply rooted interests. But what counted most was vision. The candidate who had the larger vision vanquished the one with the smaller vision.

The great Federalist Alexander Hamilton was a visionary. He saw America's future in the "triangular trade" between Britain, the rich Caribbean islands and the new USA. But Jefferson had a much larger vision. He turned America's back to Britain and organized its march into the West and the world..

By 1860 the Democrats had become a Southern Party that passionately defended slavery. They no longer had any vision, obsessed only with survival. By contrast Abraham Lincoln had a grand vision that gained electoral victory for the new Republican Party. It is best expressed in the opening sentence of his 1863 Gettysburg Address, "four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

In 1932 President Hoover did his best to revive the economy, but his skills were only managerial coming from his engineering background, Roosevelt, on the other hand, had vision embodied in his socialist idea of a New Deal. And in the 1932 election campaign he gave fire to the vision, evident in one of his most often repeated sayings, "there is nothing to fear but fear itself."

In each of these three years one party emerged on top for decades to come while the other sank into long lasting minority status. Why wasn't 1968 such a year of destiny?

In 1961 the popular new president Kennedy backed the Civil Rights movement but also involved the US in Vietnam. But in 1968 the hated president Lyndon Johnson could not get us out of Vietnam yet fully supported the war against segregation. Presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey waffled on Vietnam while his opponent Richard Nixon kept promising he would find a way out.

As a result for the first time in its history the US came to have a functioning in-out-in two party system till now. Why can't this go on for decades to come? The word globalism offers the answer to the question.

In each of the three axial years 1800, 1860 and 1932 the American nation faced a directional choice between two visions. The smaller vision said stick with what is old because it's more safe and just. The larger vision urged head into unknown territory or waters with all its perils and opportunities.

In 1800 Jefferson was already looking towards the Pacific. In 1860 Lincoln already made the choice of going to war with the South. In 1932 Roosevelt surrounded by idealistic young lawyers was already heading into the minefields of socialism.

In 2000 Bill Clinton, with only nine months left in office is propelling America into a global terra incognita. The demonstrators in the recent Washington protest marches painted it as the Evil Empire of Darth Vader.

But the demonstrators had no counter-vision to offer. Nor do George W. Bush and the Republicans offer any. Tax cuts seem to be the best the latter can do. But Pat Buchanan does have a counter-vision similar to what the great Southern leader John Calhoun offered a century and a half ago. Calhoun advised the North to go easy on slavery and so save the American Union. Buchanan says go easy on globalism and so save America.

Buchanan also says "the establishment has sold us out" and "corporate lobbyists own both the Republican and the Democratic parties." These words could come from the mouths of radical protesters or unionized workers. And when he says stick it to Clinton and the Chinese too that resonates with conservative patriots.

Like him or hate him no doubt that Clinton has the larger vision. He wants to be peace-maker in East and West Asia. In Palo Alto's poor neighbor East Palo Alto he just raised $100 million from Silicon Valley to do away with the digital divide. And he is at the center of the effort to keep the unending bull market unending. Market wizard Abby Joseph Cohen says it could last another 10 to 15 years.

In 1992 H. Ross Perot's new Reform Party ruined George Bush's chances for a second term. On November 7, 2000 Reform candidate, Buchanan, could take enough votes away from the Republicans so they would lose Congress without gaining the presidency. It's then conceivable from the lessons of American history that the Republican Party could come apart.

Both Perot and Buchanan are anti-globalist nationalists as are their conservative supporters. The angry left is anti-globalist. But Al Gore now has aligned himself completely with Clinton the globalist visionary. If the Democrats win big on November 7 the Reform Party could emerge as the new major opposition to the Democrats.

All this looks as if the main strategic aim of Perot and Buchanan in the coming campaign is the destruction of the Republican Party.