968) and John Anderson (1980) had some impact, but the 19 percent of the national vote accumulated by Ross Perot in 1992 was the first that may have affected the election's outcome. Furthermore, in the 2000 election, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader accumulated a sizable share of democratic votes. More Republicans than Democrats defected to Perot's Reform party and this may have allowed Bill Clinton to capture the election from the incumbent, President Bush. Yet the biggest problem for any third-party candidate is that the party system is so important that in polls 61 percent of voters "feel that a president who was neither a Republican nor Democrat would have 'serious problems' dealing with Congress"(Collett 434).It is also, as Crabtree notes, very significant that "a candidate such as Ross Perot found it necessary to create a political party to support his independent candidacy"(Crabtree 18). This is a strong indication of the broader importance of parties. While it is bi-partisan politics that affect the management of Congressional business and strongly affect the nature of Congressional legislation, the two major parties also function at every level of politics. As Haley Barbour, the chairman of the Republican National Committee put it, someone who got information about the parties only from the popular press would think that "political parties were mere shells through which enormous sums of money were laundered outside the public's eye to unscrupulous politicians"(Crabtree 19). But the two major parties are very complex and extend from the national committees throughout the state and local levels. At the bottom of the structure of state party organizations are the precincts, "small voting district[s] that select [their] own committee members" either through local party caucuses or primary elections" (Crabtree 19). The two major parties are also organized at the city and county level, with legislative and judicial committe...
