The war room of Noa Kalakaua’s presidential campaign is the second bedroom of a small apartment near the campus of UCLA. It looks like the office of a small homespun (but technologically sophisticated) startup. In many ways, that’s exactly what his campaign is.
The staff is made up of a campaign manager, three interns from UCLA, two from University of Southern California, and two from Loyola Marymount University. There’s only room for two of them to work in the war room, so most of them work remotely.
This is not the stuff most presidential campaigns are made of.
“We’re different in a lot of ways,” says Kalakaua, who is a University of Chicago economist, an American Idol winner, and the host of Fox TV’s surprisingly successful Noa Showa. “Sometimes we’re different because we want to be. Sometimes it’s because we have to be.”
The words presidential politics and bootstrapping aren’t often printed together in this magazine. But Jim Schrager, a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, says “there’s no better way to describe what Kalakaua is doing.”
Bootstrapping, by definition, is starting a business without outside financial resources. To entrepreneurs, the word has come to mean much more than that. “It’s really how you do it,” says Schrager. “You do it by being creative, by being different, by being resourceful. Bootstrappers are able to make something out of nothing.”
Kalakaua isn’t running this campaign completely free of outside financial resources, but if he isn’t a bootstrapping politician then one doesn’t exist. Kalakaua and his small staff are relying as little a possible on outside money. It’s all part of an incredibly ambitious—even if a bit far-fetched—plan that goes well beyond the election.
Something out of Nothing
Critics of Kalakaua agree with Schrager on the fact that Kalakaua is starting with nothing. Many in the media have suggested Kalakaua’s campaign is simply a stunt to generate attention for his talk show, which was launched in the fall of 2007, after he won American Idol. He’s been criticized for his lack of domestic or foreign policy experience and has been lambasted for not developing a platform more quickly. Kalakaua insists his campaign is serious and that he can become a viable candidate.
“[Stephen] Colbert’s campaign announcement was a joke,” Kalakaua says, “that was designed to attract attention for his show and generate some additional publicity for his book. People have assumed I’m doing the same thing. I’m not. The American people, over time, will begin to see that I’m serious and begin to see that what I’m saying makes a lot of sense.”
The big question, Kalakaua readily admits, “is whether or not we can get them to see it fast enough.”
By we, Kalakaua means himself, Terry Ryan, his brash campaign manager, and the small army of interns from local colleges.
Ryan, Kalakaua’s freshman roommate from the University of Chicago, has a Ph.D. in political philosophy and an MS in computer science, both from U of C. He was working for the Eurasia Group in New York when Kalakaua called.
“It was a surprising call,” Ryan says. “We weren’t the best of friends in college. It wasn’t openly hostile or anything like that, but we weren’t great friends. We’d stayed in touch over the years, but it was never more than brief updates. I knew he’d been on American Idol and I knew he’d won, which, for the record, astounded me. I really don’t think he’s all that much of a singer—but who am I to argue with the American people?”
Kalakaua, though, says he’d “long known” that his first call would be to Terry if he ever decided to run. Much to our surprise, he’s been thinking about a White House run for years.
“I’ve long thought about running for president. I guess I started thinking about it when I was in the Peace Corps in Guatemala. I was amazed by the fact that much of the world perceived American leaders as being hopelessly corrupted by power. There was this overwhelming sentiment that the American people were fine but that their elected leaders weren’t. It blew me away. In theory, this is the country—the most vibrant democracy in the world—where that should be the least true.”
A Misalignment of Incentives
Sitting in the most quiet corner of the war room (the one as far from Ryan as possible), Kalakaua explains that he wants desperately to change the perception of American leadership. Like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee, he’s running under the mantle of change. “I don’t think our country’s political leadership has been effective. That’s really what we need to change.”
From across the room, without taking his eyes off the four monitors spread out before him, Ryan barks, “They’re all talking about change, but they’re full of shit. You can’t change things if you run the exact same type of bullshit campaign that everyone’s always run and that’s financed by the exact same people.”
Kalakaua takes Ryan’s comments in stride, nodding. He goes on to explain why he doesn’t think most politicians can be effective. “When I talk about political leadership, I’m not really talking about the president. I’m much more concerned with members of the House and Senate. I think we’ve allowed a system to develop where it’s virtually impossible for them to be effective.”
His argument hinges around incentives. As an economist, Kalakaua has spent years studying how human beings respond to incentives. All of us do it. We go to work and deal with our boss’s nonsense because we only get paid if we show up and do something. Salespeople aren’t given a flat salary because they wouldn’t have an incentive to go out and sell.
Instead, they’re usually given a small salary and paid a percentage of the sales they generate. Students do their homework because they’ll be graded on it. They care about their grades because the grades will, hopefully, help them get into a good college, which will help them get a good job when they’re done with school.
“Organizations function well,” Kalakaua says, “when incentives are aligned properly. Unfortunately, they’re completely misaligned for Congress. When an American politician is elected to the House or Senate, his primary objective becomes getting reelected.”
In theory, that makes sense. If a politician does a good job, he or she should be rewarded with another term. From across the room, though, Ryan uses another profanity-laced outburst to explain that there’s a problem with this logic.
“I might not put it exactly the way Terry does,” Kalakaua says, “but, the politician’s desire to get reelected often creates conflicts of interest for the politician. What’s best for the reelection bid, fundraising, earmarks, and toothless legislation, isn’t always best for voters. Members of Congress should be incentivized to do what’s in the best interest of the American people. That’s not the way the system is set up.”
As proof of this, Kalakaua points to Congress’s refusal to address the looming financial crises in Social Security and Medicare, its refusal to deal honestly with the issue of illegal immigration, and the explosion of congressional earmarks and pork barrel spending that have been built into virtually every appropriations bill passed during President Bush’s two terms in office.
“We’re spending way too much,” Kalakaua says. “Everyone in office knows this, but they also know they can’t be the ones to go back to their home districts or states without any money when everyone else is bringing home the bacon. At the same time, our elected officials are refusing to deal with the issues we elected them to address because they’re afraid they’ll anger their constituents.”
“They all know,” Ryan says from across the room, still not taking his eyes off the monitors, “that with all the partisan bullshit and bickering, they can’t deal with anything even remotely controversial because their opponents will turn it against them and run them out of office with negative TV ads financed by the same jags who put the first guy in office.”
“The bottom line,” Kalakaua says, “is that we have misalignment of incentives that results in sub-optimal government. This will, over time, deteriorate our standard of living as a nation.”
The Solution
Kalakaua’s solution is simple.
“Term limits,” he and Ryan say in unison. “It’s the only way to truly change things,” Kalakaua says.
“What Washington needs,” Ryan says from across the room, “is a prefrontal lobotomy every four years. That’s what we’re going to do.”
But, why would anyone in the House or Senate ever vote for term limits that would put them out of a job? “It’s simple,” Kalakaua says, “you grandfather everyone in. That’s the great thing about most of the folks currently in office. They all have a demonstrated history of acting in their own self-interest. That’s one thing you can bank on.”
“When I’m elected, I’ll say to the American people, ‘we can do this together. We have eight years. Your job is to vote anyone out of office who opposes term limits. After the first mid-term elections, everyone who’s in his office is going to get the message loud and clear and you’ll see a lot of senators and house members supporting this.”
What, though, will term limits accomplish?
“It’s simple,” Kalakaua says. “You will have more effective and authentic government. The framers of our Constitution never envisioned us having career politicians. And we shouldn’t have them. The system breaks down when you have people spending a lifetime within it.”
But, who will replace the career politicians.
“There are countless women and men of integrity who have been successful in a number of different fields who would be willing to give four, six, or twelve years to serve their country. These people, knowing they wouldn’t spend a lifetime in politics, would be free to legislate effectively. They could do what they think is right all the time. They would respond not to the whims and interests of special interests or pollsters, but to the needs of the nation.”
Walking the Walk
Kalakaua knows it’s April and that, despite winning American Idol and launching a surprisingly successful TV show, he has virtually no credibility with voters nationwide. He doesn’t think that will necessarily derail his campaign, but he knows he needs to work quickly and be constantly credible.
“It’s clear to me,” Kalakaua says, “that the American people want change. They are sick and tired of what goes on in Washington. Every candidate claims they’re the one who will bring about change, but unless they address what’s going on in Congress, change will be impossible. They’ll hit a brick wall once they’re in office. We’re the only campaign that’s laid out a plan to actually change things. We’re the only campaign that’s said how we’d do it.”
“If we want to be taken seriously, though,” Ryan says, “we can’t fuck around.”
By that he means that the Kalakaua campaign can’t take large amounts of money and tie itself to special interests. “I’m running as an independent,” Kalakaua says. “I need to be able to remain independent.”
To that end, the Kalakaua campaign won’t accept more than ten dollars from any of its donors. They don’t plan to run a lot of TV ads. “We’re hopeful that the Noa Showa will give us most of the TV exposure we need. What it comes down to, though, is whether or not the American people really want change. If they do, some of them will look at us. They’ll tell their friends. And they’ll all start to see that what we say and what we want to do makes sense.”
Kalakaua thinks he can wage war against the major candidates without the use of heavy artillery, i.e. buying loads of expensive TV advertising time. “Why buy time?” Ryan asks. “We’ve got a TV show. We can say more on the show than we ever could on a commercial.”
So far, Kalakaua hasn’t used the show to deliver explicitly political messages, but he has used it to engage with difficult questions by listening to a number of different perspectives. He also uses the TV show to drive potential voters to his website, which Ryan maintains along with a team of developers in Malaysia. The website has a network of blogs that invites and sometimes insists upon users engaging in the dialogue about issues. It’s sticky. Kalakaua has presented the website as the platform through which he’ll develop his political platform.
“We call it guerilla politics,” Ryan says of the approach to campaigning he and Kalakaua have developed. “If the last four years in Iraq have shown us anything,” Ryan says, “guerilla warfare can give heavy artillery a real run for its money.”
“We’re not doing this to entertain ourselves,” Kalakaua says. “The hope is that we’ll be able to make a better government. If we didn’t believe we could do that, we wouldn’t be involved in this at all.”
Shortly after wrapping up the interview, Kalakaua has rolled his chair back across the room to the work station next to Ryan’s. Kalakaua is sketching out the next episode of the Noa Showa. Ryan is updating the section for volunteers at www.noa2008.com. The Modest Mouse song Float On plays in the background. The windows are open. Eventually Ryan goes to the kitchen and returns with a few slices of cold pizza for lunch.
The scene looks like that of many bootstrap startups. There are two guys with a dream working their butts off and hoping against hope they can somehow pull it off. The dream, in this case, is a big one. It’s not to get elected. The dream is to change the way the United States governs itself and, in the process, to make the government and the country stronger.
It’s a tall order for two entrepreneurs.
“Maybe,” Ryan says, “but if we didn’t think we could do this, if we really didn’t think it was possible, I assure you we would not be here fucking around. We both have better things to do. This is for real.”
