Politics

Tim Draper for President! Because why not?

March 3, 2016

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Writer’s Note: Anyone who knows me personally might be aware that I am the founder of a startup called Pivot Foods LLC and am also an inventor with a couple of patents. Just to avoid anyone thinking I’m a complete kiss-ass to Tim Draper and trying to write this article purely for some cheap path to Angel funding, I’m going to pledge never to take any money from him in any form. This is due to me being 100% genuine in what I’m about to write, and why I think he’s actually a serious choice to have a winning libertarian-minded candidate for the next cycle. With that, please enjoy!

Let’s answer the obvious question: Why not Rand Paul? Why not in 2020, support the man who has been the greatest United States senator since Robert Taft for representing liberty and crossing aisles to do so? Because he was a terrible presidential candidate. No honest person can look at 2016 and say that that was an election which libertarians or conservatives can be proud of. From the early days of not raising any money, to the late run of desperate attempts, he ran, he lost and he shouldn’t be entitled to the liberty vote in 2020. The fact is that the libertarian movement needs to think out of the box. It needs to pick someone who’s a better speaker, willing to talk about a different set of issues, intelligent, able to fundraise and also a solid libertarian. Someone who is a nice Donald Trump, but just not a total asshole with totalitarian views on everything. This man is Tim Draper.

To describe Tim Draper in a basic pitch would go as follows: He is a venture capitalist who has rode Silicon Valley to becoming a billionaire investing in hundreds of companies.

He is extremely savvy with the tech world and found himself as an early investor in companies such as SpaceX and Tesla. He also has invested with companies involved in other up-and-coming spaces such as 3D printing and biotech which could cure aging.

He is extremely well–educated, having graduated from both Harvard and Stanford.

He, like Donald Trump, has a university which he founded, called “Draper U”; and unlike Trump, didn’t have it turn out to be a scam. Instead, it has become a fun and low cost program which he’s put tons of money into where people (I have many friends in their alumni) enjoyed themselves and came out either gaining venture capital or later job offers which were directly connected to the experiences they had there.

He has not committed much, if any, money to candidates, but did put 20 million of his own money into an effort to get school vouchers into California public schools.

He is extremely charismatic, and in a good way. A friend of mine described him as tall, always laughing and a fun guy who’d be the person to tell his office “We all need to stop what we are doing and go play football outside”.

He had a reality show, Startup U, like Donald Trump; and, while not nearly the success in the ratings as The Apprentice, it decided to represent business in a different way. Not in this cutthroat corporate style method where people lose and you can’t be happy without crushing others. Instead, it presented a more realistic look at business, which showed how even in failure, growth can occur from it making people better off. Also how doing things such as a startup, while never being easy, can and should be fun.

He also is really tall, which makes him statistically more viable to become president.

It’s as good of a pitch as any for why he’s qualified to become president. As for where he stands on the issues, it’s a little less clear. He very obviously advocates for conservative ideals such as fiscal reforms and school choice. He also, to my knowledge, isn’t some Christian lunatic who began singing to sweet baby Jesus with Foster Friess at a Mike Huckabee rally. He seems to be a libertarian, or at least a small ‘l’ libertarian, who is aware of the need for fiscal reforms while also recognizing the importance of social freedoms (without needing to say Medicare should be abolished and heroin legalized). He seems to represent the average American. He also seems to understand libertarianism in the modern Silicon Valley sense, which people such as Peter Thiel and Scott Banister have advocated for years now.

I’m not endorsing him yet, but mentioning him as a very viable person for the liberty movement to get behind, once the female Richard Nixon beats the bad-hair-day Herbert Hoover, and gives Bill a new White House intern. I do want to see where he can go on the issues, though, and get the sense that he can make libertarianism what it needs to be depicted as: A young movement which is edgy and centered around policy, not politics. A movement where it unites people who are the Ivy League tower academics, the entrepreneurs who dropped out of college to start companies (hey, me) and the regular blue collar people who just don’t want government in their lives.

Here’s what Draper should make his platform like if he chooses to run as a Republican:

Social Issues

Abortion: He runs as pro-life, but not to the point that he wants to end abortion rights. He says that with Scalia gone, the odds of Roe v. Wade being overturned is zero. Instead, he wants to focus funds on pregnancy prevention technology, making it so that unwanted pregnancies never happen and abortion rates go down. He also comes out opposing second and third trimester abortions, which only make up 8% of abortions.

Marijuana: He comes out to legalize it! I’ve never smoked a joint in my life, but like really any person who doesn’t hate the poor, or not with some bizarre religious issue, I want it as legal as the alcohol I’ve never drank.

The National Security Agency: He knows technology, and would make technology and privacy a key part of the campaign.

Fiscal Issues

Medicare & Social Security Reform: Make a reform plan where he favors having a continued age raise for social security and Medicare, but partial benefits earlier on. How that would work is raising the age of retirement to, say, 71, but the age of receiving partial benefits is lowered to, say, 55. At the age of 55, a person can begin receiving 10% of SS/Medicare benefits right away, and as they get older, it scales upwards until they hit 71. This age gets raised two months every year, meaning after a decade, a person would have to be nearly 73 or 57 to receive initial or completed benefits. This strategy slows the growth of these programs while being cruel.

Budget Cuts: Talks about cutting spending where he openly advocated an across-the-board 30% spending cut on all discretionary funds, with the plan to give every federal worker a four year severance package and six year partial package for being laid off. Then he wipes out departments such as Education, Transportation, Energy, Agriculture and more.

Financial Reforms: He knows this far better over I do.

Federal Drug Administration Reform: He’s worked with biotech companies. He knows the FDA is bad for businesses, and accordingly, bad for people. Let him finally bring that issue to the debates.

Immigration: Let him be Ronald Reagan on this issue. Let him favor it so people wanting to work can come in.

Foreign Policy Issues

For this one: Just have him not be a war hawk or use the phrase “carpet bomb”, and I’ll be happy.

This article is sort of vague, and doesn’t make any clear pitch on why Tim Draper represents the liberty movement or outside of resume would make a good president. But the good news is that the President he’d challenge has not been chosen yet. The election is likely at this point going to be one where the victor will either be a very corrupt Democrat or a Republican who just isn’t actually a Republican. In both cases, he can either do the primary fight in the ways Ted Kennedy gave Jimmy Carter in 1980, or he can run for the GOP ticket racing the clown car with his Tesla.

In why I want Tim Draper to run and be included, it’s really just due to me seeing the need for someone to step in with an out of the box approach to being a candidate. Someone who also, every single day, proves that billionaires aren’t always idiots who promote their trophy wives and gimmicky brands and merchandise, but instead promotes the idea the wealthy can just be fun hard working people. Someone who, as every single friend of mine who’s met him has called him, the most genuine person they’ve ever met, and described him as the billionaire who they can’t believe is a billionaire. Someone who is qualified to run, and has the financials to actually get noticed. I feel Tim Draper can be that person, and if willing to run even a semi-libertarian campaign in 2020, will have my support.

Also, this might be something Draper has never even thought about doing when sober. He might not know the slightest bit about politics. With that, my email is charles@pivotfoods.com. I hope he would email me and ask why I think he should run, and why I think he can win.