by Russell Bartholomee
If you grow up in the United States, you can’t avoid being exposed early and often to certain powerful myths. Each of them is woven deeply into the fabric of the American Dream. Like Washington’s cherry tree or Walt Disney’s frozen head, each of them is universally known, widely accepted, and…utterly baseless.
Take for instance the notion that if you just work hard, good things will happen to you. The (clearly false) implication of that is, of course, that if you’re not enjoying a comfortable lifestyle, you’re just not working hard enough. (Tell that to the millions of people working 60 hours a week at three part-time jobs struggling to put food on the table). Another myth is that good looks and material wealth will make a person happy. One look at any weekly celebrity gossip column ought to dispel that myth. And yet people daily neglect their families to chase the dollar, and far too many young women are starving themselves to live up to some impossible male fantasy of female perfection. There are scores of others, of course. As we grow older we learn, for example, that “liberty and justice for all” is really “liberty and justice for some.” And the last two elections clearly indicate that our one nation is far from indivisible.
One tenacious myth that has been bandied about for generations is that any little boy or girl could grow up to be President of the United States. What crap.
First of all, only 42 individuals have held the position in the entire history of the nation. 42. The average baby born today will live long enough to see about 15 to 18 total presidents (and that’s if there are a lot of one-termers). Do the math; you have a better chance of winning the lottery and being struck by lightning. Twice. Secondly, every single one of those presidents has been male. The “any little girl” part of the myth seems unlikely anytime soon. And if other past trends continue, future presidents will be well-educated, financially successful, Caucasian, and Protestant. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that any one of a tiny handful of privileged, white males born today could grow up to be president. Not very inspiring, is it? And those are just the demographic hurdles. We haven’t even gotten to the really sinister part yet.
All of this is important to me because I’m running for President in 2008. (I announced my candidacy right here on the pages of Being There in Issue 3. I know it’s early, but I wanted to get a jump on the competition). I teach high school, and I’m using my campaign as a tool to show my students how the system really works. On paper, I appear to be the ideal candidate. Stop laughing. I’m a white male. I have a master’s degree. And as an added bonus, I’m even a Protestant (non-denominational). As a teacher, I’m not exactly financially successful, but then several of our more notable Presidents come from humble backgrounds. Lincoln… Clinton… I’m in good company. I meet most of the unofficial and all of the Constitutional requirements for the job (I’m a natural born citizen, have lived here more than 14 years, and will be 35 in 2008). And yet it is almost a certainty that you will not see my name on the ballot of any state when you cast your vote for President in 2008. Isn’t that just wrong?
When I announced my candidacy, I put my incredible and tireless campaign manager, Jef Waltman, to work finding out how to get my name on the ballot in each state. The fact is that it is almost impossible for anyone who isn’t nationally known outside of one of the two major parties to get their name on the ballot of any state in a presidential election. And that’s by design. I was honestly shocked at how difficult the states make it for a third party candidate.
I’ll use my home state of Texas as an example. After extensive research, Jef discovered that there are only two ways to have your name appear beside the major parties on a presidential ballot. First, you get to be on the ballot if you are the nominee of a party whose candidate received at least 2% of the vote in the most recent governor’s election. That may not sound like much, but only the Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians managed that feat last time. And since I’m none of the above, my chances of getting the nomination of any of those parties are pretty slim.
If you run as an independent, you have to arrange a running mate, find 34 state residents willing to serve as your elector candidates, and get about 70,050 signatures on a petition. That’s a lot of signatures, but I figured (since I’m starting so early), that I could get that done in time. Here’s the catch: the folks who sign your petition have to do so after the primary election (March 5, 2008), and the petition has to be turned in by May 12, 2008. To make matters worse, none of them can have voted in that year’s primary election. In other words, I would have two months to track down 70,000+ registered voters (at the mall?) who didn’t bother to vote in the primary, but care enough about politics to sign my petition.
And that’s just for Texas. Every other state has similarly forbidding hoops through which a candidate must jump. Some states just want a chunk of money. In Colorado and Louisiana, $500 gets you on the ballot. But most have requirements similar to those of Texas. Not even Ralph Nader was able to meet the requirements to get on the Texas ballot. Neither was the Green Party candidate in 2004, David Cobb, who is an attorney from Texas. For someone like me, with little to no money or name recognition, it doesn’t look very promising. Not to be a pessimist, but I’m beginning to doubt my chances of winning.
All kidding aside, this pisses me off, and not only because it ruins the myth that any little boy or girl could grow up to be President. No, I’m angry because the two major parties, corrupt to the core as both of them are, have made it practically impossible to challenge them. The system has been rigged so that the powerful will never have to cede their power. The best any third party candidate can hope to do is to help unseat an incumbent in favor of the major-party challenger. And even then, you have to be a billionaire (I’m looking at you, Mr. Perot). It’s a government of the (wealthy) people, by the (connected) people, for the (powerful) people. Any little boy or girl doesn’t stand a chance.
But that doesn’t mean I’m out of the race. Jef has found me a back door, and I’ve already started picking the lock. I intend to register in each state as a certified write-in candidate. This is far less complicated (and far less expensive), requiring only minimal filing fees and no petitions. And if you’re a certified write-in candidate, every vote fore you is actually counted and recorded in the official record. Votes for unofficial write-ins are discarded. (Sorry, Mickey Mouse). If you’re as fed up as I am with the way the Republicans and Democrats have turned your democracy into their personal power trip, then I’m asking for your support. Write me in. I know, it’s four years off and my name is hard to spell. But Team Bartholomee has come up with another slogan to make it a little easier for you to remember:
Vote BartholoMEe because I’m for BartholomYOU.[1]
[1] This slogan was created by my good friend Jay Stokes, who, along with Jef Waltman, is Team Bartholomee. In the unlikely even that I actually win this thing, I couldn’t have done it without them.
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