No Labels Has No Solutions

Attending the bipartisan organization’s first New Hampshire 'town hall' revealed its essential vapidity.

T wo–thirds of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction (it’s nearly three-fourths in some polls). In the RealClearPolitics polling averages, fewer than 40 percent of Americans view Joe Biden favorably, and the same is true of Donald Trump. Americans look forward to the prospect of a Trump–Biden rematch about as much as they look forward to being trapped in a sleeping bag with a rabid gorilla.

American politics produces few moments so richly inviting for a third party. And for months, No Labels has teased that it will rise to this historic opportunity. Then came Monday, July 17, and the first No Labels town hall in New Hampshire. To call it “underwhelming” would be to suggest, incorrectly, that it whelmed at all, unless one means the less used but first definition of “whelm”: to “cover or engulf completely with usually disastrous effect.”

Because West Virginia senator Joe Manchin was the headliner, a small group of anti-fossil-fuel protesters gathered outside. Nearly fossilized themselves, they handed out anti-Manchin pamphlets and tried to discourage attendance by calling Manchin, and by extension No Labels, a shill for the fossil-fuel industry.

One woman walking past the protesters shouted back, “I don’t want to go in either,” implying that she was there only to accompany her companion. That sentiment seemed to permeate the humid July air. People weren’t inspired to show up as much as they wandered in as part of a rambling quest for direction in a politically alienating time. It was the latest stop on a long, lonely, haphazard search for a new political home.

Attendees were told they’d be present for the unveiling of the “No Labels Common Sense Agenda,” a plan to unite Americans behind a vision of a better, less divided future. But headliners Joe Manchin and Jon Huntsman didn’t tug very hard on the curtain that hid the plan. They pulled a bit, then let it crash back down, like a Muppet Show sketch in real life.

Sure, there were handouts. Each attendee at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics was offered a handsome 63-page booklet, printed on heavy card stock, outlining all 30 points of the “Common Sense Agenda.”

There was point No. 1: “America can’t solve its biggest problems and deliver the results hardworking taxpayers want, need, and deserve unless Democrats and Republicans start working together side by side on bipartisan solutions.”

Point No. 11: “As a matter of decency, dignity, and morality, no child in America should go to bed or go to school hungry.”

Point No. 18: “A world led by America is safer than a world led by Russia and China would be.”

Releasing this agenda was supposed to be the purpose of the event, but no one seems to have told the two headliners.

In an introductory statement, dear old Joe Lieberman — friend of John McCain, Democratic vice-presidential nominee 23 years ago, and founding chairman of No Labels — said of the agenda, “I hope you will be excited by its vision and by its direction.”

His hopes were immediately dashed.

Instead of introducing the 30-point agenda, outlining it, highlighting it, discussing it, or even making a concerted effort to address it, Huntsman and Manchin sat down to answer a series of questions, “town-hall style,” from Scripps News political correspondent Kevin Cirilli and attendees.

It felt like a press conference was called and a town-hall meeting broke out. Except, the “town hall” was planned. It was the event. There was to be no presentation of the 30-point agenda, no rallying the audience around a shared vision, leaving them excited to participate in a new political movement. Instead, the moderator was allowed to ask whatever questions he wanted, and microphones were passed around so audience members could steer the conversation in whatever direction they wanted.

And steer they did.

The moderator asked political questions. Looking at Manchin and Huntsman: “Is this the presidential ticket?”

Then the attendees took their turn. Naturally, the first audience question, in true New Hampshire–primary fashion, was from a political activist who asserted a dubious string of premises to lead into her attack — in the form of a question, barely — on Joe Manchin for supporting the fossil-fuel industry.

And so it went.

The audience members asked about their personal issues, and Huntsman and Manchin gave their personal answers. It would’ve been disappointing if it weren’t so hilariously predictable.

On fossil fuels, Huntsman said he thought a carbon tax was a good idea. Manchin immediately disagreed, strongly, saying, “I have never, ever supported a price on carbon.”

The very first audience question exposed the organization’s principal flaw. No Labels can pull together bipartisan agreement that America faces big problems, and those problems should be addressed, somehow, by someone. But how? By whom? No one could say, not even the leaders brought forward to sell Americans on this new path forward.

You won’t find any more concrete answers on the No Labels website. There, under the FAQ, is the question: “What does No Labels stand for?” The answer:

We are a growing national movement of commonsense Americans pushing our leaders together to solve our country’s biggest problems. Specifically, we believe:

1. We care about this country more than the demands of any political party.

2. Political leaders need to listen more to the majority of Americans and less to extremists on the far left and right.

3. We are grateful to live in a country where we can openly disagree with other people.

4. America isn’t perfect, but we love this country and would not want to live any place else.

5. We can still love and respect people who do not share our political opinions.

6. We support, and are grateful for, the U.S. military.

No Labels’ principles are so calorie-free that its own leaders seem to have swallowed them without knowing what they’d eaten. Where it does have helpful suggestions — build more housing, stop deficit spending — it struggles to articulate how these goals will be achieved. After all, its running a candidate for president, not proposing a concrete agenda to be passed by Congress. For all its talk about civics, no one in the group seems to have considered that a victorious No Labels president would still have to deal with a Congress elected by a sharply divided country, with members answerable to constituents, not the No Labels board members.

No Labels is a beneficiary of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. It does not disclose its donors for the same reason most issue organizations don’t. “We never share the names of our donors because we live in an era where agitators and partisan operatives try to destroy and intimidate organizations they don’t like by attacking their individual supporters,” according to its website.

But at the meeting to launch its “Common Sense Agenda,” Manchin made a point of attacking Citizens United and urging its repeal — something that’s nowhere in the organization’s agenda and something that would make it difficult, if not impossible, for No Labels to raise the tens of millions of dollars it needs to implement its ambitious, if empty, political agenda.

After an hour and a half of listening to politicians make a sweltering room even hotter and stickier, the poor Granite Staters (who might’ve braved flood-damaged roads to get there) left with no greater understanding of the No Labels Common Sense Agenda than they had when they’d arrived.

While Manchin spoke to folks who’d been stuck watching on TV monitors in an overflow room, professional autograph hounds surrounded him as people shuffled out, asking each other what No Labels’ position on this or that issue might be, since it didn’t come up during the event.

In his introduction, Lieberman pointed out an historical connection that otherwise would’ve gone unnoticed: “We called it Common Sense to evoke the memory of Tom Paine’s booklet, which 250 years ago energized the American Revolution and led to our independence and to the creation of our great democratic republic. This year we hope that No Labels’ commonsense division helps bring our political parties together, revives our government, and reunites the American people.”

Perhaps his slip-of-the-tongue utterance of “division” instead of “vision” was an omen for how the evening would go. At any rate, No Labels’ leadership would’ve done everyone a favor by spending a few minutes reading the original Common Sense.

Paine wasn’t seeking moderation or common ground. His purpose was to radicalize the populace and provoke a revolution. He inspired Americans to action by mocking voices of moderation with insults and denunciations. He would’ve had no use for No Labels.

On the very first page of Common Sense, Paine wrote, “When we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a Government, which we might expect in a country without Government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”

If he’d attended a No Labels event, he surely would’ve added another means by which we furnish our own suffering.