Barack Obama is still days away from placing his hand on the Lincoln Bible and beginning his first term as president, but he’s already got an opponent for a 2012 re-election bid.
It’s Ed O’Donnell’s sixth run for the White House, but many have never even heard of their fellow Delaware resident. He’s only ever appeared on the New Hampshire ballot, receiving a total of 246 votes in his five previous efforts there.
And while that’s dwarfed by the nationwide success of Ross Perot or Ralph Nader, the two pre-eminent third-party candidates of the last 20 years, O’Donnell soldiers on, in a state of perpetual campaigning. He spends his nights in hotels, with no permanent address, traveling between Delaware and New Hampshire, and jumping at every opportunity to appear on radio, television or get one of his letters published in local newspapers.
He has little money, earning what he can selling books and maps and passing out flyers for local businesses in his spare time. Otherwise, he’s out doing non-profit work for the Winthrop Foundation, the charity he established 34 years ago – passing out bibles and other literature to prisoners, prostitutes and others on the streets of Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
It may not be the typical life of a Colgate graduate once voted most outstanding student leader or of a man who once taught a seminar at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, but it's one O’Donnell, now 60, is proud of and has no intention of giving up until the fundamentals of the United States government drastically change.
“George Washington said the elected official must provide moral as well as constitutional leadership,” O’Donnell says. “The president’s first task is to motivate – by example and by words – people to treat everyone with love, kindness, friendliness and forgiveness.”
Since the 1950s, elected officials have been focused on the material, O’Donnell says, whereas the main function of the president ought to be helping people get along with one another.
Part of that is making mental health a priority in this country. He said he supports mandatory mental health courses in all public high schools and even wants to shorten the work week to four days to reduce stress levels.
But perhaps more significantly, O’Donnell says he wants to give the have-nots new standing in America, empowering them with public-service jobs and a fair salary that will allow them to be productive members of society.
“There’s $800 billion in the bank accounts of American charities that are targeted for a specific good,” O’Donnell says. “I want to take a percentage of that and hire every unemployed person to public-service jobs and guarantee them $30,000 to $40,000 per year for picking up litter or doing other similar jobs.”
A devout Christian, O’Donnell also wants to encourage prayer in public schools, make comparative religion courses mandatory, and even candidly says he would use the office of the presidency to spread his faith.
O’Donnell is also proposing dramatic changes to the country’s foreign policy, taking billions from the military and intelligence agencies and using it instead to help those around the world without food, clothes or medicine.
“Ghandi said his goal was to wipe a tear from every eye,” he says. “Our foreign policy should be based on feeding and clothing the world’s poor. I would support massive cuts to the defense budget. I’d sell all that expensive art on the 6th floor of the state department.”
Empires always crumble
O’Donnell concedes his ideas – some of which are rooted in socialism and others that simply violate the constitution – may not be in touch with mainstream political ideology. But he predicts that could soon change.
The Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Soviet Union and countless other examples O’Donnell rattles off all met a similar demise. Our current fiscal crisis could be an indicator that America’s day of reckoning may not be far off, he says.
“I’m 100 percent certain that the government of the United States and the entire ruling establishment – the college presidents and the corporate executives – will collapse and then it will be my opportunity.”
His first move as president would be to call a Constitutional Convention in Williamsburg, Va. – a place he loves for its history.
“We’d have a diverse group of two citizens from each state and their charge would be to start the government over again,” he said. “This government does not work. It is fundamentally flawed and needs to be replaced.”
Then, he’ll begin aggressively implementing his programs. When they’re in place, he’ll be gone and hand the reigns off to his vice-president – a person he says he already has picked out, but refuses to identify.
“I’m a revolutionary,” he says. “I’m a transitional figure. I won’t need to stay long.”
