Performing perhaps the longest parody skit in history, comic Pat Paulsen ran for president five times between 1968 and 1996. A performer and comedy writer with progressive, rabble-rousing political leanings, Paulsen ran on a satirical platform, which, though relentlessly silly, drew serious attention to the real lack of choices in the American political arena. As Paulsen often said, he represented "the citizen who wants to vote for 'none of the above."'

Pat Paulsen was born in South Bend, Washington, and raised in Point Bonita, California. He majored in forestry at City College in San Francisco, but his career as a ranger was derailed when he joined the Ric-Y-Tic Players performing troupe. He was performing and working odd jobs as a Fuller Brush salesman and a gypsum miner when he was discovered in the mid-1960s by Tom and Dick Smothers. The Smothers Brothers, quirky comics...