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The Campaign Plan 

Objectives

I am running for office to meet two objectives:

  1. to cause the defusing of ticking time bombs and

  2. to promote the notion that freedom works. 

Campaigns that ape major party campaign tactics are doomed.  An effective strategy must instead exploit LP strengths and new (low-cost) media, while mitigating LP weaknesses.  Derivative objectives:

Exploit LP strengths. 

1.      LP candidates stand on the intellectual shoulders of Franklin, Jefferson and Madison.  Contrast this with the ideas of LP opponents, who stand on the shoulders of Marx, Bismarck and Keynes – with the inevitable disastrous results: ticking time bombs.  In a rational debate, we win. 

2.      The LP fields many candidates for state assembly, state senate and US House of Representatives: potential platforms for debate. 

Exploit new (low-cost) media. 

1.      Websites: to host the public exchange among participating candidates, to record attempts to engage the press, document ticking time bombs, etc.

2.      Email: to communicate with opponents and the press.

3.      Talk radio & C-Span: to promote website traffic, etc.

Mitigate LP weaknesses. 

1.      Little money (more)

2.      Little influence with the bipartisan press (more)

3.      No incumbency (more)

Strategy

Authentic democracy requires more than a ballot.  It demands informed choice.  A full, open rational debate is arguably the best way to provide the voters with informed choice.  Having superior ideas, LP candidates are advantaged in a rational, high-profile debate.  The basic strategy of this plan is to promote LP candidates by promoting authentic democracy. 

Problem #1: patently irrational (trivial) debate

Does the average voter have “informed choice”?  Hardly.  Campaign debates, to the limited extent they exist, are almost entirely dominated with patently scurrilous ads.  With so little to distinguish major party candidates on policy, seriously contested campaigns quickly get personal.  (more)

Problem #2: The bipartisan press facilitates the irrationality

As self-appointed “gatekeeper”, the bipartisan press excludes “minor” party candidates from campaign reportage.  (The LA Times, for example, limits its broadsheet and www.latimes.com to coverage of Democratic and Republican candidates.)  Collateral damage in the bipartisan media’s “war on minor parties”: a rational debate on serious issues.  (In 2006, both major party gubernatorial candidates, for example, agreed that California should go into hock an additional $44 billion; the biggest issue between the Democrat and Republican: Does Governor Schwarzenegger really believe that black Latinas are “hot”?) 

Solution: Make history the judge of election principals’ actions

How can we transform the sorry state of political discourse in America into a real debate, a debate that befits the greatest democracy in the history of the world? 

This plan proposes that each participating campaign makes two series of requests:

1.      Publicly invite the other candidates for office to an open, electronic debate by posting all emails and all responses of all participating candidates on each campaign website.  (sample)

2.      Publicly request selected major newspapers and TV networks to post exchanges of all candidates on their websites.  Each letter or email alerts the recipient to a new bipartisan time bomb. (sample)

In past elections, appeals to morality and patriotism have failed to move the bipartisan political press and politicians. This campaign communicates to America’s bipartisan political establishment through history.  That is, participating candidates will notify their opponents and the media that campaign websites (containing these notifications and their responses, if any) will be archived to the Library of Congress, allowing future historians to judge their participation. 

That is, this campaign adds an appeal to pride and, perhaps more importantly, to a sense of how harshly history will judge the bipartisan political establishment’s continued willful ignorance of ticking time bombs.

With a greater number of campaigns participating, greater pressure will be brought on non-participating candidates and press. 

Actions

Campaign actions to meet the objective of promoting informed choice for the voters:

1. Alert election principals.

Periodically, the campaign is sending letters and emails to the election principals – the candidates, the press, civic groups and the people – alerting them to the bipartisan time bombs.  The campaign will post these emails and letters on the campaign website.

2. Post responses, if any.

As opponents and the press respond, the campaign will post each response on the campaign website.

3. Archive to the Library of Congress.

The US Government periodically archives the campaign website to the Library of Congress.

4. Historians view warnings.

In the wake of exploding time bombs, historians will learn and record how the candidates and the press responded to being alerted to the bombs by viewing this campaign website.

5. Enlist other campaigns.

Throughout the campaign, participating campaigns will enlist other campaigns—of all political affiliations—in employing the same plan. An increasing number of participating candidates will add to the pressure on all candidates and press to participate (i.e., to support authentic democracy: the ballot and informed choice).