Lyndon LaRouche's Long Campaign

"The Beatles had no genuine musical talent, but were a product shaped according to British Psychological Warfare Division specifications."

- Lyndon LaRouche, from the pamphlet, "Why Your Child Became a Drug Addict"

LaRouche's 2004 campaign centers upon the idea of a national economic recovery based on fixed exchange rates and a commitment to global development. LaRouche is also against the U.S. occupation in Iraq, believing the responsibility should be turned over to the United Nations. He is, for the most part, pro-choice and against gay marriages. It is a strikingly mainstream platform.

To many, however, LaRouche is nothing more than a psychotic, power-hungry political cult leader with delusions of grandeur. They dismiss him as insignificant, a political never-was with a small following of paranoid hatemongers. "If you asked 100 poli-sci majors on this campus who Lyndon LaRouche is, five might recognize the name," says Art Paulson, a professor of political science at Southern Connecticut State University. "But if you asked 100 random students to identify Lyndon LaRouche, maybe-and I mean maybe-one could tell you. He's a conspiracy theorist, and not a very important one at that."

But he is running for president. Again.