While he isn't planning to run for president again, he says he "will launch a Web site next month with plenty of the charts and graphs he made famous when explaining the deficit in 1992." That's actually kind of exciting. For all his fascistic eccentricity I think Perot outlined a potentially powerful alternative model for a candidacy that no one has really bothered to take up since: he actually attempted to communicate substantive information on an adult level with voters. What a novel concept! At the time, this required massive resources to purchase large blocks of television for his campaign infomercials. 16 years later, it could be done by any candidate that cared to and distributed online for a relative pittance. Unfortunately, I find it likely that the consulting consensus has passed this model over (much as it's passed on the model of real decentralization/participation) as it's just too dang hard for these people to implement. Still, I hope for a day when rather than publishing thickly-written academic whitepapers into the oblivion of their "policy" section of their websites, candidates (or even articulate surrogates) make substantive presentations of their ideas available in a compelling video format. Maybe they could even do this with their strategies for winning and implementing their plans, engage the participatory cycle from their supporters. I mean, it's not as though any campaign's overall strategy is ever unknown to their opposition; but it is often obscure to their supporters. Let 'em in on the plan, and they'll do a heck of a lot more for you (and more effectively to boot). That would generate quite a lot of buzz, I'll tell you. And it wouldn't even cost that much to do.