We’ve just launched our very own Bill Gates for President forums, after receiving requests to do so. We’re not sure these boards will turn out to be successful, but seeing as we’re adventurous people, we’ve decided to give it a go.

The link? http://www.BillGatesforPresident.net/board/. See you there!

In the next few days we’ll be zooming in on some of the opinions people have been spreading on the net about the whole “Bill-Gates-for-President-Bandwagon”. Here’s an excerpt from a blog entry earlier on today that caught our eye from the Times Online News Log:

President Gates of the United States. Do you like the way that sounds? Because you are not alone. A cause doing the rounds of the internet this week – admittedly where you would expect to find his base – is for Bill Gates to run for President in 2008, or any time he wants to.

It took us a moment to get used to the idea, but then we wondered why we hadn’t thought of it before. The Microsoft man has done computers; he’s done capitalism; he’s doing as much as anyone to get on top of HIV / Aids and Malaria; so why not the White House?

We agree! Read their full story here.

We’ve had a rough (but great!) day here at Bill Gates for President dot net. After being featured on Scott Adams’ The Dilbert Blog, our url traveled the web at high speed, quickly ending up on Slashdot, and quite a few other websites, blogs and discussion boards … The high amount of traffic less than two days after the official launch of this web page was a bit too much for us to handle for about an hour, but after moving to a new web server (Yes, we’re still on a linux machine!), we were able to recover within a decent time frame. We would like to thank everyone for the attention this website has received, and apologize for the short downtime!

We haven’t just received a large number of visitors, our mailbox was flooded as well. Even though about 90% of the e-mails were supporting our ideas, we also received some interesting insights from the “No way”-side of the discussion. We’re in the process of gathering their most interesting remarks, and will report on them as soon as possible. Free speech and all that.

To sum up this very short update: “keep it coming!”. We seem to be repeating ourselves when we say we are not only here to get Bill to run for President of the United States; we want to provoke political debate and maybe even notorious critics to think: “Why not?”. Whether or not, and how you answer that question is completely up to you (but please, fill us in!).

A little over an hour ago Scott Adams has blown a whole lot of extra life into our ambitious website. Thanks, Scott! It’s great to see we’re not alone, and we’re sure more people will jump on the bandwagon in the next few days and weeks.

One of our main concerns however is keeping our web page in the spotlight, and reaching a large amount of people with our beliefs and ideas, but also with interesting articles, pro and contra. That’s right, being rationalists just like Bill (a little bit less wealthy, maybe), we believe our web page should be a place where all opinions have their place. You feel like challenging us? Bring it on! Relevance and quality are the only things we demand.

We’ll do our best to keep this website as up to date and as interesting as possible. If you want to support us, check out the support and contribute pages on the site.

For now we’re just happy to see so many of you found your way to Bill Gates for President dot net. We’ll finish today’s post with another quote from Scott’s blog. I promise we’ll cut back on these as soon as we see fit:

I’ve always felt that you should pick a president the same way you’d pick an attorney to help you out of a dangerous legal problem. Do you want the attorney who dresses nicely and belongs to your church? Or do you want the attorney who can rip out your opponent’s heart and put it on the hibachi before he dies? Maybe it’s just me, but I want an attorney who is part demon. And I want a president who isn’t afraid to make rational decisions.

Ten days ago, Scott Adams, author of the famous Dilbert cartoon series, beat us to the punch by naming Bill Gates as a possible (and serious) presidential candidate in one or two election cycles on “The Dilbert Blog“. His blog entry has since then traveled the net, and if an excerpt of this post deserves a place anywhere, it’s right here on Bill Gates for President dot net.

Scott Adams writes:

I think that in an election cycle or two you will see an atheist business leader emerge as a legitimate candidate for president. And his name will be Bill Gates.

By then, Bill Gates will have done so much good for the world through his charitable works that combined with his business success he’ll appear more qualified than any other candidate. His early bachelor life and some of his business practices will come back to haunt him if he runs, but he can still win with this simple slogan: “Who would you rather have on your side? He”ll confess to all of his past imperfections and say that presidents are poor choices for role models. He’ll advise you to look to your parents for role models while you let him run the country.

I doubt Bill Gates is considering a run for president right now, largely because it’s so hard to make a difference from that job. His charities will have more impact. But I think he’ll someday realize that the world needs a rational thinker in the top spot and no one else can win.

At least you’d know he wouldn’t be in it for the money or to speed up the Rapture. He has my vote.

The rest of his post can be read right here. All we can say is: “way to go Scott!”.