In anticipation of the Iowa caucuses next February, artist-candidate Lowell Darling has thrown his hat near the ring.

But it's no ordinary hat--or ring. Darling's bowler is filled with cement and bolted to the floor of the Legion Arts Gallery in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, alongside a ring fashioned from copies of CFR-11, the Byzantine federal election code. Darling's message? "After reading CFR-11 I know that my second grade teacher was wrong," Darling observed. "Not everyone can be president." Darling is so much the populist, though, that he's placed a photocopy machine in the gallery so that any visitor can file his or her candidacy on the spot.

Darling, an Illinois native who grew up across the Mississippi River from Davenport, Iowa, is no political neophyte. In California's 1978 gubernatorial race, he garnered 2% of the vote against incumbent Jerry Brown. He elicited Brown's endorsement after promising, if elected, to hire Brown to govern the state for him. Darling's campaign included acupuncture performance-treatments to lace up the San Andreas Fault and a state-wide tour--in a 1956 pink and black Plymouth--whose signature was its soft-sculpture lips (for kissing babies) and hands (to avoid swelling.) He was also the subject of a blizzard of newspaper and magazine articles in publications ranging from "Time" to "People," and his artist-videos comprise 145 TV segments shot for shows like "Entertainment Tonight."

Candidate Darling is heir to a long tradition in the arts. He's hardly the first artist to run for office. Nor was Ronald Reagan. (Never forget that Hollywood dotes on the term "artist.") In California, Reagan was preceded by B-movie actor/Senator George Murphy and followed by chanteur/Congressman Sonny Bono. (Notice a Republican preference for second-stringers?) In 1998, the New York Green Party (unsuccessfully) ran Al (Grandpa Munster) Lewis for governor. Whose up next? Reuters recently reported that actor/bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger is mulling a possible California gubernatorial race in 2002. When queried about widespread stories of drug use he replied, "I inhaled, exhaled everything." And "Bulworth" creator Warren Beatty may not be the only actor running for the presidency next year; Cybill Shepherd has also said that she's considering a candidacy on an abortion-rights platform

Washington has always been a favorite subject for purveyors of pop culture. But until recently they performed ideological cleansing on their "product" in order not to alienate potential audiences. Recent efforts about media-obsessed candidates such as "Tanner," Robert Altman's HBO series, and Tim Robbins's films "Bob Roberts," proved distinctly unsanitized. But now that post-Monica politics-as-self-parody has obviated the possibility of satire, what's a commercial artist to do? Last April, Robbins told "The Nation" that: "Bob Roberts is thinking about running for President right now. Being that he's paralyzed from the waist down, he's kind of the perfect candidate. The slogan would be, No sex, just business." Please don't even contemplate that sequel, Tim.

Fortunately, Lowell Darling inhabits the world of the artistic imagination, instead of Hollywood. Although poets and intellectuals frequently hold office in Latin America and Eastern Europe, the US seems safe from such subversion. Darling's merry prankster confreres include visual and performance artists, musicians, and comedians. Best known is the late Smothers Brothers' TV comic Pat Paulsen, who, in his fifth Presidential campaign, received 921 votes in the 1996 New Hampshire primary. When punk-rocker Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys garnered 3.5% of the vote in a San Francisco mayoralty race his campaign platform included banning cars from the city, making police run for re-election in the neighborhoods they patrolled, and requiring that the corporate denizens of the city's financial district "wear clown suits during business hours." Other artists who've run media-driven campaigns include Alan Abel, prankster-author-filmmaker-composer and 1983 New York gubernatorial candidate; artist Suzanna Daikin, who competed in the 1992 Presidential sweepstakes; and Mr Peanut--an elaborately costumed performance artist and Vancouver mayoral wannabe who looks like he's stepped off a Planters' label.

So is Darling in or out out? If so, what's his platform? And what does this mean to the rest of us who may be harboring Presidential dreams? To find out, the Media Channel's Media Arts Editor, Robert Atkins, tracked down Darling at his Sonoma County home for this exclusive series of email interviews.

Lowell Darling: After my gubernatorial race in 1978, it became clear to me that America should be turned into a Theme Park for the rest of the world. Today entertainment is our number one export and politics is our favorite form of entertainment. When I first offered these ideas, they were misunderstood. Today my Presidential platform makes perfect sense, especially in light of the success of "The Truman Show."

Robert Atkins: Isn't all this--the theme parking of our public spaces, the McLuhanization of politics--old news?

LD: Today I would make exactly the same suggestion I made in 1980 in my 'flawed' gubernatorial memoir, "One Hand Shaking." I suggested that if elected President I would wear a video camera that would record everything I said, saw and heard. Today we must create the Presidential Television Network. PTN is the answer to all our Presidential problems--issues of morality, accountability and especially the budget. Imagine if we'd been able to market the last six years from Bill Clinton's eyes: He looks at his wristwach (brand showing), he looks down at his running shoes (brand name), etc. We all know he jogs with Tom Hanks and we want to know if Tom Hanks really has a fat neck.

RA: So you are running and have a platform? How will you get around the compromising financial demands that you're show in Iowa addresses?

LD: I'm thinking about not running for President. And this is one of the most difficult and painful decisions I've ever made. I spoke to a fellow named George at the Federal Elections Commission, and he told me that didn't think that my fundraising strategy is legal.

RA: What strategy is that?

LD: Fired with ambition, I wrote in Iowa's "Prairie Progressive" that if I run for the Presidency, I would return my contributor's donation, matched by half of my matching federal funds. But the federal code doesn't appear to allow such tactics.

RA: What will you do?

LD: Well it's a problem but the Presidency is about anxiety. You know I was the one who gave Jerry Brown his 800 number fundraising idea, although it was originally intended as part of a TV talk show about social issues. I've actually done a lot for Jerry but he's on his own now...The bottom line is I'm no longer looking for tax-deductible contributions.

RA: What will your next moves be?

LD: I always enjoy not knowing what's next. Of course, I'm waiting to see what happens in Iowa. As with all my work, I set up a situation and watch the fireworks explode. I'll be showing at Frumkin-Duval Gallery in Los Angeles the week the Democrats have their convention next August, and I have a show planned for a small local museum here in the woods [of Sonoma County] on Inauguration night in 2001...And maybe I'm not running for President, but simply campaigning about the Presidency.

RA: Can you explain your rationale for being an artist-candidate?