That’s the question, could Bill gates become president of the United States, considering he would accept the sorry assed 400,000 USD salary plus public housing. How would he do?
Maybe we could expand the question, can anyone of intellegence and a positive background do the job? george W. Bush was a weak state governor and businessman, Clinton was a career politician, Bush was a politico who was VP and the head of the CIA, Reagan was a former governor and actor, Carter was a nuclear engineer in the Navy and a farmer. With these clowns, how bad could gates do? He has made more money than anyone in the history of the Republic has together, he has employed millions directly or indirectly, he is respected and known worldwide. Why not? Who says Gates cannot do it?
If 2004 was between Bush, Dean or Gates, who would you choose. Some of you ae probably thinking of Perot, but I think Gates is a different act from him. Or do you think that someone is trained in the art of politics and one either has it or not. Politics is a dangerous and maddening game in and of itsself, but has not Gates fought enough battles to get where he’s at.
The dude became a billionaire at 31. His philosophy on what would change the American spirit would be interesting to me, if he ever decided to do it.
I don’t think the American electorate would go for someone rich, especially not the freaking richest guy on the planet. GWB took strides to portray himself as a regular guy, as many of the current Democratic presidential hopefuls are.
We already know what kind of leader he’d be. He’d have the entire government using nothing but email (using MS outlook on MS Exchange Server, of course). Look through his book “Business at the spped of thought” before you jump to the conclusion that the guy is fit to run the government.
I can’t cite, but I remember BillG emphatically stating (some years ago, c.1997 at a guess) that he had no political ambitions whatsoever; nor would he have, ever. Bit of a shame really, because I’ve come to think he could not fail to do a fantastic job providing he cut himself off from Microsoft first. Bill’s greatest virtue is that he pays serious attention to details, which is surely the key to success in all things.
[What’s wrong with Windows OS anyway? Windows 2000 and XP both work fine on my (many) machines, and they give me far less cause to swear (per hour of actual use, mind) than any other OSes I know of.]
Dig deeper, my young padawan…then you will ask yourself the true question…whats RIGHT with them. Its a bit easier to answer than ‘whats wrong with them’ which would fill up volumes…
What do you want in this country, a tolal lack of securityl
Windows is like swiss cheese, despite continued warnings about the problem it continues on and on.
One day and probably not too far off a completely new Personal Computer Configuration and a matching OS that will outstrip the product from WA state will be on the market.
That said a strong willed leader whose first interest is the USA will have to come forth or it’s down the tubes!
First of all, if Bill Gates wanted to be President, he would become President eventually. Spend enough money blasting negative adds at your opponents and you’ll eventually win. It’s probably too late for the '04 election, but he could win in '08 if he really wanted to. Find some House seat where the incumbent is retiring. Spend ten million to get it in '04. Spend fifty million moving up to the Senate or a Governor’s Office in '06. Then he would be ready for the White House by '08. Nothing could stop him.
Would he be a good President? Tough to say. He’s given billions in charity donations to environmental and poverty causes, so it seems likely he would make those top priorities. That would certainly be an improvement over any recent administration. However, we know neither where he stands on a huge range of financial and social issues, and we also don’t now what priority he places on each. Would he actually use his veto pen to stop Congress from racking up pork barrel spending? What sort of Supreme court nominees would he give us? Could he negotiate in trade and other issues to win the good will of the international communitty? We can’t answer any of those things at this time.
As for Windows. XP, I suppose, is fine for people who use their PC just for word processing, internet, and a few other basic tasks, assuming they don’t mind an occasional virus. For serious technical tasks, it simply doesn’t have enough versatility. In a recent software testing project that I’m part of, we had to chuck out Windows and use FreeBSD instead right at the start, becaust Windows just doesn’t provide any functionality for controlling the network stack.
I hear working in microsoft is pretty good. They don’t always used MS products, for instance, if something else is better. They treat people quite well to get good people. Etc. We’re annoyed because MS can be pretty shitty to other people and companies sometimes, but few people deny Bill didn’t do well for MS.
If Bill was President, remember, you’d be on the inside. He wouldn’t be screwing you, you’d all be screwing other countries. I think it could go well.
I doubt he’d get elected though because everyone’s still bitter about the paperclip he foisted on us.
If he does that, I might vote for him for president myself!!