Eccentrics: And If Elected

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They are an eclectic lot, but they have one thing in common: all 225 are registered with the Federal Election Commission as candidates in the 1984 presidential campaign. Some of the more ambitious traveled to the State University of New York campus at Stony Brook to attend the Alternative Presidential Convention '84.

Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale were among those invited who forgot to R.S.V.P., but nobody seemed to miss them. Pete Swider, from Hamtramck, Mich., vowed to eliminate crime by issuing federal credit cards to all 18-to 21-year-olds. Wearing a blue velour jogging suit and a gold feather headdress, Chief Rufus Thunderberg, a self-proclaimed Indian leader from Connecticut, worried about an imminent energy crisis. His solution: emergency methane production. Instead of distributing surplus cheese to the hungry, the Administration, according to Thunderberg, should provide baked beans. William Allen Camps warned that an enemy power has been tampering with the weather to cut off the U.S. food supply. One reassuring note was sounded by Larry Harmon, a.k.a. Bozo the Clown. Immediately after his inauguration, he said, he would go to Moscow fully dressed as Bozo and wheedle Soviet Leader Konstantin Chernenko into a nuclear freeze. Or Tastee-Freeze. Or whatever.