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Here's an article written by a talented Umbrella member not too long ago. His name is Scarbaci and he wrote this to help players get to Congress smarter and faster. Hope this makes up for my missed article on Wednesday.

How to become a Congressman
by Dr Scarbaci

Another day, and more candidates launch their bid for Congress. While I do not understand the draw that Congress has on folks, there are many others who desire the tedious duties of protocol, a job which appears even more dull than being an Internet lawyer (I have yet mustered the bravery to even dare a peek at /those/ forums). However, it seems a good portion of those who are vying for the office attempt to sway voters with an announcement that looks as if the candidate spent some fraction of five minutes coming up with. While voters may indeed be sheep who vote based on a candidate's avatar or party, they are not amazed by such lack luster campaigns. The key difference here is perception, and if a lolcat image attracts more voters than your paragraph desperately urging for their votes, then you need to read this article.

Though many would respond to such campaign attempts with even less thought in their replies, I offer you here a simple guide to get your campaign off the ground and become almost indistinguishable from those who say just as little in a great multitude of words. In other words, the victorious candidates who get the sheep vote with an impressive (but just as useless) platform. However a warning, anything worth achieving requires work. Should anything I write here ring a bell, I honestly recommend that you withdraw from the race and focus the next thirty days on developing a well thought out campaign.

First of all, you're going to need a platform. This may seem simple, just tell people what you think they want to hear in as many words as possible. If that's the case, then you're wasting your time here. Just go copy one of the impressive campaigns and go back to two-clicking. Anybody whose ever had a date can make an empty promise. The key here is to think of you voters as your first set of opponents. Understand this, everyone has an opinion on how to do things and they think their opinion is right. Even if your voters love you more than your mom, you'll eventually will be debating against other Congressmen who have empty promises and party commitments of their own to fulfill. Your success in politics depends solely on your ability to convince others that your plan is best (theirs is not wrong, merely not as complete as yours, wink wink), and its best to start with convincing your voters.

Now you're probably faced a terrible problem. You initially wanted to be Congressman because it would be cool to tell your buddies, your shelf needs an trophy, the five gold ain't bad, and your family only loves a winner, but now how do you convince people of your plan when you never had one to begin with? Worry not! This is actually one of the easiest parts. The world will always have problems, otherwise we wouldn't need a Congress (p.s. Anarchists, want to get rid of the government? Solve all our problems). Even better, no one keeps the problems to themselves. Surf the forums like they were porn, read the newspapers. You'll stumble across a problem that appeals to you.

Course now you're probably feeling the burden of having to come up with solutions to said problems. Professional politicians are geniuses, they have advisers. It could be said that their choice of advisers is what makes them smart, but likely they have an advisor to help them pick advisers. Luckily for you, the same places where you found people complaining about problems, is also the same places you'll find people offering up solutions, completely free of charge. Why do they do this? It would be nice to think of it all as a scientific peer review process, but its mainly because people cant keep anything inside their head and/or they seek to influence policy makers (guilty as charged). However, there is a peer review process in the form of comments where you'll be able to see what others think of the solutions.

Now you could just jump on the band wagon of the most popular issues and solutions, but so can opponents and you're still playing to win, right? That means you will have to do some thinking. I've let you off the hook on finding problems and a choice of solutions for them, but your ability to debate unpopular ideas is what will make or break you as a politician. So select a proposal that calls out to you, not because everyone likes it, but because in your gut you feel that it will work. As if being a candidate couldn't get easier, unpopular ideas already have plenty of counter arguments for you to formulate responses too. People aren't that creative. If there is a known issue with your plan, they'll just repeat what they've heard. Being prepared with a way to mitigate or compromise with that issue a head of time will leave your opponents speechless.

There you have it, a step by step plan to go from an empty platform, to one that will put you ahead of your opponents who'll still probably win because they're smart enough to be loyal puppets to big parties. Oh yes, there is that slight little problem isn't there. I wish it weren't true, but a lot of voter are sheep. Popping out of the woods with the best platform on earth will still only get you third, maybe second place. You're not going to go through all this just to lose as if you did nothing at all did you? As I've said, before you get the chance to convince Congress of your awesomeness, you must convince the voters, but now before you convince the voters, you must convince a party.

Again, you could pick the most popular party and try to befriend the inner clique in the hopes they select you for a spot. At that point you can just throw out the platform and simply ride the party vote for as long as you have the favor of the inner clique. But you wouldn't be wasting your time reading an article like this when you could be chumming it up with your party buddies about the latest console games. No, once more I suggest you look for smaller party, it doesn't even have to be a top five. As long as they have one current congressman, then there is a possibility for you, as they've shown to be able to either play nicely with the other parties, or know how to win an election. Join them, convince them to your plans, and become known as thinker and a leader. Finally, you're ready to seriously go after a Congress seat.