Okay, we admit we're getting a little impatient. We're not talking about Mac OS X, or FireWire iBooks, or even faster G4 chips-- though, of course, we're pretty impatient about those, too. But what's really driving us up the proverbial wall is sitting around, twiddling our thumbs, and waiting for Steve Jobs to announce his candidacy for the office of President of the United States. Come on already; we first proposed the idea last November, and we've been blathering about it ever since. So it's not like he hasn't had time to get it together. How tough is it to print up a few bumper stickers, call a press conference, announce one's candidacy, kiss a couple of babies, and then blast a near-lethal dose of Reality Distortion Field energy into the brains of every registered voter in this great land?

And yet here we are, a scant two months before Election Day, and Steve still hasn't budged. Now, granted, after throwing his translucent hat in the ring, it probably wouldn't take him more than three days to lock up the election tighter than a Power Mac running Word 6, but still, this reeks of procrastination. The only strategic benefit we can imagine to waiting this long is that the effects of RDF energy taper off over time, so perhaps he's waiting until just before the election to jump in, pump the electorate full of Steve-y charm, and win the day by the largest margin in electoral history.

After all, there's no real point in trying to shock anyone with a last-minute campaign; everyone already knows that he's going to run. If you just keep your eyes and ears open, the signs are all over the place. For example, ZDNet ran an article on the latest Stevenote which began, "judging by the size of the lines and the tight security... the casual observer might have concluded that... Steve Jobs was about to announce his decision to run for president." Well, no such luck-- but faithful viewer Sarah Wilkin noticed that during the keynote, the Macromedia presentation focused on constructing "Steve for President" campaign materials-- just search for "candidates" in the transcript and you'll see what we're talking about. Not too subtle, is it?

And in fact, though the Macromedia stuff shown on stage was probably far more compelling, faithful viewer Devin Durham pointed out that there's already a "Jobs for President" site live on the web, complete with commercials, e-cards, press briefings-- just about everything except for, say, an actual picture of the candidate. (Apparently Steve has chosen to be represented by a red, white, and blue top hat for reasons of modesty.) Okay, okay... this site isn't legit. Like Steve would ever run a site using Active Server Pages! How tasteless. Still, we can dream, can't we?