Mark Greenstein '86, who is running for U.S. president calls himself a "conservative democrat," but instead of falling into line with the Democratic frontrunners, his platform hinges mostly on Republican ideals such as smaller government, decreased taxes and state rights.
If you just read the first sentence and wondered at the name "Mark Greenstein" associated with the U.S. presidency, you are probably not alone. In fact, The Dartmouth is the first newspaper that he has talked to about his campaign.
Greenstein only decided to start campaigning three months ago. His website is not yet fully functional, and he said he is purposely only spending $5,000 in New Hampshire.
All the same, Greenstein said he is optimistic that he will earn five percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 1.
When Greenstein, who stands at five feet and two inches, was a student at Dartmouth, he was a coxswain for the crew team, a disk jockey on the radio station and a government major.
After graduation, he spent a year skiing and then went to Berkeley law school where he said he realized that "a lot of lawyering work sucks."
He said he was motivated to attend law school by the television series "L.A. Law" since the characters "had good cases" and "get laid a lot."
When asked if he knew he wanted to one day become a politician while at Dartmouth, Greenstein replied, "I had no intention of becoming a public servant."
However, he said seeing Bill Bradley and Al Gore campaigning drove him into the Campaign 2000 fray.
"Bill Bradley and Al Gore are both closer to Lenin than to Jefferson," Greenstein said. "Independents and main stream democrats do not have a choice. I think I can give them that choice."
He said Gary Bauer, Steve Forbes and Orrin Hatch all "talk a lot more sense than Gore or Bradley."
The discrepancy he saw in American politics drove Greenstein to take a breather from the standardized test preparation business, which he has been involved in almost since he graduated from the College, and take up the campaign trail.
He advocates the complete elimination of the Social Security system, which has been in place in the U.S. since the Great Depression of the 1930s. He said the system is "stealing from younger workers."
He said he did not anticipate organizations like the American Association for Retired Persons, one of the strongest domestic lobbyist groups, to impede this drastic change in the existing system.
Greenstein also favors the complete elimination of the income tax and all luxury and social taxes. He said if smoking is so bad that the government has to impose a tax on cigarettes to discourage the practice, then smoking itself should be made illegal.
He said he would replace the lost tax dollars by imposing greater taxes on homes, cars and boats, all of which he thinks are good measures of personal wealth.
The only income tax he said he would like to leave in place is the corporate income tax, since corporations have money to spare and would not complain about paying their fair share to the government.
Greenstein's views on gay rights and abortion are also in polar opposition to the other candidates in the Democratic Party.
When asked what his stance was on abortion, he said the issue was not a direct presidential concern.
However, he continued by saying, "I don't like abortions. Abortion is killing," and women can do a "beautiful thing" by giving birth to unwanted children and then putting them up for adoption.
He said just as people don't have the choice to "kill somebody at gunpoint" citizens should not have the choice to choose to get abortions.
"We can't have freedom to do every little thing we want," he said.
When asked about gay rights, he said, "I would discourage any teenager who has homosexual tendencies from acting on them for their own sake. I'd urge them to try to wait for a meaningful heterosexual relationship."
He said that whenever he has a chance to offer this advice, while preparing students for their standardized tests in courses he runs, he does.
He said he also takes every chance he gets to tell heterosexual youths to wait until they have graduated from high school before having sexual intercourse.
In a speech earlier this year, he told a group of 13 and 14-year-olds, "You can be as passionate about ice cream as you can with sex. Ice cream can be hard, or it can be gooey. It can be swirled, it can be packed, it can be whipped. You can spoon-feed one another. Next time you and your date are thinking about going to bed, go to Baskin Robbins instead."
Despite his view on gay rights, in response to the issue of gays in the military, which has recently been in the campaign spotlight, he said President Bill Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy is misguided.
"I can't fathom a reason why gays serving honorably inherently disrupts good order or lessens our fighting capability," he said.
However, he qualified this remark with a skit demonstrating "serving honorably," which involved flailing his arms wildly and saying mockingly, "I'm gay." With this act he tried to prove that flaunting homosexuality is not conducive to military service.
"This is a guy who should be counseled and driven out," he said.
Greenstein believes that more in the U.S. military has to change than its policy towards homosexuals. He said one of his key goals as president would be to strengthen America's army.
He said one factor that contributed to this policy goal were some of his students who told him that the U.S. army doesn't "kick butt anymore."
Another issue that is important to Greenstein is the power of communities to make their own decisions.
"I personally would like to live in a community that has conservative values," he said. "But I don't want the government foisting those values on communities." To explain this point, he said he was in favor of allowing individual communities to decide to hang the Ten Commandments in schools.
So far in his campaign path, Greenstein has been trying to get himself into the public light by doing radio spots on stations like 99 Rock and WGIR AM in southern New Hampshire.
Right now, he is on the primary ballots in New Hampshire, Utah, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Kansas.
