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This Ain't No Party

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Lindstedt has filed several lawsuits for false arrest, including one instigated when he "said something about Waco to a visiting FBI agent back in '93 and they got their panties in a twirl." His "Jailhouse Papers" are on the Web, describing his struggle with justice after he was cited for a burned-out headlight 14 minutes before sunrise on U.S. Route 60. "There are thousands of Missourians behind bars resulting from illegal traffic stops," he wrote in a petition for writ of prohibition. "Relator considers himself a political prisoner kidnaped under color of law," he added in a plea handwritten from the Jasper County Jail.

Tom, Dick and Hugh

Foley and his wife raised their seven kids in a serene, spacious old white house off Conway Road. An American flag flies out front, above Hefty bags stuffed with donations for the American Kidney Foundation. Foley's upstairs office is lined with canisters of flour and spice; he manages export marketing for French's, the mustard makers. "As a businessman, I've sympathized with the Republicans all my life, but like a lot of people, by the early '90s I was a little ticked off at where America seemed to be heading," he explains. "Capitalism always tends toward creative destruction -- moving jobs south or, now, overseas -- and when there is no way to handle those transitions, people suffer pretty badly."

Foley senses not only a widening gap between rich and poor but increasing numbers of angry and misinformed Americans. "I've been in meetings where people will ascribe all of America's problems to the Federal Reserve!" he sighs. "Some have axes to grind; some are bitter toward authority and government; some put their faith in government only to see politicians do the exact opposite of what they promised. That's why I'm running, because of the total credibility loss of what I'd call career politicians."

His last political position was president of his senior class in high school, but when he grew disillusioned with Republican practices, he "started doing a lot of reading -- books like Who Will Tell the People?, about how government really functions. The more I read, the more I wanted to read." Finally he wrote a book of his own, taking Thomas Richard Harry (Tom, Dick and Harry) as his pseudonym and tracing the fault line in 1990s government.

"Balance exists," says Foley, "when the economic sector feels free to conduct business with minimal interference from the government, and government feels satisfied that the results of capitalism are equitably distributed among the people and the people agree and express that through their vote." Perfect balance isn't possible, he adds, but if we don't want to breed an underclass of disgruntled revolutionaries, we should at least head in the right direction. "Instead, the economic sector has learned to manipulate government at the people's expense."

There it was, his very own political platform, based on campaign-finance reform ("Be it mother's milk or grease, too much of a good thing is bad for you") and the need to provide a framework for sustainable, widespread economic opportunity. He decided to run for the U.S. Senate with the Reform Party because he was convinced that, "until we get at least half-a-dozen independents in the Senate, we are not going to go anywhere with campaign-finance reform, tax overhaul, fair trade or revamping Social Security. Half-a-dozen would tip the balance. But we need credible candidates, and under today's rules it is very, very hard for a third-party candidate who is not independently wealthy to make any real inroads."

Foley's only departure from the classic Reform Party platform is his support of international agreements, from the United Nations to the World Trade Organization. "They are concerned about the U.S. losing its sovereignty," he says. "But in a world that is increasingly interconnected, you can't be an isolationist, or the world will pass you by."

Every time Foley talks like that, frothing e-mails demand his expulsion from the Reform Party and Lindstedt chalks up another vote from the Buchananites. "I don't know what it is about Hugh Foley," Lindstedt chortles, recalling a recent candidates' forum in Kansas City. "He was a lot smoother than I was, 'cause I was pretty tired, but I spoke everything people wanted to hear, whereas Foley, he goes ahead and puts on his campaign literature that he's a retired international bankster! Everybody knows the Jews run cartels, and there he is talking about globalization being inevitable. I cannot believe the character is running for office."

Boob Bait for the Bubbas

A Georgia good ol' boy in a pale-yellow suit, red shirt and star-spangled top hat introduced Reform Party presidential candidate Pat Buchanan to C-SPAN on the Fourth of July. They were barbecuing in East Ellijay, and Buchanan reminded the crowd how, in the '96 presidential campaign, "We carried Ellijay against the president of the United States." He told his fans he'd soon have the Reform Party nomination and the $12.6 million in federal campaign funding that comes with it. "When we took over or moved into -- strike that 'takeover,' that's what they're accusin' me of," he chuckled. "We're mergin' with the Reform Party."

Buchanan made common cause with the Reformers by emphasizing fair (as opposed to free) trade, so he was quick to mention the WTO "Battle in Seattle" demonstrations: "You know how they threw that big metal trash can through the Starbucks window? That wasn't me -- I was disguised as a sea turtle. That was (Ralph) Nader.

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