alph Nader and Patrick Buchanan have not, will not, and should not participate in presidential debates for 7,424 reasons. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver, that number represents the number of legislators in the 50 states. Nearly all are either Democrats or Republicans.
They form a political base for Congress, which contains no Green Party and no Reform Party members, providing 535 more reasons to exclude no-chance scolds from minor parties. Presidential leadership requires building coalitions of different people with different views. It is not a solo act, the specialty of Nader and Buchanan.
Effective politics begins at the grass roots of organizing, not on the front porch of celebrity. In 1834 the new Whig Party elected 98 House members and 25 senators. The Whigs, after electing two presidents, faded away, replaced by the new Republican Party, which also started at the congressional level, winning 108 House seats and 15 Senate seats in 1854. The two parties have ruled politics since not because of corporate power but because in a big country, two major coalitions have proved practical. Also, they are built on deeds, not words.
''Political organization is not complicated, but it is hard work, and not many people care to perform it 10 or 12 hours a day,'' the late Lawrence F. O'Brien wrote in his memoir ''No Final Victories.'' He left his job as a Springfield saloon keeper to join the Senate campaign of a Massachusetts congressman, John F. Kennedy. O'Brien quoted JFK on the attraction of candidates like Nader and Buchanan: ''Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don't want them to become politicians in the process.''
Al Gore and George W. Bush sullied themselves by being elected to office, but the excluded debaters are tabernacles of purity, having never been elected and accountable to voters. Nader was busy litigating. Buchanan was busy fulminating.
Gore and Bush seldom utter the words ''Democrat'' or ''Republican'' lest fastidious voters regard them as partisan. Both are also fleeing the recent legacies of their parties: the Clinton scandals and the Gingrich follies.
Nader and Buchanan are also shaky standard-bearers. Like many, I admire Ralph and Pat for their determination. Having known them earlier in their careers, I conclude that their choice of parties is opportunistic. Nader is a pale Green, a true indoorsman, not a spruce-hugger. He probably regards the environment as a swell source of manila folders. Buchanan, a conservative zealot, snorts at the namby-pamby notion of ''reform.'' The last ''reform'' that might have pleased Pat was the reaffirmation of militant Catholicism at the Council of Trent in 1563.
Votes for Nader and Buchanan will not be ''wasted,'' because no vote is. But they will not be decisive. In 1968, George C. Wallace defined the transient role of third parties: to ''send them a message.''
In November, Nader will flummox pundits and exceed expectations by winning unlikely, and therefore unpolled, voters. (Buchanan won't - ''an asterisk, and sinking,'' says one pollster.) The Electoral College allows Nader voters a conscience-free message from big states not in contention: California, Texas, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, New England. He'll likely get 5 percent, qualifying the Green Party for federal funding in 2004.
Nader will take on the two-party duopoly in 2004 as more than a gadfly if he has elected supporters. Several Green city councilors already hold office. In Minnesota, Governor Jesse Ventura and his Independence Party are backing congressional and legislative candidates.
Politics can offer instant coffee, not instant gratification. A third party will become serious when its legislative candidates heed the motto on the bumper stickers: ''Think globally, act locally.''
Martin F. Nolan's column appears regularly in the Globe.
