As soon an I'm old enough I'm going to run for president.

Almost nine years to the day after this year's election, I'll be old enough to meet the legal age requirement of 35. I'll file with the Federal Elections Commission, and just wait for the votes to roll in.

And I'll consider myself lucky if I get even one.

Third-party candidacies have always been a quirky feature of our electoral process, and only a select few candidates will ever be remembered by history. John Anderson, Ross Perot, and Teddy Roosevelt's Bull-Moose Party presidential bid are a few exceptions.

But not many people who were fans of the movie "Born on the Fourth of July" in which Tom Cruise portrayed the true story of Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, ever knew that Kovic ran for president in 1988. I saw his name listed among the many people who received votes in the New Hampshire Primary that year.

One of the idealistic promises of the Internet is that this new medium will make our society more democratic. We'll have instant access to information. Candidates will simply upload their position papers, policy statements and the transcripts of major speeches to their Web sites. And we'll download them, and compare them to those of the opposition, and make better, more informed choices than we ever have before.

And in the information age, more people will have access to the political process, and there will be more third party challenges. Elections will finally be decided based on issues rather than the quality of campaign advertising.

Ha!

I've just completed a survey of several campaign related Web sites, and I have no more faith in the political process than I ever did before. Virtual Bill, Virtual Bob and Virtual Ross are all virtually useless.

Take Bob Dole's Web site for instance. This site allows you to customize the site based on your own interests. That means it'll keeps track of three issues most important to you and how Dole and Kemp stand on them. But you'll never get away from the fact that the Dole Campaign has turned negative in the last several days. Check out the "news" section of the Dole site, and you'll see that the tone of campaigns is not likely to change in the age of the Internet. Negative ads are just as common, if not more so. [The site was down on 18 Nov. presumably because Dole lost the election -- Arik]

From what I've seen of the Clinton Web site , it reflects the same tone as the TV campaign has. A little less negative toward the opposition, but just as full of catchy phrases like "building a bridge to the 21st Century" whatever that means. Though it makes use of some flashy technology, such as Shockwave and BackWeb (for Windows95 users only), the site has an appearance of being full of important and relevant content. But it's full of the same campaign rhetoric that makes everyone's eyes gloss over.

The same can be said for Perot's site. Just as he does on television, Ross is great at pointing out the problems our country faces, but not very good at explaining exactly how they should be solved. His Web site is no help to his campaign.

As the Internet grows, other third party candidates are going to find the same problems in getting their message out to the voters that they have in the past. Take Harry Browne, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate, for example. A few months ago, Browne sent a massive press release both by email and fax, claiming that he had been elected "The President of Cyberspace" based on a Web-based poll somewhere. I'm sure his site at has a link to that very press release somewhere. It also has a link to a political quiz that in all likelihood will try to prove that you are a Libertarian and simply don't know it yet. That's nothing new to the Libertarian message. They've been claiming for years that if only people would listen, they'd want to switch parties.

My campaign will be nothing like what these guys have done. I'll take my inspiration from Winton Worswick. I checked out his Web site this morning and wished there were more candidates like him. His is the kind of campaign I'd like to run. No big money, no marketing consultants, no image-makers.

Like it or not, the Internet is not going to offer us much of a solution to the way political campaigns are run. The traditional obstacles created by the career politicians are still too high.

But I can dream, can't I?

Watch for my candidacy, and a campaign Web site, in 2008.

Send e-mail toArik Hesseldahl.

Send e-mail toThe Idaho State Journal.