The Mother Jones Poll

The MoJo Wire invites you to jump on the Soapbox one last time and express your opinions during this campaign season. This week, imagine that you’ve just been elected president after a long and arduous campaign. What will your first moves be?

1. Pick your cabinet:

2. You’ve got this BIG budget deficit, and (silly) you promised a middle-class tax cut during your campaign. What program will you cut first (or “decrease growth”) in order to get the budget balanced?

59.67% Defense

11.15% Medicare/Medicaid

10.33% Social Security

8.36% Education

7.70% Environment

2.79% None

3. You get a lot of squeaking from lobbyists from Investment firms that Social Security should be “privatized.” What do you do?

50.16% Work for the privatization of SS

46.89% Work against the privatization of SS

2.95% None

4. Okay, so you served one term and were, uh, unelected. Now you’re faced with planning for your retirement. Social Security has been privatized, so you get the cash in hand every month. How will you spend it?

50% Invest for retirement (401(k) plans, IRAs)

12.62% Buy groceries

11.97% Pay off old debts

11.97% Buy stock in an investment firm

4.1% Put it in your piggy bank

3.61% Give it to your favorite charity

3.61% None

2.12% Buy a car

5. Bob Dole’s chances for election are starting to dwindle down to nothing. Give Bob some quick advice about how he should spend the next four years:

Our favorite responses:

1. Collecting verbs

2. Becoming a disgruntled postal worker (and secretly disposing of copies of Mother Jones)

3. Return to WWII via time machine, don’t save comrade, keep arm, become doctor as originally planned, lobby against managed health care

4. Start a Bob-Headroom TV show for Network 23 that lets him repeat himself all he wants — “L-L-L-Liberal, L-Liberal Bill Cl-Clinton”

5. Start campaigning for Liddy in 2000

6. If the elections were held today, and all these candidates had an equal chance of winning, who would you vote for?

35.25% Harry Browne (Libertarian)

28.03% Ralph Nader (Green Party)

20.82% Bill Clinton (Democrat)

6.39% Bob Dole (Republican)

4.1% Ross Perot (Reform Party)

2.79% John Hagelin (Natural Law Party)

1.3% None

.66% Howard Phillips (U.S. Taxpayers Party)

.66% Lyndon LaRouche (Democrat)

7. If the elections were held today, and you were restricted to just these two candidates, which one would you vote for?

57.21% Bill Clinton

23.77% None

19.02% Bob Dole