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It promises to be great entertainment. But make sure you discard any illusions about third-party politics before taking your seat at ringside.

Such illusions are commonplace across the ideological spectrum, among people who regard a third party as the panacea for whatever troubles them most about the existing electoral system. Are the Democrats insufficiently progressive? Are the Republicans not right-wing enough? Are both parties too compromised by special interests and big money? Let's dump the corrupt bastards and start a new party!

Aside from the technical difficulties of any such project in a nation as fragmented and diverse as the United States, the plain fact is that third parties are invariably just as imperfect as the Democrats and Republicans they aim to supplant -- and sometimes even worse. That's one reason why they normally tend to disappear after a few years, once their initial protest purpose has been served.

Surviving minor parties often wind up as appendages of the other two, used by individual politicians and powerbrokers to conduct their own feuds, vendettas and schemes.

Joe Conason Joe Conason's column appears in Salon News every other Tuesday. + Biography + Archives

Cynics would even say that the origin of the current Reform Party was as a vehicle for Ross Perot's bitter feud with George Bush the elder. But no matter how sincere Perot may be in his protectionist sentiments (and his distaste for big-spending special interests other than himself), the party he founded is rapidly devolving into a satire of its own original purposes.

The citizens who chose Perot in 1992 were consciously distancing themselves from the Republicans, in the wake of a GOP convention that featured Pat Buchanan's infamous cry for a "culture war" waged by the religious right. Two elections later, many of those voters must be gaping in disbelief as Perot and his minions now maneuver to deliver the party's nomination to that same discredited blowhard. Their understandable outrage has been openly expressed by the culturally tolerant Ventura.

Yet the Minnesota governor's preferred candidate isn't exactly an inspiration for Reform Party ideals, either. Donald Trump deserves credit for attacking as "repugnant" Buchanan's amazing remarks about Hitler. Still a registered Republican, Trump is to date the only prominent member of his party willing to denounce Buchanan's "extreme and outrageous views."

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