I introduced Beth as my running mate and told the reporters we’d be announcing our campaign schedule within the week.
I asked if there were any questions. Big mistake.
A man in a dark blue suit smiled politely. “You disappeared for two years, right? Pretended you were dead? How can you possibly think that’s the kind of person this country wants in the White House? How can you be trusted?”
Before I could answer, someone else chimed in. “Don’t you think we need someone who takes his responsibilities seriously?”
“Someone who has responsibilities,” a woman added. “Do you even have a job?”
I told her that, believe it or not, running for president would be a full-time commitment.
“But before that, did you work?”
“I’ve worked lots of jobs all across the country. My last positions were assistant baker and videostore clerk.”
Outright laughter.
“You probably live at home,” the woman continued. “With your stepfather paying the expenses.”
“Yes, but—”
A man aggressively stuck a microphone in my face. “I’d like to know how you have the audacity to talk about something as important as voting when you’ve probably never voted yourself.”
I tried to remain calm. “Good question. I’m turning eighteen this year, and voting is something I can’t wait to do.”
“This is a sick joke,” another reporter said. “You’re criticizing our government when the chances are zero that someone with your level of experience has anything to offer the people of this country at all.”
“These are all good points,” I said. “I’ll be talking about them at length in my campaign.”
The crowd descended on me like a pack of hyenas. I had expected skepticism, sure, but this was all-out anger. Had I miscalculated that much?
“I’m not saying I’m the best person for the job,” I said. “And I certainly don’t have instant answers. I’m just saying the issues of ordinary citizens—especially our youth—are not being addressed.”
Simon gave me the high sign, then pulled me inside. Peter stayed on the lawn answering more questions. By the time everyone left, I felt like I’d been stuck on the spin cycle of a runaway washing machine. Even I had doubts about the long-term wisdom of my idea.
“Well, that went well.” Beth covered her face with a pillow from the couch and screamed.
“Luckily there wasn’t any produce around,” Simon added.
“Am I nuts?” I asked. “They’ll turn the pseudocide into a character issue, they’ll make it look like I did something bad.”
The three of them stared at me mutely.
“Okay, it was kind of bad. But the guy’s right—I’ve never even voted!”
“You can’t vote,” Beth argued. “It’s not your fault.”
“This was stupid,” I said.
Simon literally pulled me out of the chair. “We’re going downstairs and having our strategy meeting. A few lousy reporters are not going to derail us. We’ll be facing much bigger obstacles than that.”
I hated him for it, but he was right. I grabbed my notes and headed to the basement.
I’d spent the week studying the last several reports from the U.S. Census Bureau and had come up with a formula for the perfect administration. Our campaign staff—and Cabinet, if we could’ve gotten elected—would mirror the general population as reflected in the reports. Simon and I raced to calculate the final numbers.45 We labeled the document “The Peace Party Mission Statement” and posted it on the Larry Web site.
I also insisted we use our first names to run. Based on the concept of “We Work for You, Not the Other Way Around,” it seemed appropriate to call the ticket Larry / Beth instead of Swensen / Coleman. I wrote our names on a sticky note and added it to the hundreds of others on my wall.
The story made it to the Boston Globe and the New York Times the next day. Both papers treated my candidacy as a joke. I decided to make a few local appearances to gauge the average person’s reaction. If the idea of running for president wasn’t worth pursuing, we’d come up with Plan B.
Some news outlets did call, but Beth was right. No one wanted to hear our thoughts on consumerism, hunger, or poverty One after another, the reporters asked about where I’d slept on the road, if betagold had tried to find me, if I’d had any romantic liaisons in my travels. It was embarrassing; it was unimportant. I gave staccato answers, then steered the conversation toward more meaningful topics.
We had much better luck with the Web site.
I wasn’t sure what kind of response to expect from the Internet; many of my fellow pilgrims from a few years ago might have moved on and forgotten about my message completely.
In the first twenty-four hours, we logged in more than thirty-five hundred hits.
Forty-three people volunteered to help with the campaign.
We were in business.
Op-ed pieces sprouted up in several newspapers: A seventeen-year-old can’t run for president! He’s wasting valuable resources on a pie-in-the-sky campaign! He’s trivializing the process! Peter and I had waged a bet on how long it would take before we were visited by one of many government agencies. I won; it took less than forty-eight hours.
The man introduced himself as Doug Graham, general counsel for the Massachusetts secretary of the commonwealth’s office. He said he was concerned about my eligibility requirements.
He flipped through his notebook like a cop. “Non-party candidates need ten thousand signatures to run for president. You also need the signatures of twelve electors on your nomination papers. But most important, you don’t meet the age requirement.”
“I know. But after studying all the documents, it seems to me that I need to be thirty-five to serve, not to run.”
“You need to be thirty-five to be on the ballot. That’s where our office comes in.” He explained that the secretary of the commonwealth’s office served as a watchdog over the election, and they couldn’t allow my name to be listed.
Peter’s negotiation skills re-surfaced as he argued with the guy point for point.
“I actually thought this might happen,” I interrupted. “There haven’t been any precedents,46 so I knew you’d be scurrying around trying to find a way to stop me from running.”
“Not trying to stop you, just trying to follow the law.”
“In that case, I’ll be a write-in.”
He told me there were laws for write-in candidates too, that they didn’t even tally the results for a particular candidate unless he or she received more than 4 percent of the vote. “Four percent might sound insignificant, but that’s more than eight million votes.”
“I don’t care about my name on the ballot; I just want at least one candidate to be focused on solving problems instead of fund-raising.”
He shook my hand and wished me luck.
Peter and I moved to the next item on our agenda: finding a campaign headquarters.
On one of his painting jobs, Peter had met a local businessman whose run-down theater was tied up in divorce proceedings with his wife. Its worn velvet seats, hardwood stage, and kitchen in the back made the theater ideal for our purposes.47 The owner said we could use the space until he could find a buyer or his wife got permission to knock it down, whichever came first. We happily set up office.
“Now, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” Peter said. “But I need you to hear me out.”
I knew things between us had been going too smoothly.
“It’s just that running a national campaign costs money, lots of money. I can understand you want to keep within the federal election spending limits—and I respect that, I really do.”
I waited for the other shoe to drop.
“Problem is, the other candidates don’t share your view that campaign financing is one of the biggest problems in Washington. They’re taking donations hand over fist. How do we compete with that?”
“I refuse to t
ake a penny from any PACs.”48
“No offense, Josh, but those guys aren’t going to give you money anyway.”
“Good, because our money will come from somewhere else.”
“Such as … ?”
“Do you know how many people in this country are between the ages of thirteen and nineteen?”
“Of course I know. That’s the market every company tries to target. About twenty-eight million.”
“Right. And if you get half of them—”
“You’ll never get half. You’ve got to use a more reasonable percentage.”
“Okay, 10 percent.”
“Still high, but better.”
“If you get 10 percent of twenty-eight million kids to send you just five dollars, you’ve got fourteen million dollars to run a campaign.”
“President Bush spent $186 million to get elected.”
“He didn’t get elected; he got selected. And that $186 million doesn’t count the $250 million of soft money Republicans funneled through the states to bypass federal laws. Gore was no better; he spent $120 million with the Democrats raising another $220 million of soft money.”
Peter whistled through his teeth. “That’s almost a billion dollars! And some people still think it’s not about the money.”49
“Let’s face it,” I said. “Most politicians spend half their time raising money and the other half putting loopholes in their legislation to benefit contributors. I think there’s something honorable about running a campaign financed with rolls of pennies and dollar bills sent in cards.”
“It worked for Oprah,” Peter said. “She’s raised lots of money for charity that way.”
“Pennies for a President.”
“Spare Change for Sure Change.”
I turned to him and laughed. “Hey, you’re pretty good at this.”
“Guess I haven’t lost all the old skills.”
When I noticed his voice catch, I asked him if he ever missed those days. He thought for several minutes before he answered.
“I miss some parts of my old life, I guess. Your mom and being good at my job. And I certainly miss that paycheck at the end of the month. But I feel more connected to my life now.”
I came clean and told Peter about my consumer binge back in Boulder.
He laughed for several minutes. “Glad to know you are as flawed as the rest of us.”
“Are you kidding? Half the time I feel like that’s all I am.”
“Join the club.”
The two of us sat on those worn theater seats for the next two hours. By the time we went home I finally understood the meaning of the word “father.”
ELECTION COUNTDOWN
MID-JANUARY: RALLIES
We held our first campaign rally on the banks of Boston Harbor, mere steps from the site of the infamous Boston Tea Party, the country’s original act of political theater. I wore a Native American headdress the same way some of the colonists had dressed up as Mohawks that fateful night. Two hundred and thirty years later, I was ready to toss some verbal cargo of my own. If only there had been more than twenty people there.
Call the Mad Hatter—We Need Another Tea Party!
Back in 1773, the British East India Company complained that they were suffering economic hardship, so the British government passed the Tea Act of 1773, letting them off the hook for paying taxes. The colonists of New England were furious that the government had given the company unfair advantage over smaller and local competitors. So they boycotted, eventually staging the historic Boston Tea Party on this very spot, an act that demonstrated they were tired of a government that favored Big Business over its own citizens. I say that the situation we citizens face today isn’t much better than what our ancestors faced in our country’s infancy. In fact, it’s much worse.
Do you know that 83 percent of the government’s income comes from people like you and me, and only 17 percent from corporations? Not so long ago, it used to be a fifty-fifty split. Why so unfair to the average citizen now? Because you and I don’t have lobbyists fighting for our rights in Washington the way corporations do. Our politicians have taken so much money from Big Business for their campaign war chests that they have to listen to their concerns. They’ll pay you and me lots of lip service, saying they care about our needs, but until we fork over the same kind of cash the corporations do, we’re out of luck. As it is now, we go to our jobs every day so we can donate money to bail out the airlines, the banks, and the utilities. Our ancestors at the Tea Party rebelled over a whole lot less than that.
The Boston Tea Party was famous for another reason too—the tea boycott that followed was one of the earliest efforts where women in this country organized to change public policy. I’m happy to say my running mate, Beth Coleman, embodies the spirit of these brave and resourceful women. I invite all women and men, boys and girls, to work with us in effecting positive change again today. Those colonists went down in history for standing up against a government that valued corporations more than its own people; work with us now to stand up to this corporate-loving government again.
I wanted to toss a box of Lipton into the harbor as a grand finale but couldn’t bring myself to litter.
By the time I’d finished, the crowd had doubled and there was actually a line at the voter registration table.
Beth was ecstatic. “Nice touch—adding in the piece about the women. They barely teach that part in school.”
“Or the fact that the boycott got the nation off tea.”
“Yeah, Starbucks has a lot to thank those women for.”
We smiled at each other, our regular rhythm re-established. 50
Afterward, we answered questions from dozens of people who lingered at the rally. Many were as concerned as I was about the minority of the rich absconding with the blueprint for our future. I had told myself that if I tanked at that first rally, I would rethink the campaign entirely. But that afternoon assured me that we were on the right track. Forget the naysayers, we were moving forward.
That is, until I saw the papers the next day.
Even with a group of interested people and our theatrics, there wasn’t one mention in the Globe or Herald. If you hadn’t read our Web site, you’d never know the rally had happened at all. I found myself in the strange position of actually needing the media this time around. And as anyone who’s tried to swim against the corporate tide knows, the media’s not in any hurry to bite the hand that feeds it.
I knew going into this that the press and current political system wouldn’t make it easy for a seventeen-year-old to run for president. I just didn’t think they’d make it impossible.
Still, kids continued to arrive at headquarters. Locals, then students from all across the country. Some wanted experience for their resumes, some a sense of political community. Most were in school, so we handed out assignments they could complete from home—making phone calls, staging local rallies. We held interviews for top field positions based on the demographics we’d set forth in our mission statement.
Lisa, our new communications director, lived in Back Bay At five feet ten inches, with her long blond hair pulled messily on top of her head and her ASK ME ABOUT BEING A DYKE T-shirt, she was stunning. She’d worked on several local campaigns and couldn’t wait to roll up her sleeves on ours.
She leaned back and put her bare feet on the chair in front of her. “Okay, best case, we would’ve been doing groundwork a few years ago. Most campaigns aren’t run this seat-of-the-pants.”
“I know.”
“But there’s also something to be said about improvising, being able to make changes quickly as you go along.”
“I’m with you.”
“First thing: The Republicans and Democrats aren’t going to waste any time with us at all. They think anyone this age can’t be serious; they’ll pretend we’re not even here.”
“Age is the best thing we have going for us,” I said.
“Most people are going to think being seventeen—�
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“I turn eighteen this year.”
“Most people will link that to inexperience.”
“Yes, but most people our age don’t vote! Of the almost 27 million people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, only 32 percent made it to the polls last time!”
She readjusted her messy curls. “It’s criminal.”
“It’s more than criminal. We could have changed the result of the last election. It was that close! If just a few more kids had voted, we could have altered history.”
“Neither Bush nor Gore addressed any issues kids care about,” Lisa said. “They went to schools and pretended to care.”
I jumped out of my seat. “The fact that we can’t win is our strength, not our weakness. We have no lobbyists to piss off, no sponsors to keep happy. We’re free to say what we think, unlike everyone else in this campaign.”
“So turn it around on them?”
“Hell, yeah. Let’s expose this dog and pony show for what it is.” The ideas streamed from me unedited. “Let’s be old-fashioned carnival barkers. Let’s run our rallies like game shows. Let’s wear costumes and do skits as politicians taking payola from corporate lobbyists. We have nothing to lose, and it’s a plus!”
I left Lisa writing notes at lightning speed, still buzzing with the thrill of our ideas. I remembered the line from a favorite Dylan song—When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose. A campaign slogan written by one of the century’s greatest social commentators? Bring on the bumper stickers.
And like that, as if the musical reference conjured her up from Boulder, I looked down the aisle to the volunteer sign-up table and saw Janine.
Brady bounded down the aisle and almost knocked me over. He lay on the floor, begging me to rub his belly. I obliged.
Janine approached me carefully, as if I were not the same guy she’d been going out with only six weeks before. She wore her plaid kilt with a striped top and sheepskin boots. I couldn’t help grinning when I saw her.
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