Corvallis man thinks he has the right stuff for the nation’s top job

By BENNETT HALL
Corvallis Gazette-Times

Michael Charles Smith is a pretty regular guy.

The 44-year-old Corvallis resident has a wife and two kids, a house and a mortgage, and a job at Hewlett-Packard.

He plays the tuba in the community band.

Oh, and there’s one more thing:

He’s running for president. As in president of the United States.

“A lot of people sort of get this puzzled reaction,” Smith said, “like, ‘Gee, is that cool? Or is that crazy?’”

Though he insists he’s not insane, Smith knows his candidacy is a longshot, to say the least.

“I’m serious about it, yet I’m realistic,” he said. “I’m not delusional enough to have my bags packed and be planning on changing my address to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Smith has been touting his candidacy on his Web site, www.smithforpresident.com, since October. But last month, he made it official when he filed papers with the Federal Election Commission to run for president in the 2008 election as a Republican.

An articulate man in wire-rimmed glasses, Smith describes himself as a “zealous moderate” and says he’s running to try to nudge his party back toward the center from what he sees as an extremist brand of right-wing rhetoric.

“I was increasingly disillusioned with what I was hearing presented as the Republican position, and particularly some of the social and religious conservative voices,” Smith said.

“Although they’re loud, I don’t think they’re representative of Republicans as a whole, and I think they’re completely at odds with the classic Republican principles of smaller government and personal freedoms.”

Not that he thinks he can knock off Condi Rice, John McCain or other GOP heavyweights in New Hampshire or Iowa and win the nomination.

His goals are more modest. Smith just wants to do well in Oregon.

“My objective would be to get myself on the ballot, and my hope would be to get a delegate or two,” Smith said.

That, he reasons, would give him the standing to go to the national convention and deliver his message of moderate Republicanism to the party leadership.

Whoever winds up winning the GOP nomination in 2008, Smith would like the candidate to know that “you don’t have to come into Oregon talking just about abortion or gay marriage or the other social hot buttons,” he said.

“We’d like to hear more about less government, we’d like to see a balanced budget, we don’t believe that just because the president’s our guy he should be given carte blanche in the war on terror.”

Even that limited goal could be tougher than Smith imagines, cautioned Bill Lunch, head of Oregon State University’s political science department.

To win a delegate to the Republican convention in the Oregon primary, Lunch estimated, Smith might have to capture 30,000 to 40,000 votes, depending on the turnout and state party rules.

He suggested Smith might be better off trying to get his name on the ballot in a caucus state such as Washington, where smaller numbers of voters determine the outcome through a tiered series of meetings.

In general, though, Lunch said candidates from outside the mainstream rarely get far. Unless they’re celebrities the public already knows, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, or billionaires who can pour their fortunes into advertising, like Ross Perot, they tend to disappear in the political clutter.

“Most voters focus their attention on candidates they believe have a reasonable chance of becoming president,” Lunch said. “They want to think that their vote counts.”

Just getting on the Oregon ballot, Smith acknowledges, will be a challenge. To qualify, he’ll need 5,000 valid signatures from registered Republican voters, at least 1,000 from each of the state’s five congressional districts.

He plans to campaign at farmers’ markets and county fairs, maybe hit the Pendleton Roundup — anyplace he can get his message to people directly.

To this point, his political organization consists of just one person, former neighbor Ann Messersmith, the retired head of OSU’s nutrition and food management department. She knows it will take a lot of work for Smith to make any real noise in the election, but she says it would be a mistake to underestimate her man.

“I really think he can go quite a long ways with his platform,” Messersmith said. “I think Mike could surprise a whole lot of people.”

If Smith’s campaign does get some national attention, he might take a page from Bill Clinton’s political playbook and try to charm the voters with his musical talents. During his first presidential run, Clinton appeared on “The Arsenio Hall Show,” put on a pair of Ray-Bans and belted out a bluesy version of “Heartbreak Hotel” on his saxophone.

“That’d be an interesting contrast — Bill Clinton the jazz-playing Democrat versus Michael Smith the tuba-playing Republican,” Smith said. “I don’t imagine if I were invited on ‘The Tonight Show’ that I’d turn it down.”

He’s not sure what he’d play, though.

“There’s not too many good pop tunes for tuba,” he admitted. “I might have to bring the whole Corvallis Community Band for backup. We could play a Sousa march or something.”

Bennett Hall can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.