why vote for me

First, because I actually would be a good president. To determine whether or not you agree with this statement, keep coming back here and reading my blog posts as I continue to enter new ones. Generally, I propose to be a president who has a principled moral view and a systematic political vision guiding his choices, a president who does not pretend to be an expert on every politically relevant empirical subject matter, let alone any. Neither I, nor McCain, nor Obama have gone to graduate school in and spent his professional life studying economics, or political science, or meteorology/environmental science, or Middle Eastern social and cultural dynamics, or the energy industry. My one own expertise (in this full sense) that I have to offer as president is, as far as I can tell, the most important: moral and political philosophy. When it comes to empirical subject matters relevant to the practical choices of a president, I propose to do the only responsible thing: consult my advisers (chosen for their expertise, not because of family connections, etc.) and, more important, consult experts on all sides of the relevant empirical issues, ones fully outside of my administration. Of course, as president, it will in the end be up to me to make all sorts of important choices. But, as a professional philosopher and so someone who is more trained in the skill of thinking generally than any other kind of professional, I can't think of anyone better to make decisions based on information and advice culled from the empirical expertise of others.

Second, because it would not be a wasted vote. Their are various worthwhile purposes one can have in casting a vote for president. One, of course, is the purpose of potentially changing who becomes the next president.

But there are others, mainly purposes having to do with making some kind of political statement, and so potentially effecting some kind of political change (not having to do with who wins the election that time around), by increasing the vote tally of a candidate. For example, suppose there is a third party candidate who is running solely on the issue of solar power, and suppose you believe that solar power is terribly underused and that governmental efforts to invest in research and development of more effective and cost-efficient solar power are sadly pathetic. In that case, even if you know this candidate has no chance of winning, you might very reasonably vote for that candidate in the hopes of potentially effecting some political change when your chosen candidate gets a decent number of votes and/or more votes than expected.

It's with such a purpose in mind that I'm hoping some will choose to vote for me. For example, suppose I get enough Idaho votes that the Idaho Statesman chooses to write an article about me, an article which describes those views of mine which likely attracted my voters to me. Then other people read that article and, perhaps, are more likely to vote for me in four years (increasing the chance that, eventually, especially with this sort of causal effect compounding itself over many election cycles, I will have a real shot at the presidency), or instead, perhaps, are more likely to cast later votes for other candidates, presidential and otherwise, in light of such views. Further, non-voting-wise, some may choose to mention my views to others in conversation about politics, others in the media may choose to inject at least some discussion of my views into the media on other occasions, and so on.

What is distinctive of me such that an unexpectedly high vote tally might potentially effect political change, and so might make it perfectly reasonable to vote for me, come mainly in two categories: (i) some of my views about particular issues, for which you will mainly have to wait for later blog entries, and (ii) the view expressed in the first paragraph about presidential expertise, consulation of experts, and decision-making in light of the most trained general thinking skills. And, aside from what is distinctive of me as a presidential candidate, a vote for the no-party write-in kind of candidate that I am could potentially have an affect on attitudes to non-major-party candidates generally, increasing the the degree to which we live in a genuine democracy by way of giving people more options, and also hopefully putting more pressure on the major party candidates to take certain issues and ideas more seriously, to think outside the box, etc.

Furthermore, in Idaho, where McCain is almost completely guaranteed to win (much more guaranteed than you are to survive your next drive in a car), it's especially hard to see how a vote for me would be a "throw away" vote. If anything, a vote for either McCain or Obama would be a throwaway vote, since, when it comes to those two major party candidates, people are only going to pay attention to who wins what states, and who wins the entire general election, whereas a vote for me has a real chance of putting my vote tally above that threshold where I get some real political attention from the media, and so potentially do the things of the sort described in the third, fourth and fifth paragraphs above.

Although especially obvious for Idaho, I think the same basic point holds for any state in the country. The 2000 presidential election was by far the closest in US history, given just the the several thousand vote difference in Florida, which ended up deciding it. But that was still more than a 2000 vote difference. Even if, for example, I were to get more that the 250 votes I am hoping for in Missouri (a state which, at this point, could go either way as far as McCain vs. Obama), the chances are almost nil that that would affect which of those two major party candidates wins the state.

And please do not think to yourself in response: but what if everyone in Missouri who is attracted to your views reasons this way, and so votes for you? The flaw in this line of thinking is in pretending that your vote, and the reasoning you engage in behind your vote, has any magical influence on how others will reason and vote. The fact is, as I realize (sadly), almost all voters will never even have heard of me come vote time, and very few of them who have will be swayed to vote for me. It's just a mistake to think that you - a single individual - going into a particular polling place and writing in my name on just one ballot, is somehow going to change the fact that all those other people aren't going to vote for me. I can reasonably aim at 250 votes in Missouri, and hope for a few more, but there is just no chance I will get, say, 10,000 votes.

So, instead of voting for McCain or Obama (whichever is your preference between the two), a vote which has very little chance of determining who actually wins the election, I encourage you (at least if you find my views attractive) to vote for me, something which has a much higher chance of getting me a vote tally that puts me over the threshold necessary to have the political effects described above.