Most people probably don't know this, but just about ANYONE born in the USA can be elected president. Yes, that's right. You don't have to be sponsored by a party. So, at this point I have to say, why not me? Or why not you? A vote can be cast by simply writing in a name.
An interesting side note here is that ANYONE can also be elected Pope. I bet you didn't know that. Of course, a non Catholic would have to convert and be ordained a priest, but still, we're all theoretically candidates for that too. Personally, I have no interest in "running" for that post though.
I'm putting this page up now so it gets slurped up sometime in the next year by the search engine spiders. If it starts getting hits, I'll start posting things I would do as Cmdr. In Chief. Of course, I'd need some money to get things rolling. But if someone out there has the cash, I'd have no problem setting up an escrow fund for this purpose and even spec out a 100% secure system by which YOU could decide how my election is run. I'm serious, read on.
Right now, there's one very simple issue I would focus on. Let's face it, nobody can solve all the world's, or the country's, or probably even a single state's problems in just four years. The best an elected official can probably do is create one useful program, law, or something of the sort. So for me, the issue is simple: electronic (eg., online) voting!
It's pathetic that we don't already have this. So many more people would vote. We file our taxes online. We pay bills online. Security can surely be worked out. So why don't we do it? Why don't more politicians talk about it? Why isn't it even a major issue? India, the second largest population in the world, plans on implementing electronic voting. Why can't we?
Think of how this could work. Given that votes could be set up, implemented, and tabluated in a few hours ... let's say the President, Senate, or House has a particularly sensitive issue they can't really decide upon. Well, why not vote? All of us. A main argument originally for representative democracy was that "the voting populace" started becoming too large for the physical locations and the sheer amount of time to implement a vote became intractable. I'm talking ancient Greek history here folks.
Anyhow, that's the deal. We've got lots of problems here in the US. I think the only way to really solve them is to put the power back into the hands of the people because sadly, we seem to have lost it quite some time ago and are losing more and more each year.
Feel free to send me email at topper@virginia.edu. Yeah, I've probably just opened up yet another door for SPAM, but I can deal with it.