> Running for the office of chief executive of the world bourgeoisie
> doesn't seem like the time to conduct scores of simultaneous
> experiments.
Given that the GP obviously doesn't have a chance of putting any of their candidates or non-candidates (endorsees?) into said office, why not do some experiments? Maybe eventually they will find out what the heck they are about.
But your characterization of that office does raise the question of what the point of a radical party putting up a candidate actually is. Why should anyone who wants to overthrow the system, or at least make major changes in it, run for chief executive of the system? These sorts of campaigns used to be called "informational" -- the idea was, IIRC, that you could get your ideas into the newspapers (about the only mass medium there was in the old days) by running for office, even if you had no hope of winning. But nowadays there are so many ways to get your ideas out (Moore's documentary approach being only one of them) that running for president may not necessarily be the best one. Making films, blogging, direct action movements, union organizing -- using all sorts of media may have more impact than old-fashioned "campaigning."
In fact, I find it hard to see what the Greens' purpose in running *any* presidential candidate is, other than to convey the image that they are a real political party who can play in the same league with the big boys. But this image seems to me somewhat undercut when one of their major figures accepts a VP-candidate position under a celebrity non-member of the party who does not want to be nominated by it, and who in any case refuses to come to the party's convention to ask for what he does want. This sort of behavior makes it rather opaque to me just what the "information" the campaign is supposed to be conveying actually is. But then I'm having a hard time these days figuring out what sort of an alternative system opponents of the existing system should be advocating; once I figure that out, then I may have some more solid criteria for judging various forms of political activity.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt