THINK OUTSIDE THE POLITICAL BOX

LOS ANGELES -- When Tom Campbell, a Republican, rose to speak, few of the
15,000 journalists covering the Democratic National Convention listened.

His early evening address went largely unreported by the mainstream media.
Most of its members probably were trolling for news at one of the many
parties that daily served as the opening act to the Democrats' prime-time
program at the Staples Center, the cavernous arena that housed this past
week's gathering.

Campbell appeared on a different stage. He addressed the ''Shadow
Convention,'' an eclectic meeting of maverick intellectuals, combative
politicians and forlorned grassroots activists assembled inside a sweaty
auditorium in an aging, unreclaimed section of Los Angeles a short walk from
the Staples Center.

The Shadow Convention was the place to hear talk of revolutionary, not
evolutionary change. No one offered up more of that than Campbell, a quirky
California congressman making a long-shot bid this year to unseat Dianne
Feinstein, the state's senior U.S. senator.

While those who spoke at the Democratic convention -- and at the
Republican's national meeting in Philadelphia earlier this month -- hewed
closely to the orthodoxies of their party, Campbell's speech was political
sacrilege.

He labeled this nation's drug war ''a failure.'' He complained that while
most drug users in this country are white, the vast majority of those who
have been jailed for drug crimes are Hispanic or African-American. And he
worried aloud that incarceration, not treatment and education, would
continue to be this nation's major approach to fighting the drug war.

Another Slippery Slope?

That's pretty revolutionary talk for a Republican in the throes of a
campaign. But Campbell is nothing if not different. For instance, he
compares this administration's deepening involvement in Columbia's drug war
to the way this country was drawn into Vietnam:

''We are entering a civil war, in a Third World jungle, with roots at least
30 years deep. We are creating strategic hamlets into which those living in
the countryside will be concentrated. We are sending U.S. military advisers.
We are encouraging a Third World country to soak its citizens in toxic
herbicides from aerial spraying. This is our policy in Colombia,'' Campbell
said to raucous applause. ''All that is missing is the signature of (former
Defense secretary) Robert McNamara.''

The Shadow Convention, the brainchild of Arianna Huffington -- the one-time
conservative commentator who found a heart -- is the Boston Tea Party of our
times, a flagrant attack on the threadbare belief that mainstream
politicians have the corner on good ideas.

Huffington drew a long list of political curmudgeons, rebellious
commentators and counterculture heavy thinkers: two-time presidential
candidate Jesse Jackson and his son Jesse Jr., an Illinois congressman;
writer Gore Vidal; Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.; actor/director Warren
Beatty; and former Democratic senator Gary Hart. Another Republican in
attendance was New Mexico Gov. Gary E. Johnson, who, like Campbell, thinks
the drug war championed by most of their GOP colleagues is a sham.

Time For Some Unconventional Wisdom

For too long, political debates have been dominated by the conventional
wisdom of the leading political parties. The pre-eminence of their thinking
on issues is seldom seriously challenged. Many who try are deserving of the
fringe to which their ideas are assigned.

Not so Tom Campbell -- at least, not when it comes to his position on our
domestic drug war and his worries about this nation's growing involvement in
the one being waged in Colombia.

Campbell's speech could have been an awakening for millions of Americans who
have been convinced that the billions of dollars we spend on jailing drug
users is a good investment. That a wider audience did not hear it is proof
of the constraints our two-party system puts on the free flow of ideas. That
it was heard at all is a testament to the value of Huffington's Shadow
Convention.