HE’S A CANDIDATE, HE JUST DOESN’T WANT THE JOB

Perhaps hoping to have his cake and eat it too, Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert, who announced last week that he would run for president as a Democratic-Republican only in South Carolina, took to Meet the Press Sunday and told Tim Russert that he is running for president, but doesn’t want the job.

“This is not a dream, you’re not going to wake up from this. I’m far real-er than Sam Brownback, let me put it that way,” Mr. Colbert, the host of the popular faux news program, “The Colbert Report,” said of his candidacy.

Among other revelations, Mr. Colbert said that he actually doesn’t want to be president, he just wants to run (“There’s a difference”). He’s considering asking Senator Larry Craig to join the ticket. And, Mr. Colbert, who reportedly keeps a poster of Richard Nixon hanging in his office, suggested his approach to governing would be “Nixonish or Nixonoid.”

And why is he only running in South Carolina (his home state)?

“I want to put the focus back on South Carolina; I want it to be a permanent thing,” Mr. Colbert said. “I don’t want Iowa and New Hampshire to be the only people in the United States who get to control who is a bellwether state.’’ [MICHAEL FALCONE - New York Times]

While it may seem humorous, this slight clarification in semantics may allow Colbert to skirt federal campaign finance laws. On Friday, The Politico reported that, “If he continues moving toward a presidential campaign, particularly if he, or Comedy Central, keeps spending money exploring and promoting by hyping it on his nightly half-hour news parody show, he could get himself and his network in trouble for violating election laws, including those barring corporate campaign contributions.”

We’re not lawyers, but this seems like a flawless plan. If Colbert announces that he’s running for president but he doesn’t want to be president, then he can possibly continue campaigning. Which means he may have found a loophole that would keep the shtick alive.

Of course, if he’s wrong, Colbert faces a fine that would surely be in the hundreds-of-thousands of dollars; and who knows what else the FEC would cook up to make an example of him. So maybe it isn’t a win-win, but it gives us hope that Colbert will continue spreading his message of “truthiness” to the people — the people of South Carolina.

Watch a clip of Colbert on Meet the Press at MSNBC.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 21st, 2007 at 10:17 pm and is filed under Democrats, Primary Season, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.