Neither Clinton Nor Trump

By William Kristol The Weekly Standard May 16, 2016

I have always voted for the Republican presidential candidate. From Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford to Ronald Reagan (twice) and George H.W. Bush (twice) and Bob Dole, from George W. Bush (twice) to John McCain and Mitt Romney—I've checked the box next to those eight names on all 11 occasions I've had the chance. About half the time, I've voted for someone else in the primary. But even in those cases I never hesitated before supporting the Republican nominee in the general election.

I regret none of those votes. I believe in retrospect, as I believed at the time, that in every case these men would have pursued policies better for the country than their opponents would have, and I believe now, as I did then, that in almost every case the Republican nominee was also superior to his opponent in terms of character and temperament and judgment.

My GOP presidential voting streak will end at 11. I cannot vote for Donald Trump. It's not clear that his mixed bag of motley policies would be superior to those of his Democratic opponent. He could well pick better Supreme Court justices, which is important; but he could well pursue a less sound foreign policy, which is also important. But policy is not the issue. Character is. It is clear that Donald Trump does not have the character to be president of the United States.

And it is clear Hillary Clinton ought not to be our next president either.

What to do?

Find a better choice. Recruit and support an independent candidate.

I'm not prone to encouraging or supporting independent candidacies. I've never done so. I think the two-party system has served America well. I think, all in all, the Republican party has served the country well. I could even make a case that, of all the political parties in the world, the Republican party is one of the most impressive: It's been right more often about more consequential things than almost any other.

But it was wrong to nominate Donald Trump.

The good news is that it is not too late to give Republican voters, a majority of whom have not supported Donald Trump in the primaries, an alternative. An independent Republican candidate can help prevent the conflation of the Republican party with Trump and of conservatism with Trumpism. Such a candidate could also appeal to many independents and some Democrats. He or she could win.

Really? Yes. Getting an independent candidate on the ballot in all 50 states is less difficult than conventional wisdom has it. The only states whose ballot access deadlines are before the end of June are Texas and North Carolina, and those deadlines are susceptible to legal challenges that are being drawn up as I write. Those challenges will probably succeed—but if they fail, one would have to resort to a write-in campaign in those two states. A U.S. Senate candidate won a write-in campaign in 2010.

Of course, putting together a serious independent campaign is a formidable task—but plenty of operatives and aides and donors and lawyers stand ready. They are at present only loosely organized, if at all. But it is appropriate in this era of distributed intelligence that this independent campaign start as a distributed campaign, especially since the need for a far broader distribution of power and responsibility to citizens and for bottom-up policies is likely to be a theme of such an effort.

And the fact is that an articulate and independent-minded conservative, perhaps a generation younger than the two elderly plutocrats between whom the parties are asking us to choose, could make a real race of it. He or she could build enough momentum over the summer to get into the debates, and then ... couldn't the debates be a moment when large numbers of our countrymen might awaken with relief and greet with excitement the possibility of liberation from the nightmare of Clinton or Trump? How exciting would it be to inaugurate an attractive candidate who's neither Clinton nor Trump on January 20, 2017?