But there are plenty of people who are convinced that Hagelin is a grade-A nut job. He is making his third run for the presidency, with the Natural Law Party's nomination in his pocket for the third straight political season. This is his first run for the Reform Party nod. His political opponents, such as Buchanan grass-roots organizer Linda Muller, like to call him a "cult leader," no doubt because he was a faculty member of Maharishi International University until 1999.

The school was named after the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, perhaps best known for turning the Beatles on to meditation, and allegedly getting them off of LSD, in the 1970s. The Maharishi's acolytes also once included pop guru Deepak Chopra and Hagelin, who in 1990 told Life Magazine that the yogi's legacy "will be far greater than that of Einstein or Gandhi."

But Hagelin's immediate concern is turning Reform Party voters on to his campaign. He is the only opposition on the Reform Party ballot to conservative Pat Buchanan, and the winner of the party's mail-in primary, currently underway and running until August 11, will take control of $12.6 million in federal matching funds.

Of course, most of the attention being paid to Hagelin now is being paid to him not for who he is but for who people want him to be, creating a truly symbiotic political relationship -- the man from Maharishi U. struggling for legitimacy, as a wing of the old-school Reform Party struggling to stop Pat Buchanan.

But first, Hagelin needs to break through the crackpot labels and legitimize himself to voters and the media. He emphasizes his pre-Maharishi educational background -- Dartmouth, Harvard, Stanford -- before trying to explain why he left the confines of Palo Alto, Calif., for Fairfield, Iowa, and MIU. One of his advisors helpfully points out that, while Hagelin does practice meditation, he is actually an Episcopalian.

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