One obvious similarity stands out. Of the 43 Presidents we have had up until 2008, 25 have been lawyers. That’s a staggering ratio of 58%. Not only that, but every major candidate that we have now running for President in 2008 also holds a law degree, and several of them have practiced law. Obviously, the first thing you should do if you want a shot at the Presidency is obtain a Juris Doctor.

Another career that isn’t surprising is soldier; seven of our 43 Presidents served in some capacity of the armed forces before seeking office. Several more have served in the air force or navy - George W. Bush, Sr., was a pilot, and Jimmy Carter was a sailor, both having earned their way up to Navy Lieutenant.

Of all the Presidents, Thomas Jefferson had the longest resume with six careers outside of politics; he had been a writer, inventor, lawyer, architect, farmer. You might be wondering what he invented? The first swivel chair, along with other innovations he put in when he designed his famous home, Monticello.

Contrary to the old chestnut about how actors make great politicians, only Ronald Reagan actually had an acting career before becoming a politician, so one test case isn’t much proof.

Only three Presidents had a previous occupation as writer. One of those being Thomas Jefferson, who almost certainly never got paid directly as a writer, but did his writing in the course of documenting and directing the early childhood of our government. As for Kennedy, his writing was actually helping his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., complete his memoir of his three years as United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. And Jimmy Carter, he has written 23 books, being the only President who qualifies as a professional writer. Granted, all but two of these were written after, and not before, his Presidency.

One other notable writing career is Benjamin Harrison, who was a journalist by way of having been a court decisions reporter of the Indiana Supreme Court during the time that he was studying law.

While we’re on the subject of Jimmy Carter’s career, let’s clear something up: that title of “peanut farmer” was an exaggeration. He helped out on his parent’s peanut farm as a young boy. He shows no evidence of having desired to make a career out of it, and it looks like he gave it up after an accident with some equipment left him with an injured finger.

Harry Truman was the only other President who was also a farmer, although several - particularly the early ones - were owners of plantations. His father was actually the farmer, but Truman worked there for some of his childhood, then went off to finish school and seek his fortune in clerical jobs before returning to the family farm in 1906 and staying on to work there for 11 years, at which point he joined the military. He returned from World War I, married his sweetheart, and opened a haberdashery, making him the only men’s clothing retailer on the Presidential list. The farm went bust during the Great Depression.

Andrew Johnson worked briefly as a tailor. He was apprenticed to a tailor at the age of 10, and by age 16 he and his brother ran away to the city, where he found work as a tailor and stayed at it until he’d finished his teen years. Then he entered politics as an alderman.

And, contrary to what you might expect given the poor separation of church and state in the U. S., there has been exactly one member of the clergy to later get elected President - James Garfield, who was a minister and an elder for the Disciples of Christ sect of the Christian Church. He preached his first sermon in Poestenkill, New York.

Shrub (George Walker Bush) - A name bestowed in the writings of the late Molly Ivins, the American columnist and author. Seen by many as the Dorothy Parker of modern politics, it took a sharp wit like Molly’s to draw the connection between the surname “Bush” and a reference to the Junior President being hardly capable of filling the shadow of Bush Senior.

Slick Willie (William Jefferson Clinton) - Bestowed by an editorial article in the “Arkansas Democrat Gazette”, this nickname does the skillful job of referring to the “Teflon” nature of Clinton where nothing ever seemed to stick to him, his charismatic skills, a reference to his way with the ladies, and a kind of 1940’s-era risibility, all without condemning him too hard.

The Gipper (Ronald Wilson Reagan) - Named after an actual role he played in the movie “Knute Rockne, All American”. The movie was about football and Ronald Reagan played George Gipp. The lead character actually had the line: “The last thing George said to me, ‘Rock,’ he said, ’sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper.” Reagan actually cheerfully adopted this nickname himself.

The Accidental President (Gerald Ford) - Ford had a reputation for being physically clumsy and his many slips and falls were caught on camera. Most famously was when he tripped coming out of his jet, Air Force One, and tumbled down about 12 feet of steps. Combined with this, he had never run for President or Vice President, since Nixon appointed him from Congress directly to the Vice Presidency to replace Spiro Agnew. Nixon then was ironically impeached himself, leaving the tiller of the nation in Ford’s shaky hands.

Tricky Dick (Richard Milhous Nixon) - No list of colorful Presidential nicknames would be complete without it. First coined by Democratic opponent Helen Gahagan Douglas, during the 1950 race for the California U.S. Senate. The name was applied for Nixon’s already questionable tactics when competing for a Senate seat, and even then compared to his later record, the public had seen nothing yet.

Give ‘Em Hell Harry (Harry S. Truman) - This was shouted out from a crowd listening to one of his famously fiery speeches, and the name stuck throughout his Presidency as he earned the reputation of a vigilant watchdog of the nation’s well-being.

The Sphinx of the Potomac (Calvin Coolidge) - The president was known for being the most taciturn official ever, and legends abound of how difficult it was to get him to talk. This made him enigmatic; nobody knew what he was thinking, and so he was silent and mysterious like an Egyptian sphinx.

The Professor (Woodrow Wilson) - Surprisingly enough, an academic with his own thoughts and no need for speech-writers is the exception in the Presidency rather than the norm. But Wilson was one of these, and was one of the few to be hailed as an intellectual. Compare this with later Presidencies where jokes at the expense of the President’s I.Q. are the norm.

The Lion (Theodore Roosevelt) - It is difficult to pick from the many colorful nicknames given to Roosevelt the first. However, this one sums up his military record before his time in office, and his grit and determination in rooting out corruption on his way to the top. He ruled with a very firm hand, and this nickname speaks of that character in an almost Biblical state of reverence.

His Obstinacy (Grover Cleveland) - A President famous for his use of the veto power; he had a rubber stamp and he wasn’t the least bit afraid to use it. Cleveland himself later bragged that his greatest accomplishment as President was blocking the bad ideas of others.

This isn’t just granola-munching Flower Child Liberals talking, either. Conservative voices this year have spent more time criticizing their own group than they have been defending that group from outsiders. A collective groan can be heard going up from the Grand Old Party this year, because there’s an absolute lack of viable candidates. The Democrats might be tempted to say “Well, that didn’t stop you in 2000!”, but this is different. Bush knew the Republican spirit and knew how to play to it.

But the legacy eight years later: what is considered by many to be the most corrupt government that the United States has ever had, and what many are calling the least popular President ever. His popularity rating hasn’t risen above the 30% mark for most of his second term. We have a legacy of a messy, war-torn foreign policy, a network of cronies running everything, and the fact that torture, once a taboo topic, is now a check box on the form of issues to support or not support, right next to school vouchers and gay marriage.

Do you support torture? It boggles the mind to think how that could be put as a reasonable question. And yet four of our candidates in 2008 answered ‘yes’! They are Giuliani, Hunter, Romney, and Tancredo. Republicans all, and doubtless feeling that they have to answer in the affirmative in order to win voters. We have to be firm to fight terrorism, after all. We must torture to protect our freedom, which is what the terrorists hate us for.

What can only be described as the political takeover of 2000 did little to preserve the good name of the right wing. Using a technicality unknown to most voters in an education-poor country, they managed to use the Electoral College to basically take over the government. The fact that they pushed through and got their way anyway did not serve to win the hearts of the American voters, whether right or left. As the Presidential limo was blocked from driving up to the white house and was pelted with eggs by an angry mob, many Conservatives expressed with embarrassment that it would have been better to lose than to win this way.

The aftermath of the election is that many voters are discouraged and disillusioned, believing that their vote does not count and there’s no reason to go on trying. The aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing seven years of war has left many more with paranoid conspiracy theories, furiously chasing their tails as they point to the obvious corruption that anyone can see, but no one can explain coherently. In the Nixon administration, we had his impeachment. As shocked as a nation was at this event, it could rest assured that justice had been served. The people thirty years later don’t have that comfort.

Then there is the fact of the attacks themselves. Only the very paranoid would say that “Bush caused the attacks”, but there is still the reasonable conclusion that had a different President been sitting in the Oval Office at the time they occurred, then events would have played out differently. What matters to voters now is not so much what happened then, as where we are now: in debt, two wars that show no signs of ever ending, a PATRIOT act that reads like a declaration of martial law forever, a domestic policy that’s nothing short of disastrous, and a Federal government which is amongst the most powerful anyone can recall seeing.

As rioters in New Orleans storm city hall demanding they be allowed to stay in their shelters because they have no-where to go, as family members of soldiers killed in Iraq weep over their graves, as real estate markets bottom out and the dollar, for the first time in recent memory, is no longer the most valuable currency in the world, as travelers come back from the airport with horror stories of the TSA gestapo, and as criminal charges mount against an administration that has shown no sign of remorse, Conservatives are looking on and wondering, “Was it supposed to end like this?” This doesn’t seem to be what anybody had in mind when they first said, “I’m a Conservative.”

The candidates for the Democratic side are strong, and the ones on the Conservative side ignored the crisis of government to squabble about whether we can use medical marijuana, allow gays to marry, or trust a woman with her own uterus. And though the Democrats do not claim to have all of the answers, they will have to do pretty terrible just to pull up even with the Republicans.

Do your part and vote today!

Paid advertising
Provided the campaign is well funded, this method is by far the easiest. Many TV stations, print media, and radio stations openly accept political advertising from almost all parties. Others ban political ads, but allow campaign groups to sponsor public service announcements with no partisan message. Still other media, particularly specialized magazines, openly support a certain candidate.

Publicity
While paid advertising does help to get the candidates’ messages out and make their faces familiar to the constituents, ads just don’t earn the same level of trust as free media coverage. Free publicity carries a lot of weight. Publicity is when journalists and editors choose which candidate to talk about and what to say about them. This type of coverage is generally free of the one-sidedness of paid advertising and therefore more valuable to readers and viewers.

That’s not to say candidates sit back and wait for the media to come to them. It’s usually just the opposite — many turn into “publicity hounds” who dog the media as much as possible hoping to get into the limelight. Of course, it doesn’t always work. Sometimes less aggressive methods, like holding public events, work better to draw media attention.

Mass meetings
It’s one of the hallmarks of democracy: the right to hold mass meetings. Needless to say, campaigning candidates make as much use of this right as they can, organizing supporters’ meetings, pep rallies with rousing music and whirling confetti, and in some cases, even protests.

One of the major benefits of meetings like these is that they increase supporters’ feelings of closeness to the candidate. Even when you support a candidate’s ideals, it’s hard to really get behind someone you’ve only seen in pictures. When you’ve had the chance to see them in person and maybe even shake their hand and ask a few questions, the candidate becomes more like a personal friend.

Another way in which meetings help the campaign is by showing visually how many people in the local area support the candidate. The turnout to the meeting provides clear social proof and helps convince attendees and anyone who hears about the meeting that mainstream voters support that candidate.

Campaigning for political office has become far more complex since the first political debates in ancient times. Working with the media and going out to meet the voters in person is critical to the success of election campaigns, but those are just some of the techniques for winning elections that are used today.

Make your voice heard and cast your ballot!

Estimates have it that the race for the 2008 White House could carry a $500 million price tag, which is far more than the Presidential Election Campaign Fund can hold. Because of this, Democratic and Republican nominees could decline to use the fund in both the primary and the general elections. Pundits have identified the Presidential Election Campaign Fund as being broken, having not kept up with inflation, and that it also fails to take into account the greater number of media streams available to campaign through. When they say that, they mean “the Internet”, which is having the greatest effect on the voter’s decision process this year more than previous years.

George W. Bush turned the money down in both his 2000 and 2004 GOP primaries. Both Howard Dean and John Kerry followed suit in 2004.

Also called the “checkoff fund” because it appears as a check box on the tax forms, the program, which is administered by the Federal Elections Commission, was created in response to the Watergate scandal in order to reign in the campaign financing activity of Presidential candidates. It reduces a candidate’s dependence on large contributions from such donating parties as special-interest groups. To accept the fund requires that a candidate agree to an overall spending limit and to abide by spending limits in each state. They must also be subject to a campaign audit.

The fund is only expected to have about $200 million in it by the beginning of 2008. It is divided equally between all candidates, which means that even some of the lowest-funded candidates in the race will be constrained to a paltry sum compared to what they can easily collect on their own. The trend lately has been to start fund-raising earlier every year; the candidates have already gotten a sizable bankroll going by 2007. In addition, many of the candidates already hold public office, and are free to use their left-over money from their previous candidacy for their current election run.

In the race, Senator and candidate John McCain, Senator Russ Feingold, and Representatives Christopher Shays and Martin Meehan have all made strong cases for campaign finance reform. McCain has spear-headed the matter on the front of the checkoff fund, having turned down the money for his 2008 bid, but also having taken action in favor of overhauling it.

If the overhaul were to go through, it would triple the amount available to candidates during state primaries. It would also eliminate the state spending limits, which is a chief pinch point. It would also offer more money to candidates when other candidates had already turned it down, which seems to be a great playing-field leveler.

It should be pointed out that McCain is being a good sport about this, since he is currently the third or fourth highest earner of campaign funds. The fact that he would allow money which he had turned down to go to his potential competitor, sans spending limit, shows the remarkable confidence befitting a military hero.

But if they’re having a tough time keeping up with electronic technology, they’re in for a real poser with biological technology. It is obvious from research that within our century, biotechnology will give rise to a host of new issues to deal with that we never saw before. Whether they come from our country or somewhere else, they’re definitely on the way.

Cloning is one issue that many of us have no idea how we’ll react to. A poll of Americans has shown that a sizable percentage believed that a cloned human would not have a soul. However, there’s a bright side to this: they might not object to cloned embryonic stem cells, at that rate, since to them clones have no life to take.

Then there is the matter of artificial DNA. One pictures the world of the movie “Blade Runner” with colorful replicant life forms living amongst us. But this isn’t too far off. In fact, in a recent science article in the Washington Post, experts have stated that “the technology is quickly becoming so simple, experts say, that it will not be long before ‘bio hackers’ working in garages will be downloading genetic programs and making them into novel life forms.”. When these feats are possible, government controls will have to rush to update themselves to regulate what can and cannot be done in this area.

Tampering with existing DNA in already-living people is becoming commonplace. “Gene therapy” is where genes are inserted into a patient’s cells and tissues to treat a disease, usually a hereditary one. The effect is to replace a mutant gene causing the disease with a healthy one. Although the technology is still in its infancy, it has been applied in some cases with some success. This raises some interesting questions for the medical malpractice lawyers: Will we one day see a child suing her parents for allowing her to be born with Down’s syndrome? When we use artificial genes to replace natural genes, have we created a chimera?

At the end of these developments lies the ultimate science fiction scenario: genetic engineering. Literally playing God. Biological weapons have already been widely debated in politics already, and a biological weapon is nothing more or less than a super-germ created specifically to infect the enemy. So far, these germs have only been bred, not created from scratch. But beyond mere germs, what else could somebody do with a bio-engineering lab, a lot of scientists, a lot of money, and not much ethics? Perhaps breed a race of super-soldiers to conquer the world with?

There is also the matter of ownership of intellectual property. Many biology labs have already rushed to patent life forms that they might create in the future. This makes sense when you consider the case of genetically altered food crops - a case in point is a new strain of corn that has been designed to be insect-resistant, already growing and yielding crops in Kenya.

Other cases are manufacturing human insulin through a genetically modified bacteria and erythropoietin manufactured from genetically altered mice. All of this is already being done, but laboratories want to maintain some property rights before they just release their newly-altered life forms into the wild. In fact, much of the advanced medical treatments today are being deployed with the use of biological engineering in some degree. One of the earliest approved uses was the FDA-approved genetically-engineered hepatitis B vaccine, introduced in 1986.

The purpose of this article is not to scare anyone or promote fear-mongering. Biotechnology is already out there in the world, and it is clearly saving lives. But it cannot help but march forward, and sometime when the dust has settled, perhaps cloned or genetically engineered humans will be voting on what we can do to them, instead of the other way around.

Additionally, there is massive and passionate anger in the voting ranks. We have the unpopular Iraq war in our laps, a budget surplus has been turned into the largest deficit in history, with what all figures point to as the least popular President stepping down from an eight-year reign - with impeachment cries dogging his heels, no less. The Republicans have lost more friends at this point than they ever have before. At the same time, we have massive dissatisfaction with the Democrat side, where we have had defeats at the hands of lame duck Democrat Presidential candidates and voted in a score of Democrats into the Senate and Congress who have since sat on their hands and done nothing.

So, the entire country is actually one big battleground. All assessments of the political map for 2008 have to take this into account. Being said, here are the states which are seen as the front lines of the Presidential race, and why:

Virginia: A decisive state on the Eastern side, it has recently gone from Republican to Democrat, but may be leaning back. The polls here have McCain ahead of Clinton by a wide margin of 51 to 42, but a tie between Clinton and Giuliani at 45% each.

Ohio: It is the “incumbent battleground”, having decided the 2004 Presidential election.

Arkansas: This is where we get Bill and Hillary Clinton from, but also where we get Mike Huckabee. Arkansas is traditionally a Conservative state which votes Democrat most of the time. The votes this time will be split, with either Republican Huckabee, the most recent Governor, or Clinton, the former First Lady, emerging as victor. Polls have shown a slight leaning towards Clinton, but the Republican attention appears to be going towards Giuliani, not Huckabee.

Kentucky: This state is so divided that it can’t help but be a battleground. The state went for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, and for Bush in 2000 and 2004. Polls have shown Clinton leading Giuliani by four percentage points, but leading McCain by just one percentage point.

Colorado: Here we have another Clinton / Giuliani split, but it’s a hair-split. 44 to 40 on the polls. The other factors that make it a battleground are the bordering of the Conservative Great Plain states, which tend to push it to the Republican side, and the large number of Hispanics in the state, which tends to pull it to the West Coast side and Democrat.

New Hampshire: It became a “swing state” in the 1990’s, after having been solidly Republican before.

Indiana: It was mostly Republican up until 2006, when the state swung heavily to the Democrat side in the Senate race. The aforementioned Senate Democrats have done a great job of being clay pigeons since getting into office, however, so the state could veer back to the other direction. Polls currently show the state voting Democrat over Republican 37 to 32, but the state has not voted for a Democrat President since 1964.

Missouri: This state is the traditional bellweather for the rest of the nation, which is to say that if Missouri thinks it, the rest of the country starts thinking that way, too. Its central location both geographically and politically helps to give the status of a canary in a coal mine. The polls here have been largely in favor of Clinton, and it should be noted that the state just elected its first female Senator, Claire McCaskill, in 2006. McCaskill is ahead in the state’s approval ratings, with even a third of Republicans saying they approve of her job so far, so this could give them a favorable impression of female politicians in general.

Don’t get the idea that political MySpace layouts don’t have anything more to offer than photos of grinning candidates kissing babies, though. With a little looking and some creativity, you can get a layout that expresses your political stance in a way that fits your personality, too.

Look online
The easiest way to get ready-made elections-themed MySpace layouts is to search online. Of course, since this theme isn’t too common, you might not find any just by going to your favorite MySpace layouts site. Instead, search for terms specific to the type of layout you want. If you want a non-partisan layout, searching for terms like “elections” and “voting” should turn up a few.

For something more specific, try using the name of your preferred party, such as “Republic party,” “Liberal party,” “Green party” or whatever your choice is. If you’re looking for a layout that will help you campaign for a certain candidate, search using that candidate’s name. So, if you’re getting ready for the 2008 U.S. elections, you could search for “John McCain MySpace layouts” or “Barack Obama MySpace layouts.” People can be pretty passionate when it comes to promoting their favorite candidates, so you’re bound to find a few layouts using search terms like these.

Check with campaign headquarters
No, that doesn’t mean calling up official headquarters and asking if they could send you over a nice MySpace layout. Instead of calling the capital, look close to home for any local groups promoting your preferred party or candidate. Stop by in person and ask if they know of any good tool you can use for online campaigning. They may not have any MySpace layouts on hand, but they’ll have things like bumper stickers and other images you can scan and use in your own layout. Which brings us to the next method…

Create your own
Can’t find any elections MySpace layouts that suit your tastes? Make your own! Making your own MySpace layout isn’t at all complicated. If you’re really good with HTML, it will be easy. If your HTML skills aren’t so advanced, just grab a theme you like and edit it. Just make sure you use a theme and pictures that are available for public use.

If the techie stuff just isn’t for you, though, you can order layouts made for you. Go to a site like elance or getafreelancer and post a project for a MySpace layout with an elections theme.

Whatever your political stance, elections MySpace layouts make it easy to express your views to everyone who stops by your profile. You don’t have to be a politics fanatic to use one, either. Just putting up a neutral, non-partisan layout on elections day helps remind your visitors to vote. Either way, you’ll be doing your part to participate in democracy.