No shortcut to power.

• Author: Robertson, Henry
• Position: Politics and Election

The Green Party, if I may use that term in the singular, is the best hope for change through the ballot box. The call is urgent. The country's on an imperialist rampage, civil liberties are under attack, the electoral process is corrupt from top to bottom, the economic system is unjust and unsustainable, and public values have been reduced to a grotesque parody of "freedom." Greens want a share of political power and we want it now.

You can't always get what you want.. All signs are that the rest of the country isn't ready for us. Power, to be democratized, must be decentralized; our political and institution-building focus should be local. Running for higher office is a distraction from that work.

Collecting tens of thousands of signatures to get on the ballot takes thousands of hours of work and is not a good way to organize; you have to minimize the time spent with each voter in order to maximize the number of signatures. Campaign slogans are designed to win votes, not communicate a message of fundamental transformation. Democracy is an idea whose application needs to be worked out for every unit of government starting locally (public utility board, school board, city council, state legislative district, etc.). If we are not ready to implement it once we get in office, then we do not deserve to be elected.

Every state is different. In some states Greens are numerous and their candidates electable, but for every California, New Mexico or Maine there must be five like my home state of Missouri where, despite two presidential campaigns, the Holy Grail of statewide ballot status has eluded us.

In 2004 Ralph Nader may be the Greens' presidential candidate for the third time. He has never joined the Party. In Missouri in 2000, he endorsed the Democrat for US Senate, snubbing our own candidate.

I don't want to knock Nader. I worked to put him on the ballot and I voted for him. The alternative to a high-profile figurehead is a home-grown Green rising from the roots. Whoever that person might be, he or she would not have Nader's name recognition. the result in Missouri is predictable--no ballot status. But even if the Nader...