By Haddon Libby
Have you been paying any attention to the 2016 Presidential Election Process? If you have not, here is some of what you are missing:
On the GOP side, once-upon-a-time front runner JEB! rebooted his campaign and now uses the slogan, JEB! CAN FIX IT. Personally, I do not want any more politicians of privilege who have the fix in for their friends and cronies. The Koch Brothers’ handpicked choice, Scott Walker, dropped out of the race as no one other than those two brothers seemed to support him.
Outsider, The Donald, leads the pack while doing his best rendition of Archie Bunker while pseudo-outsider, Dr. Ben Carson, believes that the pyramids were grain silos despite empirical evidence to the contrary. Marco Rubio appears to be a financial mess despite a $1 million book deal. Carly Fiorina touts her record as CEO of Hewlett Packard during a time period when its stock value halved and they shipped American jobs offshore. Meanwhile, Ted Cruz is in third or fourth place despite statements that President Obama was getting ready to do a military takeover of Texas so that he could have a third term as President. Cruz cited military drills in the Southwest from a few months back as his empirical evidence. Fortunately, Cruz met with military leaders who did a ‘pinky swear’ with him and promised him that no coup was being planned….whew!
If all of this isn’t weird enough for you, the front runner on Democratic side and former Walmart Board member, Hillary Clinton announced that she was spending a weekend with advisors in preparation for being spontaneous. Her chief challenger, Bernie Sanders, is deemed a ‘radical socialist’ for crazy ideas like basic education and healthcare for all Americans.
Whether you are Republican, Democrat or Independent, it is fair to say that this year’s gaggle of politicians is a motley group. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could push a reset button, eliminate most if not all of those running and get a new batch?
I have an idea.
Let us establish the None of the Above Party of the United States. I would have suggested the shorter ‘None of the Above Party’ name but a Democratic operative in Washington DC already owns that name and website domain.
As Chairman of the newly formed NOTA-US (pronounced ‘not us’ as the ‘a’ is silent), I believe that we need a simple platform. NOTA-US stands for nothing – we are the ‘Seinfeld’ of political parties.
Each NOTA-US candidate would have to take a solemn pledge to have no opinion and stand for nothing. We would run for office on a platform where we implore voters to find a better candidate than us. You should only vote for us if you do not like your other choices.
In the unlikely (or likely) case that we are elected, we would have to develop a way to govern until more responsible leadership comes to the forefront. Otherwise, our terms in office would become a free-for-alls where special interests use the governmental system for their gain at the expense of the people. Just think what could happen – spiraling deficits, corporate handouts and abuses of the democratic values on which our nation and political system were founded.
In order to provide this caretaker governing platform, I would propose implementing a system whereby each voter has the ability to give their opinions on all matters that we have to make decisions. Given how far technology has come, we could build a system whereby people could use their phone, smartphone or computer to cast their opinions and votes. If people chose not to participate in this system, a small group of activists could influence our decisions as NOTA-US candidates only do what the voters tell them to….then again if the majority do not tell us anything, maybe we should just do nothing.
So who is with me?
Haddon Libby is Managing Partner of Winslow Drake, an investment advisory firm and can be reached at hlibby@winslowdrake.com.
