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It seems like we have forgotten – or never knew – that, in our democratic republic, we the People are sovereign1 and that we have a constitutional right to all the relevant unvarnished information we need to choose our public servants wisely. Moreover, our current and prospective public servants are obligated to provide us with that kind of information whenever practical. It is not for our servants to decide what we do and do not have a need to know. Yet because our public servants occasionally feel that revealing information would be against their own personal interests – when, for example, they believe it would hurt their chances for re-election, conflict with their narrow ideology, or might even land them in prison – they have been known to withhold information, obscure it, classify it, or spin it beyond recognition. (See Political Corruption.) Through this campaign I hope to provide a first step toward a remedy for that perceived conflict between the public interest and the personal interests of public servants. This remedy works by taking much of ability for candidates to control their public image and messages out of their own hands.2 The remedy is simply to broadcast my entire campaign to the public – no editing, no script, nothing but the Internet at most between me and the People. Most candidates, of course, are unlikely to give up any of their ability to control their public messages – unless they believe it would help them get elected. I am running this kind of campaign because I do not think of campaigns primarily as means of getting elected, but as a means of informing the self-governing public. I believe campaigns should be about giving voters all the information they need to make a well-informed vote. If I do get elected, it will not be due to any intentional deception or false image construction. For the first time in history, all voters will have been given the opportunity to know exactly who they've hired – including the vast majority of my staff – before we take office. They will also know exactly what my agenda will be. |
1 For some reason, we act as though the President is our leader, but our President is our servant. We are not subjects of a monarch or dictator. It is our country. There is no unitary decision-maker. (See the U.S. Constitution.) In fact, our system of self-government is in large part designed in reaction to and for protection against overly centralized and unaccountable government. Ultimately, we the People of the United States of America make all national decisions collectively through our elections and through our constitutional right to petition our elected representatives.
2 Unfortunately, most politicians today, whether elected or not, have been convinced that they must exercise nearly absolute control over their public image. If they are correct in their belief, they seem to be admitting that they would not be elected if the people really knew who they were. They might be right. Let us hope they are wrong