The color of the independent movement has been controversial since the very start. Though the media rendered an image of the angry white male to define the independent voter, beginning in 1992 – when Ross Perot first ran for the presidency – those inside the movement know the true story to be otherwise. The “radical white middle” and the disaffected black and Latino Democrat is an electoral alliance with the potential to rock the political world. Indeed, some would argue that it already has.

Here’s a question I’d like to ask every independent in the United States of America: If there are so many of us (35% say they’re independents rather than Democrats or Republicans), why do we have so little political power? There probably is no one answer to this question. Actually, there may be 35 million different ones. Independents are like that. The Neo-Independent (whose subscriber base is somewhat under 35 million) was created to foster such a national dialogue. “Back Road to the White House” is a piece of it– at the level of independent leaders, activists and journalists. I’m eager for many more voices to join the conversation.

2005 is the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s “miracle year” when, while working a day job as a patent clerk in Berne, Switzerland, he authored four papers: one on Brownian Motion, a second on the size of molecules, a third on light being composed of particles rather than waves, and a fourth which modified the prevailing theory of space and time into the theory of relativity. He was 26 years old.

In 1971, Gore Vidal wrote the cover story for the June issue of Esquire magazine, which announced: “Ralph Nader can be the next President of the United States.” In the article, Vidal fantasizes and proposes an independent run for the presidency by Ralph Nader in the 1972 election. At the time Vidal, who was co-chair of the New Party – an early (in contemporary history) experiment in independent politics – saw Nader as a “figure around whom those disgusted with traditional politics can rally, a point of hope, a new beginning in our tangled affairs.” Nader did not answer Vidal’s clarion call in 1971, though I suspect that today he may wish he had. A lot of Americans would gladly summon back the days when our affairs were merely tangled – not mangled, as they have so disturbingly become.