Friday, October 19, 2007 - Posts
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This is the second entry in "The Fringe," a periodic look at the
lesser-known candidates for president. You can read the entire series here. Dr. Mark Klein
shares at least one presidential tic with the rest of the mainstream
candidates—he has a tagline. "We need a grown-up in the White House,"
Klein proudly told me earlier today. He wants that grown-up to be him.
Klein
is a retired psychiatrist from Oakland, Calif., who woke up one morning
in 2005 and felt like running for president. So that he did. Armed with
$20,000 of his own money—Klein doesn't do any fund raising of his
own—he started a field office in West Des Moines, Iowa, and says he has
a dozen volunteers who believe in his message. "Instead of in my
retirement buying a fancy Mercedes, I decided to run for the White
House," he told me.
Klein's main goal is to strengthen the middle class.
That means stemming the flow of illegal immigrants, imposing banking
regulations, and re-evaluating free-trade policies. "What passes for
the free market today is basically socialism for the very rich," he
said. He added that even though he lives an admittedly "prosperous"
lifestyle and lives off stock dividends, he considers himself middle
class, since he has a net worth less than $10 million. He's less
focused on foreign policy (his campaign materials say it would play
"second fiddle" to domestic policy), but says he wants to withdraw all
troops and supports the Bidenback strategy of dividing Iraq into three countries.
As if running for president wasn't hard enough, Klein is convinced the GOP doesn't like him. He claims
the Iowa Republicans ignored his requests to be included in the Ames
Straw Poll because they're anti-Semitic (Klein is Jewish). Mary Tiffany
of the Iowa GOP told me his discrimination claims were baseless. He
just didn't pass muster when the State Central Committee chose whom to
put on the ballot in Ames. "Mark Klein isn't even a formidable
candidate," she said, adding that she was surprised I was giving him
the time of day. If Klein had more press coverage and bigger events,
she said, they might have listed him as a candidate. (Eleven candidates were on the ballot, including John Cox and the then-unannounced Fred Thompson.)
All
of this creates a presidential Catch-22: Outsider candidates can't
raise their profile at major events because they don't have enough of
an infrastructure, but they can't get the infrastructure they need
because they don't have the medium to spread their message.
Of
course, Klein could have gotten around this by running for some office
other than president. But those small-time positions didn't interest
him. "I don't waste my time," he said.
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