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This is the sixth entry in "The Fringe," a
periodic look at the lesser-known candidates for president. Read the archives here.
The Fringe suffered its first rejection this week. On
Tuesday I called Randy Crow, a North Carolina Democrat running for president,
hoping to profile him for this series. But Crow said what none of the other
Fringers have: he didn't want the press coverage. He told me that he doesn't
like being the oddball fringe candidate that the mainstream media trots out to
show how easy it is to run for president. He'd be willing to talk if I asked
him for a quote on a policy-related story that I also asked the frontrunners
about. Fair enough, I said.
But that doesn't mean Mr. Crow's website is off limits. Click over to it
and you'll meet a conspiracy theorist who claims he's a descendent of Pocohontas, thinks the
New York Times is in cahoots with the Bush administration, and thinks "zioni$m"
is a major problem for the country.
Crow's biography
is comprehensive, to say the least. He helped run his family business, owned a
"high tech sewage plant," and is an avid reader. He's 61 and has already spent
$70,000 on running for 13 different political offices. Also, people play "dirty
tricks" on him:
In 1994 I started having some weird events
of a dirty trick nature enter in my life. It took me five or six years to
figure what was going on and even to this day what was and is going on is a
little unclear. One thing is for sure, my PHD in the capabilities of
clandestine forces did not come from osmosis.
Crow is convinced
that the planes that crashed into the World Trade
Center towers were
controlled via remote by the Bush administration. Moreover, the publishers of
both the New York Times and USA Today are in on the plan. He also thinks the "DC snipers are patsies,"
referring to John
Allen and Lee Boyd Malvo (who aren't responsible for the DC
shootings, according to Crow).
He's unabashedly anti-Zionist. He says he doesn't think he's
anti-Semitic, just anti-Zionist. "Some people, usually zioni$t$' and
communi$t$, as a means of trying to nullify me, say I am prejudiced against
Jewish people. This is not true. I was not raised to hate anyone or to be
prejudiced against any person." Those dollar signs must be typos, in that case.
There's plenty more, but I'll let his own list of "problems
in the United States"
speak for itself:
1) communi$m 2) The Economy 3) US
dollar 4) Alan Greenspan 5) God under attack 6) The media 7) Rigged political
system 8) President making war on the economy as much as he is making war
around the world 8) Homeland Security 9) The Patriot Acts 10) Gun Control 11)
Vouchers 12) Military Tribunals 13) NAFTA 14) Faith Based Programs 15) Farmers'
plight 16) Merger Mania 17) Credit card interest rates 18) Stock Market 19)
Enron 20) Social Security 21) Short Selling commodities 22) Interest paid on
savings too low 23) Mortgage debt 24) zioni$m 25) Total elimination of
inheritance taxes 26) Oil & gas prices too high
Sorry we didn't get a chance to talk, Mr. Crow.
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There was a point during last night’s debate, as Chris Dodd railed against Hillary, when a friend turned to me and said, “Imagine if it was Obama saying that.” It’s a sentiment a lot of Democrats have been thinking over the past few weeks. What if Obama started talking like Dodd?
A few weeks ago, Dodd put a hold on the FISA bill that would give immunity to telephone companies that cooperated with government wiretapping. More recently, he became the first Democratic candidate to publicly oppose the confirmation of Michael Mukasey as attorney general. Since then, Sen. Biden and the three front-runners have all jumped on board. (Mukasey’s refusal to classify waterboarding as torture and his views on executive powers have irked other Democrats, too.) Both moves have won Dodd admiration among activists and, while his prospects for election may still be dim, but there’s no doubt he has shaped the debate.
Why hasn’t Obama done the same? As Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum noted the other day, Obama needs a new issue. He may have struck gold last night when Hillary went knock-kneed over the secrecy surrounding her National Archive papers. But in the meantime, there’s no reason he shouldn’t take the lead in opposing Mukasey. He missed his first chance. But if Mukasey’s nomination comes to a vote, most likely next week, he will have a second shot: the filibuster.
The last person to call for a major judicial filibuster was John Kerry during Samuel Alito’s confirmation hearings. That plan didn’t go particularly well and even drew him some scorn, since many senators considered it futile. But with more and more Dems turning against Mukasey’s nomination, Obama would likely have more backing.
No word yet from Obama’s campaign on whether they’d consider using the filibuster. Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for Dodd, said the senator would be “considering what options are available.” The filibuster is clearly one of them. The question is, who will push for it first?
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From the communications team that brought you Snackgate 2008, here's the latest (Click to enlarge):
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Pundits have been slamming Hillary’s debate performance on two counts—her ambiguous answer about driver's licenses for illegal immigrants and her evasiveness over whether she would release her papers stored in the Clinton Presidential Library. (Transcript here.)
On the second question, she was particularly unconvincing. When moderator Tim Russert asked her if she would make available her communications with the president in the 1990s, she said that’s “not my decision to make.” As if she might not have some pull with the former president. Her evasion makes it sound like she—or Bill—has something to hide. (So far, the dodge seems to be working.)
But on the question of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan to offer driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, she’s been getting an unfair rap. Yes, she equivocated: “I did not say that it should be done, but I certainly recognize why Governor Spitzer is trying to do it.” Yes, she contradicted herself: When Chris Dodd pointed out that “you thought it made sense to do it,” she replied, “No, I didn't, Chris,” which is simply untrue. But her waffling served a purpose. She was trying to say that the policy “makes sense” without actively supporting it—a distinction that, while Clintonian, is reasonable for a candidate to make. She recognizes the tough circumstances Spitzer faces and, if you read into her language, it’s clear that she supports his decision. But she also doesn’t want to say something that could be used against her in the general election. (“Driver's licenses for illegal immigrants” in scary bold lettering would fit nicely across the TV screen.)
Russert and others were trying to get her to hitch her trailer to Spitzer’s rig. But she shouldn’t have to—it wasn’t her decision. People are right to be concerned about equivocation, especially from someone whose husband redefined the term. But there’s a middle ground between supporting a policy and denouncing it. For a front-runner to try to occupy that space shouldn’t be all that shocking.
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Is it just me, or does the “lightning round” represent everything that’s wrong with American political discourse? I understand that candidates can get wheezy and it's necessary to set limits. But the idea that you can even begin to give a satisfying answer in 30 seconds is absurd. Worst of all, you get these extended cut-off battles, which makes the candidate’s answer sound verbose and meandering, even when it's not:
[BRIAN] WILLIAMS: Governor Richardson, we're going to start with you. This is about something called Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. It's called TIMSS. A number of overseas nations took part in it. It found that overseas students spend an average of 193 days annually in school. The deficit compared to the U.S., where it's 180 days -- over 12 years, that adds up to one-year gap between education in the U.S. and overseas. Do you believe we in this country need to extend the school day and/or extend the school year? And will you commit to it?
GOV. RICHARDSON: Yes, I'd commit to it. And I'm glad finally education is coming up in a major debate. This is what I would do. We are 29th in the world in science and math compared to the EU, to countries in China and India. They graduate four or five times more engineers. There is a competitiveness gap here. This is what I would do. One, I'd have 100,000 new science and math teachers. But we have to pay our teachers what they deserve, a minimum wage, what I believe, of $40,000 per year. I'd get rid of No Child Left Behind. I would have science and math academies.
MR. WILLIAMS: Time.
GOV. RICHARDSON: But in the high school curriculum, it's critically important --
MR. WILLIAMS: Time.
GOV. RICHARDSON: -- that we have more civics, more language, and art in the schools --
MR. WILLIAMS: Governor?
GOV. RICHARDSON: -- to provoke creativity in science and math proficiency.
MR. WILLIAMS: Thirty-second limit on these.
(See nifty New York Times transcript analyzer here.)
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"Kucinich questions Bush's mental health" via the AP:
'You cannot be a president of the United States who's wanton in his
expression of violence,' Kucinich said. 'There's a lot of people who
need care. He might be one of them. If there isn't something wrong with
him, then there's something wrong with us. This, to me, is a very
serious question.'
This coming from a man who "heard directions" from a UFO.
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That shouldn’t be news. But it
is, seeing as it was only his second time there.
Fred Thompson is sticking with his “Southern Strategy,” the Wall Street Journal reports
today. In other words, he’s largely bypassing Iowa
and New Hampshire in favor of early southern states like South Carolina
and Florida instead of :
It's not a conventional presidential strategy to play down Iowa and New
Hampshire. Candidates who have tried skipping them
generally haven't fared well. And Mr. Thompson said during his visit yesterday
that he's planning on spending enough time and money in New Hampshire to at least make a respectable
showing before the vote heads South.
Is he serious? It’s not just that Iowa
and New Hampshire
have been important in the past. They’ve been essential. In the last 28 years,
the only presidential candidate to win his party’s nomination without winning one
of those two states has been Bill Clinton. And, to borrow a put-down, Fred Thompson
is no Bill Clinton. Sure, he’s faring better in South
Carolina and Florida—second
place behind Giuliani. But even Giuliani knows that’s not enough.
Giuliani, who initially planned to focus on the February 5 “Tsunami
Tuesday,” has decided to go all in in the
Granite State. You don’t want to risk going into
Feb. 5 having already lost a handful of states—Iowa,
New Hampshire, and Michigan being the riskiest. He has recently
seen a jump in the polls there—although
Romney still leads—and he plans to start
airing TV ads as well. Without a victory, or at least a respectable showing, in
NH, he would have trouble stopping Romney’s momentum.
Thompson has yet to face this fact. It’s one thing to
recognize your limits in the early states. It’s another to pretend they don’t
exist.
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The three Democratic frontrunners rode Chris Dodd’s
coattails today when they announced
their opposition to Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey. Obama called
Mukasey’s “professed ignorance” on waterboarding “appalling.” Edwards said if
waterboarding was used in the
Spanish Inquisition, it shouldn’t be used in America’s fight against terrorism. Clinton looked inward,
saying she was “deeply troubled” by Mukasey’s Senate testimony.
But Dodd was the first candidate to speak out against
Mukasey’s nomination on Sunday after he finished
his Meet the Press interview. On Monday,
sensing an anti-Mukasey vacuum, he held a conference call with journalists to reassert
his opposition. For two days he had all of the anti-Mukasey headlines to
himself.
But now the frontrunners have entered the fray. The three
candidates all voiced opposition to both Mukasey’s waterboarding position and
his support of an expanded executive branch. Dodd is not nearly as upset about
Mukasey’s wishy-washy
stance on waterboarding as he is about the AG nominee’s support
of expanded executive power. But his decision to speak out will likely force the
frontrunners to add this issue to the already
packed agenda for this evening’s debate.
Dodd is doing what a third tier candidate is supposed to do.
He’s changing the conversation and pressuring the frontrunners into making
decisions. If he’s smart, he’ll brag about his trendsetting tonight at the
debate.
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Imagine all the children whose Halloweens will be ruined when their parents make them go as Chris Dodd.
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With tonight’s Democratic debate billed
as a three-way showdown, it looks like Obama and Edwards have signed a
temporary non-aggression pact in order to focus all their audacity and hope on
Hillary.
Obama announced
over the weekend that he plans to
start talking tough with Clinton.
Then yesterday, Edwards lobbed the first grenade, attacking
Hillary’s integrity in a lofty speech
his campaign billed as “definitional,” “Senator Clinton's road to the middle
class,” he said, “takes a major detour right through the deep canyon of
corporate lobbyists and the hidden bidding of K Street in Washington -- and
history tells us that when that bus stops there it is the middle class that
loses.”
Both attacks come at slightly different angles. Obama challenges
Hillary’s policy ideas. He’s been tweaking her for her Iran vote—not to mention her Iraq
authorization—and pushing her to give details on how she’d fix Social Security.
(So far, she won’t say whether she’s willing to raise the retirement age or
lift the cap on collecting Social Security taxes.) On Iran, he’s
questioning her judgment. On Social Security, he’s daring her to give a straight
answer. But in both cases, he can dodge her accusation that he has “abandoned
the politics of hope” by insisting that he’s focusing on policy.
Edwards, meanwhile, is going after Hillary’s character. He
pointed out yesterday that she has “taken more money from Washington lobbyists than any candidate from
either party -- more money than any Republican candidate.” He’s not just
talking about policy tweaks. He’s saying that she’s part of the “bankrupt ways
of Washington.”
It’s risky to sell the primary as a referendum on character, since personal
attacks never reflect well on the attacker. But Edwards knows that for some voters,
Hillary is on shaky ground already. An extra tremor, he figures, and the earth
will open up.
With attacks coming from both sides—perhaps literally—Hillary
will have to play some serious D. But it could also play to her advantage. If
they go too hard on her, they might come off looking like bullies. If they go
too easy, she could just swat them away with a laugh and a joke about getting
attention from men. Either way, they will only solidify her status as the one to beat.
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Like what we've done with the place? Welcome to Trailhead's new look, which should make us feel more like blogs you're already used to. We’ve got all
of the usual fixings: an RSS feed, comments in The Fray,
and an individual page for each post. If you're new to Trailhead, take a peek at our archives.
In political news,
this email from Clinton's chief strategist Mark Penn just arrived:
Losing ground in the
polls, Senator Obama announced over the weekend that he will abandon
the politics of hope and attack Hillary in tonight’s debate. Senator Edwards,
who rose to prominence in 2004 by eschewing attacks on other Democrats,
formally announced last night that he is going to attack Senator Clinton’s
character.
Considering that both Senators
Obama and Edwards made their names by pledging to be positive, the last thing
one would have expected was for either of them to go out and announce with
pride that they were now going to go negative on a fellow Democrat. It’s
unprecedented in my experience.
Of course, Hillary will not hesitate
to set the record straight on the issues that opponents raise about her.
But as we move deeper into the Fall we are seeing the clear contours
emerge:
One candidate is defining the
“politics of hope” while the others are abandoning them.
Want to guess which one?
We're certainly looking forward to this evening's debate.
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Via the AP:
Biden: Race Is About Ideas, Not Money
By RANDALL CHASE
Associated Press Writer
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) - Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden said Monday that the race for the White House is more about ideas than the huge amounts of money being raised by many of the other candidates.
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Tom Tancredo has announced he's quitting politics—congressional politics.The Colorado congressman announced today
that he will not seek another term after his expires in 2008. You'd
think this would mean Tancredo wants to focus on his efforts to grab
the Republican presidential nod. But instead, his spokesman said his
decision was partly based on wanting to spend more time with his
grandkids.
Last time we checked, somebody doesn't run for
president to spend more time with his grandkids. If Tancredo wants out
so badly, then why is he still in it?
It may have to do with his
other reason for leaving Congress: He thinks he's accomplished all he
can on the immigration issue inside of the Capitol. Whereas he feels he
can pass the hard-line-immigration baton to other House members, he
doesn't see any other presidential candidates who share his
anti-immigrant vigor. Tancredo is willing to sully his political legacy
to enforce America's borders.
Last week, Tancredo offered Mitt
Romney a deal: If the Red Sox lost the World Series, Romney would have
to bow out of the race. But if the Rockies lost, Tancredo would drop
out. If only Romney had accepted, Tancredo would have said Adios to both of his campaigns today.
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If you haven't had your daily dose of meta, check out the new study analyzing coverage of the 2008 presidential race, conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. (If that's not quite meta enough, read the coverage
of the coverage of the coverage.) The study's general findings:
Democrats have gotten more coverage than Republicans in 2007; Barack
Obama hasn't been able to translate positive news stories into gains in
the polls; and the media isn't reporting what the public wants to hear
about. (They allegedly want substance, we give them horse-race
minutiae.)
But a few interesting details seem to have passed under our navel-gazing radar:
- Hillary
Clinton and Rudy Giuliani have more negative coverage than positive.
Yet they're both still front-runners. How is that? Tom Rosenstiel,
director of Project for Excellence in Journalism, suggested it's the
result of the frontrunners getting "scrubbed a little harder than
others." He also pointed out that both candidates, being from New York,
get more than the usual scrutiny from the New York Times, which tends to set the tone for networks, magazines, etc.
- Most Americans claim they want more debate coverage. I blinked when I saw this. What about all that debate fatigue I hear about?
- More coverage doesn't necessarily mean better poll numbers—see the Obama example above—but it does correlate with higher name recognition. Hillary and Obama had more stories written about them than any other candidates. Likewise, 78 percent of Americans could name Hillary as a candidate, and 62 percent could name Obama—higher name recognition than any of the GOP candidates. So, if I'm reading this right: people pay attention to the media, they just don't care what we say.
—The Democrats drive a higher proportion of stories about themselves than the Republicans do. An analysis of "triggers"—what causes a story to be written—shows that 57 percent of stories about Dems are inspired by the candidate or the campaign, as opposed to 46 percent in the case of Republicans. Perhaps the "right-wing message machine" could use some repairs.
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Bill
Richardson's a believer. So is Dennis Kucinich. Even Rudy Giuliani is
willing to admit that extraterrestrials might be out there.
The 2008 presidential race is starting to look like an Alf convention. Last week, Kucinich's alien beliefs were outed
by his good friend Shirley MacLaine. Her new book details Kucinich's
run-in with a UFO on her porch: "It hovered, soundless, for 10 minutes
or so, and sped away with a speed he couldn't comprehend. He said he
felt a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind." One
can only guess what those directions may have said.
Earlier this month, an 8-year-old kid asked Giuliani,
"If you find that there is something living on another planet and it is
bad and it comes over here what would you do?" Rudy, ever vigilant on
national security matters, assured the boy that there won't be a repeat
of Independence Day
if he's in the Oval Office. "Well if we're properly prepared for all of
the different things that can happen to us, we'll be prepared for that,
as well," he said with a grin.
But it was Bill Richardson
who spoke most explicitly on the UFO issue last weekend. Speaking to
Dell employees in Texas, Richardson said
that if he became president, he would continue his long fight to
release top-secret files on Roswell, New Mexico's infamous "flying
disc" recovery. In a foreword to Roswell Dig Diaries, a 2004 Sci Fi Channel book, the New Mexico governor wrote
that he has never been satisfied with the government's explanation and
that the "American people can handle the truth." Considering Richardson
makes up part of the "ET Ticket," I guess it should come as no surprise.
Giuliani
and Richardson have even managed to use aliens for political gain. The
terrorist threat pales in comparison with an alien invasion, so if
Giuliani can protect us from little green men, then Osama should be a
walk in the Pakistani park. Richardson's assertion that he would
release top-secret Roswell files if he became president implies that he
is willing to run a transparent White House with all nonalien issues,
as well.
One more thing—it shouldn't come as a shock, but Mike Gravel is a believer, too.
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The
politics of illness is particularly sensitive in this election, with so
many candidates and their spouses battling one disease or another. Fred
Thompson announced in April that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma but that the cancer was in remission. Before that, Elizabeth Edwards revealed
that her cancer had returned but that her husband's campaign would
continue. And now Rudy Giuliani, pushing his health-care plan in New
Hampshire, is rolling out a new radio ad discussing his experience with prostate cancer, which he defeated in 2000.
"I
had prostate cancer, five, six years ago," Giuliani says in the spot.
"My chance of surviving prostate cancer, and thank God I was cured of
it, in the United States, 82 percent. My chances of surviving prostate
cancer in England, only 44 percent under socialized medicine."
It
feels icky to discuss life-threatening illnesses in PR terms, but it's
no accident that Rudy chose to weave his own story into his message
about health care. We're used to seeing warrior Rudy, victory this and
security that. We're not used to seeing vulnerable Rudy.
Of
course, there's good vulnerable and there's bad vulnerable. In
Thompson's case, people initially wondered if he would be able to
launch his campaign. In Edwards' case, allies speculated that he would
drop out. But Rudy's case is—forgive me for saying it—a good one, at
least from the political angle. For one thing, he beat the cancer.
(Look out, Islamofascism.) But more importantly, it softens him up. As
Elizabeth Edwards might say, he has stared the worst in the face and not blinked.
This
sort of human touch—candid without being cheesy—is just what Rudy
needs. For him, religion is private, and the same seems to be true for
other personal and emotional issues. But personal narratives matter to
voters. We know he's willing to put people in a hospital. It's also
good to know he's been there himself.
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One argument for keeping fringe candidates around is that they make the mainstream pack address difficult topics. You could say the same thing about Stephen Colbert's sudden presence in the 2008 race, only in this case he's making them funny.
After a South Carolina newspaper let readers vote on whether John Edwards or Stephen Colbert was actually the state's "favorite son," the Edwards camp issued this rebuttal:
CLAIM: Edwards abandoned South Carolina when he was one year old.
FACT: Edwards was born in South Carolina, learned to walk in South Carolina, learned to talk to in South Carolina, and will kick Stephen Colbert's New York City butt in South Carolina.
Stephen Colbert claims to represent a new kind of politics, but today we see he's participating in the slash and burn politics that has no place in American discourse. The truthiness is, as the candidate of Doritos, Colbert's hands are stained by corporate corruption and nacho cheese. John Edwards has never taken a dime from salty food lobbyists and America deserves a President who isn't in the pocket of the snack food special interests.
N
ot bad for a political communications team. Voters like a candidate who can make fun of himself, and Edwards hasn't always fit the bill—see his bristling response to the admittedly ubiquitous coverage of his hair. Poking fun at his anti-corporate, anti-lobby image is a smart move.
Hopefully we'll see Colbert engage the other candidates, too. Something tells me Mitt Romney is already readying the canned-joke assembly line.
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This is the fifth entry in "The Fringe," a periodic look at the lesser-known candidates for president. Read the rest of the series here.Cap
Fendig is the fringe man's Mike Huckabee. The Republican presidential
candidate wants to keep the troops in Iraq, supports the fair tax, and
promotes pro-life policies. But while Huckabee's profile continues to
rise, Cap Fendig is hoping to grab four percent of the votes in Iowa,
at most. That's what happens when the highest public office you've held
is county commissioner.
The 53-year-old man certainly looks presidential, and speaks in a southern drawl that would make John Edwards swoon. His high-quality Web site
has pictures of him and his wife looking like the all-American
couple—complete with an out-of-focus background to imply Fendig is a
stark contrast to the murky America that surrounds us all.
Fendig
recently sold his tour company in Georgia to fund his campaign, but it
was his business that inspired him to run in the first place. He said
his platform consists of policies the "American people" want. Of
course, most of those Americans are his conservative tour clientele.
Fendig
is not ashamed to tell you that he thinks the constitution ought to be
changed. First up, the Fair Tax, which would repeal the 16th
amendment that allows the government to collect an income tax. Next, he
wants to solve the immigration problem by scrapping pieces of the 14th
Amendment. Under the Fendig administration, babies born in the United
States would no longer be automatic U.S. citizens. Their parents would
have to be citizens, as well. Unclear on whether America would make it
a habit of deporting children before they leave the hospital. Oh, and
don't forget to tack on a gay marriage amendment while you're at it.
(Fendig said homosexuality is a lifestyle choice America cannot endorse
but should protect.)
Constitutional changes aside, Fendig is making one novel recommendation: He wants to impose term limits on congressmen so that the legislative branch has a "rotation of fresh ideas and energy."
Fendig,
though, has more pressing concerns—like getting people to take him
seriously. When Fendig delivered his official announcement speech at a
county meeting, the video shows that the woman sitting behind him couldn't help but let loose a laugh.
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This is the fourth entry in "The Fringe," a periodic look at the
lesser-known candidates for president. You can read the whole series here.Tom Koos
gets it. He knows that a 41-year old facilities manager from California
isn't going to win the Democratic nomination. He understands it's
unlikely he'll even earn a delegate in New Hampshire, where he'll only
campaign for a week before the primary. But he's not running for
president to become president. He's running so he can figure out who to
vote for.
Koos has wanted to become president since he was 7. He
looked up at the calendar and realized that he'd be 35 by 2000, which
meant that in 28 short years, he could be taking the oath of office.
So, in 2000, he threw his name in the ring. Nineteen people voted for him—one more than the Fringe's last subject, Michael Skok.
Considering Koos finished 76,881 New Hampshire votes behind Al Gore
in 2000, what is there to gain by running again? Koos told me he wanted
to get a better sense of what his own opinions were on the election's
major issues so he would know which candidate to endorse.
As a result, Koos' platform is essentially a composite of his opponents' stances. Like Joe Biden, he wants a soft-partitioned Iraq. Like Hillary Clinton, he supports a national-service academy. And like Dennis Kucinich, he advocates a universal, single-payer health-care system. He's the Voltron of presidential candidates.
Does
this mean Koos is once again embarking on a selfish, self-indulgent
pursuit? Perhaps. But he said he's also running to try and convince his
friends and family to pay attention to the elections. When he tells
people he's running for president, he gets to discuss current events
and politics with relative strangers. Plus, he said, running for
president is "an awful lot of fun." Some might call it a midlife
crisis, but Koos thinks of it as a boyhood dream.
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This is the third entry in "The Fringe," a periodic look at the
lesser-known candidates for president. You can read the entire series here.Michael
Skok, a 58-year-old retiree from New York, asked me this today: "I
would argue with you that Republicans have evolutionists in their
party. So why can't the Democrats have a creationist in their own
party?" Skok believes the Earth is 6,000 years old, that America will
cease to exist within eight years, and that we need to send a man to
Mars. That's why he's running for president.
Undeterred by his 18-vote tally
in New Hampshire's 2000 primary, Skok is back in the race for the
Democratic nomination. Not that he's on the trail, exactly: He can't
afford to head out to New Hampshire just yet, having spent much of his
campaign budget on the $1,000 registration fee for the state primary.
His family doesn't like that he's running: "They said it's a waste of
money. I tell them I'm trying to save the country." Here's the plan:
Restore the country's Christian values: Skok wants to stage a modern-day Scopes Trial
via a nationwide debate between the country's best creationists and
evolutionists. "We're becoming a nation that's godless with no
morality," he said. He's puts his faith in the creationists, partly
because the books on evolution he has read have been "confusing."
Find alternate sources of energy: To
ease America's dependence on the OPEC states, Skok wants to put solar
panels in Earth's orbit and then somehow get that energy back down to
Earth. Also, expect the Skok administration to put solar collectors
along the freeway and invest in wind turbines.
Fix America's trade deficit: Skok
is convinced that in eight years, there will be no such thing as the
United States. Instead, the EU is going to annex the U.S. because the
dollar will be so weak and so many industries will have been outsourced
to China.
Advance America's science and technology sectors: Sending
an astronaut to Mars, he said, would help strengthen America's position
in the world. This, coupled with Skok's desire to send solar panels
into orbit, made me wonder how his creationist beliefs jibe with his
scientific interests. "I'm using science to find out if the Bible is
true," he told me.
Skok said he can't imagine voting for any
other Democrat but that Fred Thompson had caught his eye because he
wanted to restore Christian values. If Fred's performance continues to
underwhelm, maybe Values Voters can find their candidate across the aisle.
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This is the second entry in "The Fringe," a periodic look at the
lesser-known candidates for president. You can read the entire series here. Dr. Mark Klein
shares at least one presidential tic with the rest of the mainstream
candidates—he has a tagline. "We need a grown-up in the White House,"
Klein proudly told me earlier today. He wants that grown-up to be him.
Klein
is a retired psychiatrist from Oakland, Calif., who woke up one morning
in 2005 and felt like running for president. So that he did. Armed with
$20,000 of his own money—Klein doesn't do any fund raising of his
own—he started a field office in West Des Moines, Iowa, and says he has
a dozen volunteers who believe in his message. "Instead of in my
retirement buying a fancy Mercedes, I decided to run for the White
House," he told me.
Klein's main goal is to strengthen the middle class.
That means stemming the flow of illegal immigrants, imposing banking
regulations, and re-evaluating free-trade policies. "What passes for
the free market today is basically socialism for the very rich," he
said. He added that even though he lives an admittedly "prosperous"
lifestyle and lives off stock dividends, he considers himself middle
class, since he has a net worth less than $10 million. He's less
focused on foreign policy (his campaign materials say it would play
"second fiddle" to domestic policy), but says he wants to withdraw all
troops and supports the Bidenback strategy of dividing Iraq into three countries.
As if running for president wasn't hard enough, Klein is convinced the GOP doesn't like him. He claims
the Iowa Republicans ignored his requests to be included in the Ames
Straw Poll because they're anti-Semitic (Klein is Jewish). Mary Tiffany
of the Iowa GOP told me his discrimination claims were baseless. He
just didn't pass muster when the State Central Committee chose whom to
put on the ballot in Ames. "Mark Klein isn't even a formidable
candidate," she said, adding that she was surprised I was giving him
the time of day. If Klein had more press coverage and bigger events,
she said, they might have listed him as a candidate. (Eleven candidates were on the ballot, including John Cox and the then-unannounced Fred Thompson.)
All
of this creates a presidential Catch-22: Outsider candidates can't
raise their profile at major events because they don't have enough of
an infrastructure, but they can't get the infrastructure they need
because they don't have the medium to spread their message.
Of
course, Klein could have gotten around this by running for some office
other than president. But those small-time positions didn't interest
him. "I don't waste my time," he said.
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In honor of Stephen Colbert's presidential run and the beginning of the filing period
for the New Hampshire primaries, Trailhead is introducing its first
regular feature: the Fringe. We'll profile the über-long shots who have
come out of the woodwork armed with limited cash, delusions of
grandeur, and blind faith to seek residency in the White House.Our inaugural candidate is Dr. Jack Shepard, a dentist from Minnesota—no, not that Jack Shephard.
He has lived in Rome for the past 25 years but still thinks he's the
Republican who can protect America and bring peace to the Middle East.
Oh, I almost forgot, he's a convicted felon who is wanted on arson
charges back home.
Shepard left the country
in 1982, after serving eight months in jail for possessing narcotics—he
says he was permitted to have them because of a license obtained for
his dentistry practice*—and
after Minnesota authorities claimed he burned down his house and
dentistry office. Since moving to Italy, he says he routinely speaks
with high-level Syrian, Iranian, and Hamas officials to assist
America's foreign-policy efforts. He believes he is still serving in
the armed forces at the age of 60 because his ID card
doesn't have an expiration date. He claims he can't come home because
he's still serving his country abroad. When I asked for specifics, he
said that was all he was allowed to tell me.
If Shepard's
platform has a fulcrum, it's full diplomacy with leaders in the Middle
East, especially Iran. When I asked him about Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmedinejad's aggressive anti-Israel comments, he blamed them on a
mistranslation. He would section off Palestine within Israel (he
offered no specifics) and veto any pro-Israel bill that came across his
desk. He also offered this: "The votes that I get will be votes from
peace people," he said, "I'm curious how many people are actually after
a person who really has dialogue with the evil of axis, as it's
called." That was not a typo.
If Shepard sounds like he's a
peace-loving Democrat, that's because he used to be. He became a
"born-again Republican" in 2000 after a convoluted episode involving racial bias. Nevertheless, he wants the Rev. Jesse Jackson to be his ambassador to the United Nations.
He
wouldn't tell me much about his domestic policy despite specific
questions on health care, abortion, and gay rights. But he did say he
wanted to reform the prison system, using personal examples from his
own incarceration as evidence of its shortcomings.
To run for
president, all Shepard had to do was send $1,000 check to New
Hampshire's secretary of state and sign some papers saying he wanted to
run. In South Carolina, you have to pony up $2,500 or 3,000 signatures
to get on the primary ballot. Nobody does a background check, and he
can't get pulled off the ballot in New Hampshire unless somebody files
a complaint. This means Shepard will almost certainly remain a
diplomatic vigilante.
Even if he were to garner a delegate, it's
doubtful he'd be able to attend the GOP national convention in
Minnesota, since that's the state where he's wanted for arson. Ever the
optimist, Shepard ended an e-mail he sent me with this: "It would be
the greatest and happiness moment of my life to return to St. Paul,
Minnesota the city of my birth to get the Republican Nomination for
President there." After all, aren't all politicians just talkative
people looking for a little redemption?