New Party

WASHINGTON -- Ross Perot's surprise plan to start a third national party that would field a presidential candidate in 1996 is throwing the Federal Election Commission into a tizzy over questions of how the effort can be legally financed. The immediate question is whether Mr. Perot can bankroll it himself, or will be restricted by federal limits on political contributions.The federal campaign-finance law stipulates that an individual can spend all he wants on a candidacy of his own, as Mr. Perot did in 1992, but can contribute only $1,000 to someone else.

Are we capable of restoring American values and ending the governmental logjam created by Democrats and Republicans alike? Do we have the moxie and patriotism necessary to address the increasing challenges facing America today? The sequester struggle again suggests we can't - at least under current circumstances. But maybe, with a new political party, we can. Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum's new book, "That Used to Be Us," describes America's regression since the Cold War ended and outlines our critical challenges posed by globalization, the information technology revolution, out-of-control debt, rising energy consumption and climate change.

TOKYO -- The phone rang just before midnight one Sunday in May, and a stranger was on Yoshio "Terry" Terasawa's line."When I hung up, my wife said, 'I can guess what he wanted, and I want you to know this -- if you become a politician, I promise I'll divorce you,' " he recalled.Twelve weeks after that May conversation, Mr. Terasawa is putting his apartment at the Watergate in Washington on the market and leaving behind 17 years spent as a Wall Street executive and four as a senior World Bank executive.

Sometimes less is more, more or less. Sometimes, less is all you have and all you have will do just fine. Sometimes, the small things, the short things, the bits and pieces are worth keeping because they might be one day useful; my father felt that way about stove bolts. Walter Hard, a Vermont folk poet of Robert Frost's generation, once told of the frugal Yankee woman - was there any other kind? - who left a bag in her attic labeled, "Pieces of string too short to use. " So, alrighty then, that's my preamble and I'm going with it. Here, forthwith, are pieces of column too short to use ... • Suggestion for the Baltimore merchants who oppose Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's proposal to increase the city's bottle tax to five cents to pay for school renovations: Turn what you see as a problem into an opportunity.

WASHINGTON -- Ross Perot's plan to start a new Independence Party and drive either the Republican or Democratic Party into oblivion could be an historic development in American politics -- or a grand fizzle.It depends on how enthusiastically Mr. Perot's troops respond, and whether a candidate of substance seizes the opportunity if it materializes.As usual, Mr. Perot said it was ''the people'' talking, and indeed the plan comes after yearlong discussions and workshops of his United We Stand America organization on the feasibility and desirability of a third party.

JERUSALEM -- Beset by dissidents in his party, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has decided to abandon the conservative Likud and plans to compete in early elections as head of a new party, Israeli news media reported yesterday. Asaf Shariv, Sharon's top adviser, told the Associated Press the prime minister would make a formal announcement today and ask Israeli President Moshe Katsav to dissolve the parliament, which would trigger early elections. Majalli Whbee, a Likud lawmaker who is close to Sharon, told army radio that the prime minister called him about his decision to form a new party.

MOSCOW -- A group of prominent Soviet political figures, including former Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and presidential adviser Alexander Yakovlev, has been holding secret meetings aimed at launching a political party that would challenge the Communists in national elections, Soviet political sources say.Shevardnadze already has come under the threat of expulsion from the Communist Party for publicly advocating the creation of a new democratic party....

LOS ANGELES -- Organizers of Ross Perot's drive to launch a new national party, set back by what they see as Republican "dirty tricks," are claiming they will still beat Tuesday's deadline to qualify for the 1996 presidential ballot in California.Russell J. Verney, an official of Mr. Perot's Dallas-based United We Stand America organization, which is in charge of the campaign, says, "We're halfway. Right on track" to collect the 89,007 voter registrations required by law, "plus a cushion" against any forms thrown out as invalid.

JERUSALEM -- As the campaign for Israel's prime minister enters its final days, Yitzhak Mordechai is stuck in the middle.In March, the former defense minister launched his campaign for prime minister with the founding of the Center Party. Once the darling of the conservative Likud coalition, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mordechai was regarded as the most popular politician in Israel.Today, though, his standing in the prime minister's race has dropped precipitously. Mordechai trails leading contender Ehud Barak and incumbent Netanyahu by more than 25 percentage points.

ROSS PEROT says the time has come for a third party in America. He predicts that the loyalists of his 1992 campaign, plus converts to the point of view of his United We Stand, America organization, will get a new party on the ballot in all 50 states, then select a presidential ticket that will be competitive with the Republican and Democratic tickets. He himself may head the ticket, but he urges others, of "the caliber" of Colin Powell, to seek it.Mr. Perot, who got 19 percent of the vote in a three-way race in 1992, says he expects his party will eventually supplant either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.

Your recent editorial regarding Egypt ("The revolution betrayed," Dec. 22) refers to "the moderately Islamist Muslim Brotherhood," biggest winner so far in Egypt's parliamentary voting, and to the country's "weak secular and liberal parties. " The secular and liberal parties are weak, if not uniformly secular or liberal, and they evidence strong anti-capitalist and anti-Semitic influences. But what is moderate about the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party so far could be campaign and coalition tactics, not strategy.

At 10 p.m. on a recent Thursday night, Red Maple, the lounge in Mount Vernon, was as quiet as an Old West movie town before a gunfight. Even the tumbleweeds were away, possibly pre-gaming somewhere else. Then, at 10:30 p.m. on the dot, like Daniel Craig in "Cowboys & Aliens," the crowds materialized as if out of nowhere, looking just as surprised to be there. The reason for the sudden change was the lounge's special that night: an open bar until 11 p.m. Yuengling and rail vodkas flew from the behind the bar as an overburdened bartender struggled to keep up with demand.

Club Phoenix is a dumpy two-floor bar in Mount Vernon that's forgotten for most of the week, even by the crowd of older gay men that frequent it. But on weekends, it's become known for hosting dance parties on its rickety, unvarnished upstairs floor. Most Saturdays, a bunch of Maryland Institute College of Art students serve as DJs for the Dance Your [Butt] Off party. And this Friday, it will host, for the second time, Ice Age, a monthly party dedicated to obscure, atmospheric music that marries Goth rock and New Wave — something that might sound like a cut from the Cure's album "Seventeen Seconds.

Maryland Republicans will provide clues to how they plan to mend a divided and demoralized party when they meet Saturday to choose their leader for the next four years. Whoever is elected to chair the state party can look forward to a season of change: Gov. Martin O'Malley and the Democrat-controlled General Assembly will be redrawing legislative and congressional districts, term limits mean the next gubernatorial race will be for an open seat and, for the first time since 1998, former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. is unlikely to be the party's nominee for governor.

President Barack Obama just secured billions in tax breaks for low- and middle-income workers, an extension of unemployment benefits for millions of people, extensions of tax breaks for college tuition, child tax credits, and incentives for businesses to expand. All of that will inject more money into the economy at a time when it is still fragile and should help create jobs. And for this, he's facing strong opposition from the very group of people who have spent the last two years defending his efforts to stimulate the economy: congressional Democrats.

Listen to the torrent of expected turmoil from the GOP takeover of the House of Representatives: the huge political battles ahead, the hand-to-hand combat with President Barack Obama, the legislative Armageddon. Yeah, agenda this, policy that. But I'll tell you where the real turmoil begins. It's in the mechanics: the transfer of real estate from the erstwhile majority to the now-ascendant minority, the shift in operations, the scramble for office space, the control of committee rooms — and the menu in the Longworth cafeteria.

WASHINGTON -- Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot announced plans last night for a third political party to run an independent presidential candidate in 1996.Mr. Perot, who dodged questions about whether he himself might be that candidate, said retired Gen. Colin L. Powell was among half a dozen "world-class people" he'd like to see as the candidate of the new Independence Party.Mr. Perot said organization of the new party will start at once in California to meet an Oct. 24 deadline to qualify for the 1996 ballot, and he also will work to meet deadlines in Ohio and Maine before the end of this year.

TOKYO -- Six of seven opposition parties that could form a coalition in Japan for the first time since 1948 appeared to reach agreement yesterday on reforms that would form the basis of a non-Liberal Democratic Party government.Leaders of two key parties announced that they would demand acceptance of a reform plan as the price of their support in a coalition.The two parties, the Japan New Party and the New Party Harbinger, hold decisive parliamentary votes in the alliance against the Liberal Democrats, who fell 29 seats below a majority in last Sunday's election.

I try to read every e-mail readers send me, and respond at least once to all but those who resort to unseemly language and name-calling. (You would be surprised by how many letters are not, shall we say, "family-friendly.") One of the things I've noticed in critical e-mails, ostensibly sent by conservative readers, is the frequent invocation of a person who occasionally makes news but is generally not part of our daily national political discourse: Jimmy Carter. The former Democratic president's lone term ended almost 28 years ago. And yet, for a surprising number of people, Mr. Carter is like a boogeyman lurking in America's political basement, ready to spring up at any moment and chain-saw the country in half.

WASHINGTON -- There's one thing I appreciate about what I call the "X-treme" candidates in the presidential debates. When they speak, sometimes a real debate almost breaks out. The X-treme candidates are always out there, dancing on the edges of politics like skateboarders at the X Games, the annual televised "extreme" multisports event that compare to the Olympics the way demolition derbies compare to the Indianapolis 500. There's Rep. Ron Paul, the...