by , 5:30 PM EST, January 27th, 2003
This slipped under our radar, to be honest, but recently a Web site was launched whose purpose was to draft Steve Jobs to run for President of US. Fittingly enough, the site was titled Steve Jobs for President. We might hopefully be excused for missing it, as the site was only up for 10 minutes. During that 10 minutes, Slashdot readers managed to shut the server down. This according to a story from Wired.com by Leander Kahney.
The article also goes on to say that the founder of the site phoned Steve Jobs' office at Apple. According to the Steve Jobs for President Wen site's creator, a personal assistant for Mr. Jobs said he wasn't interested in the job. From Wired.com:
"We had 10,000 hits in 10 minutes," said William Foster, who dreamed up the idea. "It brought the server down. It was only up for 10 minutes."
However, in that time Foster said he received numerous e-mails of support and encouragement and a couple of dozen donations of cash -- he wouldn't reveal how much, but they were all under $10.
The other big problem was that Jobs wasn't interested. Thanks to the response, Foster considered re-launching the site. He decided against it after phoning Jobs' office. Jobs' personal assistant told him Jobs had seen the site, but was too committed to his family to run a grueling political campaign.
"He was flattered," Foster said, "but it was a job he wasn't interested in having. He wanted to concentrate on his family and his two companies."
If successful, the campaign would have drafted Jobs as a Democratic Party candidate in 2004. Jobs, who heads up Apple and Pixar, an animation studio, is a long-time supporter of the Democratic party.
You can read the full article at Wired.com, including some reaction from Alan Deutschman, the author of The Second Coming of Steve Jobs.
Would you want Steve Jobs to be president of the US? There are no doubt some somewhat polarized opinions on this, but it's hard to deny that Mr. Jobs would make a better president than some politicians, but we prefer him at the head of Apple. Your mileage will vary on that.