Parting thoughts on the Barr campaign

Brian Doherty asks "Where Did the Libertarian Party Go Wrong?" over at Reason. It's not the first post-election critique of Bob Barr's presidential campaign, nor will it be the last, but it's an interesting one, and since it quotes me, I think I'll go ahead and set my own thoughts down at greater length.

First, the quote: "In terms of vote totals, his failures put him firmly in the LP 'usual' pack. In terms of effect on the Libertarian Party, he probably set us back 20 years."

I have to say that I'm already mellowing a bit from that initial take. How far the Barr campaign sets back the LP doesn't have to be a function of the Barr campaign -- the rest of us have something to say about it too. We can allow 2008 to cast a long shadow, or we can break in a different direction and leave 2008 behind.

For that matter, in terms of performance at the polls, Barr was not really a failure by LP standards. In terms of percentage of the vote, he performed in the middle of the LP presidential pack (4th place of 10 campaigns).

There was also a strategic decision on the campaign's part to target "battleground" states in an attempt to "change" the election outcome, rather than to go after the "low-hanging fruit" of more votes in "safe" Democrat or Republican states where the voters wouldn't be as worried about "costing" one major party or the other the election. That's something I can't fault the Barr campaign for. It was a judgment call they had to make. Michael Badnarik's 2004 campaign made the same call in the same way, targeting New Mexico, Nevada and Wisconsin as potential "spoiler" opportunities. If 2008 hadn't turned into a blowout, there was every chance that the Barr campaign's strategy would have worked.

Some observers -- among them, I believe, Ballot Access News publisher Richard Winger -- believe that the LP and third parties in general will benefit in the long run from the Barr campaign's ballot access litigation. If so, that's a good thing and Barr should receive credit for it.

The failure from a Libertarian Party standpoint, in my view, is that Barr didn't run a libertarian campaign. If the GOP nominated Barbara Boxer for president, or the Democrats picked Tom DeLay, the "base" of either party would consider that presidential campaign a failure regardless of how many votes the candidate picked up. Barr was a mismatch for the LP. He ran as a Dixiecrat "states rights" conservative, and in doing so he at least partially and temporarily re-branded the LP away from libertarianism and toward his own ideology to some as yet unknown extent.

Coke does not give its "salesman of the year" award to the guy who moves the most cases of Pepsi. The Pope does not canonize the woman who converts the most people to Buddhism. The LP's designated sales manager for this year went out and sold something other than the LP's product. That's a failure in itself, and a failure to the extent that it creates an ongoing public misperception as to what the LP's product is.

Now, back to those vote totals: Was 510,000 votes a "failure?" Above, I say that it wasn't ... by LP standards. But those aren't the only applicable standards.

The standard set by Barr campaign manager Russ Verney from the stage at the LP's 2008 national convention was raising $40 million and winning the election. I doubt that very many people believed it was really going to happen (or that Verney believed it himself), but when you hype numbers, you can expect those numbers to come back to haunt you.

At least as late as October (and possibly later), Barr running mate Wayne Allyn Root confidently predicted "1-3 million votes." He did so on October 5th in the New York Times. That's a hard number, and Root is a Las Vegas oddsmaker.

"Libertarian" Republican and sometimes Barr/Root booster Eric Dondero's predictions swung wildly around numbers he cherry-picked from polls (while ignoring the history of actual LP vote totals on election day versus earlier poll numbers), but in August he hedged his bet to the low side and set a standard for "success" --

[T]he media is completely ignoring the Libertarian yard stick for success: Beating Ed Clark. Libertarian Ed Clark's campaign received 922,000 votes in 1980, 1.1%. It is the all-time benchmark for success for Libertarian Presidential campaigns. ... The magic number for success for Bob Barr for President remains -- 922,001.

Of course today, Dondero is in full-out backtrack mode, decrying the Doherty article and bitterly bitching that people should acknowledge the "success" of a campaign which fell far short of his own stated standard.

One of the curious elements of Dondero's argument is that percentages are irrelevant -- only raw vote totals matter. I disagree. Two votes is more than one vote, but whether or not two votes are better than one vote depends on how many people are voting. One vote out of two is damn good. Two votes out of two million isn't.

In 1996, Harry Browne received 485,798 votes out of 96.2 million total votes cast.

In 2008, Bob Barr received about 510,000 votes out of 126.7 million votes cast.

Thirty million more voters, but only 24 thousand more votes. It's impossible to believably spin that into any kind of great "success."

A stray note on competence:

It's impossible to tell how things might have come out had the Barr campaign been competently managed ... but it's reasonable to think, on the basis of casual observation, that it wasn't. Needless ballot access problems, message ranging from "true conservative" to downright incoherence, five figures on an air conditioner for an office that was leased for five months, $18,000 in limo bills ... the organization appeared dysfunctional.

Mike Ferguson is one of the most competent individuals I know. I say that because it's true -- nobody's going to mistake us for best buddies. Given an environment of general competence, I suspect Ferguson would have been a very effective campaign operative, boosting Barr's vote total everywhere he went. Instead, he seemed to get stuck spending most of the campaign hauling ass around the country and trying to unscrew other people's screwups (for example, the West Virginia ballot access debacle).

As early as the LP's Denver convention in June, I observed that Steve Gordon seemed to have already been moved to the campaign's sidelines once Russ Verney took over as manager. Gordon denied it, but the impression remained. Frankly, I suspect that Gordon would have been a better pick for campaign manager than Verney, whose main claim to fame is that he managed to bring Ross Perot -- a wildly popular public figure with effectively unlimited campaign funds and who at one point was polling toward victory -- in at 20% in 1992. Gordon has the requisite nuts and bolts skills, and he was better positioned than Verney to get the LP's supporters in the mood to work for the campaign's success from the very beginning. Even setting aside later events, Verney's presence at the nominating convention probably cost Barr votes, and cooled reception toward his nomination, by bolstering the campaign's outsider/"Darth Vader" image.

But I could be wrong on those things. It's happened before.

Hopefully, in 2012 Libertarians will think their presidential nomination selection through from the ground up -- starting with the message they want to convey and then looking at which candidate conveys that message most effectively. Nothing wrong with hitching one's wagon to a star, but only if the star is going to pull that wagon in the direction you want to go.

OBAMA WINS!

Just thought I'd go ahead and get ahead of the MSM curve there, since I'll be out next Tuesday evening.

When a Democratic presidential candidate schedules an event in Springfield, Missouri the weekend before the election and brings his wife in to do it with him instead of keeping her on the trail elsewhere, there's only one reasonable conclusion: He's got this thing nailed down solid, and now he's going for "mandate" numbers in the Electoral College.

I grew up not too far northeast of Springfield, and my understanding is that my uncle (and my second cousin -- we share a border with Arkansas, see?)¹ was the first Democrat to be elected to county commission in our county (Laclede) since before the War Between the States (that was back in the late 70s or early 80s -- he only lasted one term). Occasionally a Democratic candidate for public office will take Springfield itself, but it's just a dot in the red sea of southern Missouri.

If Obama thinks he can pick up Missouri by campaigning in Roy Blunt's back yard, he's either stupid or he knows to a dead certainty that he's got the election in the bag. And Obama's not stupid.

If McCain manages to turn out the Diebold vote or something, maybe a printout of this blog will be in the running for use in the obligatory Harry Truman re-enactment. But I just don't see that happening. Missouri and North Carolina as tossups are hard evidence that the GOP is royally screwed for next Tuesday.

-----
1. It's not as kinky as it sounds. My dad's cousin married my mom's sister, so it's not like I'm my own grandpa or anything.

What Obama should say ...

... if McCain plays the Ayers card.

Senator McCain, I was eight years old when the Weather Underground became active. I was never involved in it. I never supported its activities. I later befriended a man who had once been a leader of that organization -- a man who had killed no one, a man who had turned himself in to the police, made amends, and become a peaceful member of his community right about the time I graduated from high school.

You were closer to sixty-eight years old when you began your active support for arming and funding the Kosovo Liberation Army, an al Qaeda connected terrorist organization responsible for hundreds, possibly thousands, of murders and kidnappings in the former Yugoslavia, and implicated in a plot to attack Fort Dix, right here on US soil. Your active support for those terrorists -- and their reciprocal support for you in the form of contributions to your campaigns, routed through their US front organization, the Albanian American Civic League -- continues to this very day.

Senator, I regret to inform you that you lack the moral stature to lecture me, or anyone else, on the subject of palling around with terrorists.

McCain has said he'd rather lose an election than lose a war. Well, he's going to lose an election. Tonight is really more about whether or not he flushes his personal dignity down the same toilet as his presidential prospects.

Bring it on!

Tune in next Friday, October 17th, at 9pm Eastern. As the nominee of the Boston Tea Party, I'll be debating other vice-presidential candidates on Restore the Republic Radio, an Internet broadcast outfit recently created by the merger of Revolution Broadcasting (a Ron Paul R3VOLution phenomenon) and Aaron Russo's Restore the Republic.

Confirmed participants so far include myself, Darrell Castle of the Constitution Party, and Wayne Allyn Root of the Libertarian Party. That list will likely grow, and I'll try to keep it updated.

Thanks to RtRR for creating this opportunity. They sponsored a presidential candidate debate this last Thursday. That debate included Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party, Charles Jay of the Boston Tea Party, Brian Moore of the Socialist Party USA, a representative of independent candidate Ralph Nader, Frank McEnulty of the New American Independent Party, and independent candidate Steve Allen. You can grab MP3s of that debate (it's split into three files) here.

Terror, firmer

Wikipedia on terrorism:

Most common definitions of terrorism include only those acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for an ideological goal (as opposed to a lone attack), and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants.

Wikipedia quoting author Dan Berger on the Weather Underground:

[T]he group purposefully and successfully avoided injuring anyone, not just civilians but armed enforcers of the government.

Wikipedia on the Kosovo Liberation Army:

The exact number of victims of the KLA is not known. According to a Serbian government report, from January 1, 1998 to June 10, 1999 the KLA killed 988 people and kidnapped 287; in the period from June 10, 1999 to November 11, 2001, when NATO took control in Kosovo, 847 were reported to have been killed and 1,154 kidnapped. This comprised both civilians and security force personnel: of those killed in the first period, 335 were civilians, 351 soldiers, 230 police and 72 were unidentified; by nationality, 87 of killed civilians were Serbs, 230 Albanians, and 18 of other nationalities. Following the withdrawal of Serbian and Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo in June 1999, all casualties were civilians, the vast majority being Serbs. According to Human Rights Watch, as "many as one thousand Serbs and Roma have been murdered or have gone missing since June 12, 1999."

Historical timeline document of the Albanian American Civic League:

- February 1998: "The Civic League issues a public declaration, 'In Defense of the Albanian National Cause,' in which it announces its support for the Kosova Liberation Army ..."

- March 1998: "[T]he Civic League holds the first rally on Capitol Hill in support of the Kosova Liberation Army."

Guess who contributed $5,000 to John McCain?

Hint: Try Googling the phrase "he did everything we asked of him, including arming the KLA."

Barack Obama used to hang out with a an old sixties lefty who killed no one. John McCain still pals around with the Balkans chapter of al Qaeda. Glass houses, stones, etc.

Liveblogging the debate

Well, yes, of course I am. Tweetin' too.

8:02pm "Recovery plan?" What "recovery plan?" A $700 billion ripoff isn't "recovery."

Obama's calling it a "rescue effort." No, no, no .. RIPOFF. No, the taxpayers aren't putting their money at risk, the bureaucrats are stealing the taxpayers' money. Blames the Busheviks, ties McCain to them. Probably right on both counts. Plays the middle class card.

8:05pm McCain: Poor Ted Kennedy, feeling' bad, we're all feelin' bad, I'm Mr. Bi-Partisanship. Options. Packages. Hasn't called it a ripoff yet. Now Mr. Bi-Partisanship blames the Democrats. Not the beginning of the end of the crisis, the end of the beginning of the crisis.

8:08pm Lehrer: Do you guys support this bullshit?

Obama: Yes, but no. I predicted it and tried to stop it.

McCain: (Lehrer: "Are you going to vote for the plan?) He hopes so, but maybe not. He predicted it and tried to stop it too. I'm Eisenhower. No, wait, I'm McCain, but I'm sort of Eisenhower.

8:12pm Obama: Need leadership even when there's not a crisis. Americans are too friggin' stupid to balance their checkbooks without Barack's magic calculator to make the numbers come out right.

McCain: Excess and greed in Washington, DC and Wall Street. American worker most productive in world, yada, yada, it's just idiots like me who screwed them over.

8:14pm McCain lapses into the canned pitch ... came to change Washington, it changed us, spending out of control. Gonna make porkers famous. Like that Obama guy.

8:16pm Yeah, that pork sucks, and I gave it up. Been clean for a month, man. But it's not spending that's out of control, it's tax cuts. All your FRNs are belong to us unless I need your vote, then I'm your pal, and what I really meant to say is that I'll cut taxes.

8:17pm Obama doesn't think $932 million is a lot of money. Out of control! Corrupts people! I was called "the sheriff," I'm not Mr. Congeniality. Obama says he wants to cut taxes but he wants to raise spending ...

Obama: Close loopholes! Keep jobs in America! Give everyone band-aids and anti-biotic ointment, I'll pay for it.

8:20pm Lehrer: Neither of you guys makes any sense. Explain yourself, McCain.

McCain: Trying to channel Josiah Bartlett from "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen."

McCain: "So the point is" ... he wants to social engineer with taxes to get people to make babies and pay their doctors' greens fees.

Obama: If you make less than $250k per year, I won't increase your taxes. Yes, business taxes look high, but the loopholes make it effectively one of the lowest rates in the world. Close the loopholes then talk to me about tax cuts. McCain would tax health benefits, what an assbag.

8:24pm McCain: Look at our records, then tell me who the assbag is. Obama gave bennies to Big Oil.

Obama: McCain would give Big Oil another $4 billion in tax breaks.

McCain: You already did, clownshoe.

8:26pm Lehrer calls it a "rescue plan" again. Twice.

Obama: Range of things. We don't know what tax revenues are gonna be, economy's slowing down. We can't do everything, but we have to have energy independence. Will wave my magic wand. Got to destroy the health care system to make people better off, and destroy education to make people smarter.

8:28pm McCain: We've got to cut spending. Government out of control (nth time he's used that phrase, and now Lehrer is calling the ripoff a "bailout"). Eliminate ethanol subsidies. Do away with cost-plus on defense contracts. I saved the taxpayers $6.8 billion on a Boeing contract and put people in prison. Elect me and I'll save you another $6.8 billion and put you in prison too.

8:30pm Lehrer: Neither of you seem to be suggesting any major changes to account for the ripoff.

Obama: Invest in energy! Big project! John's right, we need to make some cuts. Lobbyists skim billions off Medicaid, Medicare. Gotta change the culture. Not a crazy liberal just because I attack George Bush. Worked with Tom Coburn to Google Government.

8:30pm Lehrer: I'm not fucking around here, guys. Gimme the major stuff.

McCain: Spending freeze on everything but defense, veterans and anything else I think is important.

Obama: Cut lobbyists' Medicare subsidy. End Iraq war.

McCain: Giving $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us much, need to crank up solar, wind, nukes and let them starve. Create 700,000 jobs by building 45 new nuclear reactors. Also, we'll be able to read our new glow-in-the-dark newspapers.

Lehrer: Not getting through to you, am I? Do you guys understand that a $700 billion ripoff is going to have you by the nuts if you're elected?

8:35pm Obama: Yeah, but I'm not going to squeal no matter how hard it squeezes. Mine are brass.

McCain: Obama would hand health care over to federal government, not doctors. Obama's $800 billion in new spending would make everyone squeal.

8:37pm Obama: McCain agrees with Bush 90% of the time. Saying he'll lead on controlling spending after 8 years of this stuff isn't believable.

McCain: I'm not Miss Congeniality. I've taken Bush to the woodshed. Maverick. My partner's a maverick, too, even if she is crazy as a shithouse rat.

8:39pm McCain: And by the way, I say we're winning in Iraq, so now you know that I'm crazy as a shithouse rat too.

Obama: McCain and I have a fundamental difference. I ran against the war six years ago (I won't mention that I've voted to fund it ever since). I'm running against the war now, but I'll give you another war if you really want one.

8:42pm Obama: Iraq has a surplus, we're screwed and spending $10 billion a month there. The lesson to be drawn is that we should never hesitate to use military force wisely.

McCain: Next president doesn't have to decide if we go to Iraq or not, but how we get out. Obama said the surge didn't work. Didn't go to Iraq for 900 days, didn't meet with Petraeus when he did go. Don't tell me about war, whippersnapper.

Obama: Can the inside baseball (committee thing). Soldiers did good job. Petraeus did good job. Surge was tactic to contain the consequences of bad war. McCain wants to pretend the first four years didn't happen because he was wrong about them. I was right about them but that didn't stop me from voting to keep the thing going.

8:46pm McCain: Obama has never played Avalon Hill's "Squad Leader" and doesn't know difference between tactic and strategy. Obama opposed funding.

Obama: McCain opposed funding with a timetable, I opposed funding without one. But we both supported sitting in the situation room and beating Bush at "Squad Leader" if the lobbyists would provide Crab Louie. Al Qaeda is back and badder than ever because Bush wouldn't spring for the "Cross of Iron" expansion set. I can fix things in 16 months and put bin Laden's head on a pike in front of 1600 Pennsylvania.

8:49pm McCain: Petraeus, Petraeus, Petraeus. Obama would give us wider more complicated war, we might have to buy more dice and make counters out of posterboard and maybe refresh the hors d'ouvres.

Obama: Can't separate Afghanistan from Iraq, so I'll put more of those new posterboard counters to Afghanistan. We should have just played Risk, this is too complicated. Pakistan sucks.

8:53pm McCain: Yeah, Pakistan sucks but let's give them a bunch more money anyway and not talk about it. I pronounce Taliban right. Obama says "Tally" too much. We've got a lot of work to do in Afghanistan teaching them how to pronounce "Taliban." I wouldn't publicly say I was going to attack, I'd just get the briefcase and push the button.

Obama: You sang "Bomb Iran." You suck.

[time for Taco Bell break]

8:58pm McCain: I supported everything we did that worked, and opposed everything that blew up in our faces. That's why the Iraq war is a victory, because I supported it. I have a bracelet, so we must stay the course.

Obama: I've got a bracelet too. I lied about being against the war in 2003, but you can trust me now because I have the bracelet.

9:02pm Lehrer: Iran.

McCain: If Iran gets nukes, Israel is screwed. We can't allow a second Holocaust. Let's form a League of Democracies, since that worked so well for Wilson and prevented WWII. The Iranians have a lousy government. With sanctions, we could make it worse, maybe even as bad as ours.

9:05pm Obama: War on Iraq strengthened Iran. They've funded Hezbollah, they've funded Hamas, and I've helped them do it by voting to fund the war on Iraq, but if you trust me this time I won't do that again.

9:08pm McCain: Ochmeneedoodadjood wants to destroy Israel. Obama would talk with him. I'm going to talk around it a bit, but so would I.

Obama: Gotta talk with people. That's what politicians do.

[Meximelts, fire sauce, cola, bourbon]

9:12pm McCain: Pronounces Ahmenigesundheit right this time. South Koreans are taller than North Koreans, because North Koreans break agreements.

Obama: McCain keeps lying about what I mean, and the viewing audience should drink each time one of us says "Henry Kissinger."

9:15pm McCain: Kissinger, Kissinger, Kissinger, known him for 35 years.

Obama: Resurgent, aggressive Russia is a threat to stability of region. Blames Russia for Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia and Abhkazia. We have to stop secessionists, especially if they're ethnic Russians who don't want to belong to Stalin's old home state. But we can't go back to Cold War. Gotta work with them while we're calling them names, because US has a national security interest in central Asian shitholes.

McCain: Russian aggression, Russian aggression, Obama is naive to think that there's another side to that Georgia/South Ossetia/Abhkazia thing. No Cold War, but we do need to hop around yelling "KGB" and do everything we can to provoke them.

9:21pm McCain: We can't have Russia ignoring international standards like we do.

Obama: McCain and I agree that Russia sucks. Matter of fact I agree with him more than he admits. We need to rebuild Georgian economy because we've done such a great job with ours. Two points on Russia: We have to have foresight, and I do because I'm Barack Obama. Second point: Russia is resurgent and Putin is DA BOOGEYMAN! We have to have energy strategy! Can't drill our way out!

[Tamara: "These guys both suck -- is this almost over?"]

9:25pm McCain: Babble about nukes some more.

Lehrer: Likelihood of another 9/11?

McCain: Much less than it was the day after 9/11. Much safer nation now, but a long way from safe. Did I mention I'm bipartisan? I know Joe Lieberman. We investigated 9/11 and found out what happened and fixed it. Bipartisan! Bipartisan! Long way to go. Gotta do a better job. No torture! I know our allies. America is safer today but we have a long way to go, so prepare for random body cavity searches at the Post Office. Those body cavity searchers are heroes.

Obama: We are safer in some ways. Better airport security because people have to take their shoes off. Long way to go, we should harden chemical sites. Biggest threat we face is not nuclear missile, but suitcase nuke. Need missile defense. Only spending a few hundred million on nuclear proliferation is mistake. But we should focus on al Qaeda. We need to be nice guys with our allies if we don't want them to screw us. McCain's good on torture. Shining beacon on a hill.

McCain: Al Qaeda would establish base in Iraq if we left! If we follow Obama's plan, Osama bin Laden will crawl out from under your bed and get you!

Obama: We've focused on Iraq, bin Laden is still under your bed. Now we're borrowing billions from China (he must not have noticed they suspended lending to the US the other day) and they're doing all kinds of wild shit. $10 billion a month on Iraq, so your kid can't get a checkup and science doesn't happen any more. Haven't adequately funded veterans care. Gotta have "broader strategic vision," and I do because I'm Barack Obama.

9:34pm McCain: I've been involved in every foreign affairs fiasco in the last 27 years and that makes me qualified to lead. We're winning in Iraq because I have a bracelet. I know the veterans and I'll take care of them. They know I love them. I don't need on the job training because I'm John McCain.

Obama: My dad was from Kenya and came to college in US. Nobody wants to come to college in the US now. I can fix that because I'm Barack Obama.

McCain: Plays POW card. Came home, was sad. Worked on normalization with Vietnam. Know how to heal wounds, deal with adversaries, deal with friends, because I'm John McCain.

Lehrer: You guys suck. This is so over.

Buy the ticket, take the ride

Ron Paul has endorsed Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party's candidate for President of the United States.

Readers of this blog know that I'm no Paul cultist. And, while I haven't belabored the point (I prefer to ignore them), I keep the Constitution Party lower than the Democrats, lower even than the Republicans, on my preference list. Put a gun to my head, I might vote for John McCain to save my miserable life. If it's Baldwin, though, go ahead and pull the trigger. You can splatter my brains all over the wall before you can have my vote for him. Cigarette, blindfold and mason jar full of cheap bourbon first, if you don't mind too terribly much.

Thing is, it didn't have to be this way. It could have been prevented. Hell, it took herculean efforts on the part of the Libertarian Party and Bob Barr's presidential campaign to make it happen.

The Libertarian Party could have held out for a libertarian presidential slate. It had several good candidates to choose from. Instead, it decided to play cargo cult dress-up games and nominate a duplicate Republican ticket.

Bob Barr could have shown up to the Campaign For Liberty event he committed to participate in, smiled, accepted a handshake from Paul, and walked out without an exclusive endorsement but with more money and more votes than he had walked in with. Instead, he chose to cancel at the last minute, make an ass of himself (and his party) in public by trying to upstage Paul, and piss off the voter bloc that constitutes the closest thing to a libertarian groundswell since at least the 1964 Goldwater campaign, probably since Grover Cleveland's 1892 anti-tariff/hard-money run for a second non-consecutive term, and just maybe since 1776.

Even after that, the Libertarian National Committee could have minimized the damage. It could have issued an apology to Paul and C4L, on the LP's behalf, for Barr's antics. It could have even, in extremis, removed Barr as the party's presidential nominee. Instead, the LNC gridlocked -- its Irresponsibility Caucus met proposals for an apology with proposals for further insult, and neither side prevailed. Unfortunately, either the Irresponsibility Caucus or the Barr campaign apparently has de facto operational control of LPHQ, which has issued a stream of communiques designed to make the situation worse, not better.

It took three massive systemic failures -- at the convention level, at the campaign level, and at the national committee level -- to bring about the current situation. All of those failures were avoidable. The party and the campaign chose not to prevent them. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

The LP is broken, big-time. This year is pretty much shot. Barr looks set to raise a little more money, and probably pull down a few more votes on his name recognition, than Michael Badnarik, the LP's 2004 candidate whom Barr's acolytes have so much enjoyed laughing down their noses at. I doubt more than ever that Barr will bust the 1980 Ed Clark ceiling and reach a million votes, and even if he did, it would be a poison pill -- the more attention he attracts, the more silly and less serious the LP looks.

Can the LP be fixed? Should it be fixed, at least in anything resembling its current form? So far as I can tell, The Libertarian National Committee's main function at this point is to serve as a live demonstration of the futility of central planning and top-down politics.

The LNC also no longer has a monopoly on libertarian partisan politics at the national level. The Boston Tea Party may only be on the ballot in three states this year, but I seem to recall that that's one more ballot line than the LP made its first time out. If the LNC system continues to fail partisan libertarians, they -- as individuals, and as state Libertarian Party organizations -- have somewhere else to go.

That swirling sound you hear ...

... is Bob Barr's presidential campaign circling the drain of history.

Brief recap:

Barr was scheduled to appear with Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin and independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader at a press conference yesterday to endorse a joint four-point issues statement on which all these candidates (and Boston Tea Party candidate Charles Jay) agree.

At the last minute, Barr canceled, with campaign manager Russ Verney allegedly giving as the excuse "it just isn't worth it." When a Campaign For Liberty official, Don Rasmussen, asked Barr campaign deputy director Shane Cory what was up with that, he alleges that Cory's reply was "go f**k yourself." Barr then held his own press conference, grandstanding on Paul's name with an offer of the Libertarian Party's vice-presidential slot, while Verney, the campaign, and LPHQ spun like mad about how this "demonstrates Barr's leadership" and how Barr would be lowered by appearing on stage with someone "like" Cynthia McKinney. Over the last 24 hours, the Barr campaign has continued to run smack on Paul.

Now for a brief digression, just to make things crystal clear: Nobody with two or more functioning neurons is going to accuse me of being a Paul sycophant. I opposed his GOP presidential campaign and believe it did significant damage to the libertarian movement (the newsletter scandal, the pork-mongering, the anti-gay and anti-immigrant BS, etc.). If you don't believe me, Google "Ron Paul" and this blog's URL.

But that doesn't matter, for three reasons:

- One of the major premises and promises of the Barr campaign -- from well before his announcement that he was considering running, going at least back to his sponsorship of a motion on the Libertarian National Committee asking Paul to seek the LP's nomination -- was that Barr would appeal to the Paul voter and supporter bloc. No need to belabor that. Read the history. It's all there in the search engines.

Hint: You don't deliver a voter bloc by monkeywrenching that bloc's hero's event, trying to upstage him, telling his supporters to "go f**k themselves," claiming you're too big and important to appear on a stage with him and other presidential candidates, then talking about him like he's a fool and a knave out of one side of your mouth while offering him the second fiddle position in your own failing effort out of the other, all the while blowing about how this bundle of nonsense constitutes "leadership."

- Secondly, Barr's delusions of grandeur and absurd strategies aside, Barr isn't just a presidential candidate, he's the presidential candidate of a party, the Libertarian Party. That party has longstanding ties to Ron Paul, who was its 1988 presidential nominee. At one point, polling indicated that more than seven of every 10 LP members wanted to run Paul on the LP ticket again this year. Whether I liked it or not -- and often I didn't -- Libertarians across the country put gallons of sweat into building bridges with the Paul movement over the last 18 months. I don't know if Barr has succeeded in burning those bridges with his antics yet or not ... but make no mistake about it, he's poured gasoline on those bridges and he's capering around them with a Zippo^® in one hand, a can of accelerant in the other, and a deranged grin on his face.

- Thirdly, the Paul press conference was a no-brainer. It was a major media opportunity with no down side. It was a cake walk. All Barr had to do was stand on a stage with four other people, at least two of whom are more famous and well-thought-of by the public than he'll ever be, smile and say nice things about an issues statement that every last freedom-loving American can wholeheartedly sign on to, and watch the money and votes roll in. It was seemingly impossible to screw this up. But -- wouldn't you know it? -- the Barr campaign found a way to turn a cake walk into a fiasco, just like his old party seems to do every time.

The Barr campaign broke its promise to try to deliver the Paul voter bloc yesterday. The Barr campaign created a major schism between the Libertarian Party on one hand, and a major ally of the LP and his supporters on the other, yesterday. And the Barr campaign demonstrated the most mind-blowingly blind level of incompetence and inability to discern opportunities to even promote its own candidate yesterday.

And they don't seem inclined to even try to stop the bleeding.

The Libertarian National Committee needs to issue an abject, no-exceptions, no-excuses apology to Ron Paul and the Campaign for Liberty for its presidential candidate's misbehavior, repudiate that misbehavior, and dissociate itself from that misbehavior. Actually, it needed to do that yesterday afternoon, and the clock is ticking. That's what it owes to Paul, to Paul's supporters, to the Campaign for Liberty, and to the LP members who resemble all those descriptions. And, for that matter, that's what it owes to the Barr campaign. Sometimes supporting the presidential campaign, as it is the LNC's obligation to do, entails at least trying to clean up the presidential campaign's messes.

The Libertarian National Committee also needs to take up the question -- i.e. get a motion made, seconded, and in play -- to remove Barr as its presidential candidate. Barr has arguably attacked the party's interests multiple times -- in terms of publicly espousing positions that conflict with the party's Statement of Principles, and in terms of running a campaign that embarrasses, misrepresents, and diminishes the credibility of, the party. If the LNC doesn't take official notice of that and deal with it by considering its options under the party's bylaws, then the LNC is a dead stick and should stop wasting the members' money on the pretense that it is a real board overseeing the real operations of a real political party.

McCain: Good instincts, bad form, no cigar

If you're shaking your head in disbelief at the McCain campaign's feigned outrage over the Obama "lipstick on a pig" remark, I don't blame you. It's at least as desperate as it sounds, but not quite as stupid. Here's why:

Until right before the GOP convention, it was obvious that the only way John McCain could win this election was to relentlessly slag Barack Obama and hope like hell nobody looked too closely at John McCain.

Which, all in all, makes for a bummer of a campaign and a presidency that's busted from the beginning because it is -- much as I hate the word -- "polarizing." The new president comes into office with a large plurality, maybe even a majority, of Americans not just having voted for the other guy, but hating the new president's guts.

Whatever else you believe, believe this: McCain wants to be President of the United States, not President of the Republican Party Faithful. Like him or not -- like it or not (and sometimes it's an ugly marriage of the worst of both "major" parties) -- he actually does have a record of "reaching across the aisle." He actually does want to bring the country together. And he wants to continue that record as president instead of spending four or eight years burning in a George W. Bush style hell.

Obama was running the table, though. He had already pegged a McCain presidency as "eight more years of George W. Bush" and was pressing the theme effectively. The race, which had been leaning hard Democrat anyway, was quickly developing into a Reagan-Mondale 1984 scenario in partisan reverse.

So, time for Plan B. Sarah Palin was supposed to be a "game changer" for McCain. She was supposed to provide a point of positive focus so that McCain's campaign could safely, and at least partially, be about something, anything other than just slagging Barack Obama. She was supposed to bring the GOP's social conservative bloc and forlorn "libertarian" [sic] fringe into the circle of McCain's moderate happy dance.¹ And women ... she was supposed to be a candidate for whom Julia and Suzanne Sugarbaker could both swoon. And she was supposed to be able to get away with kicking Barack Obama in the nuts, because you don't slap a woman across the room even for that, at least not if you want to get elected president.

Unfortunately, Palin degenerated into a hot mess in record time. Her schtick was fun for about five minutes, and then pesky irrelevancies like her actual record started horning in and crushing the buzz. At this point, the only beneficiaries of her nomination are Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Dan Quayle, who finally gets to hand off the "Stupidest Republican VP Idea Ever" tiara and retire.

Hint: The reason she's refusing interviews is that every interview she doesn't refuse will shave half a percentage point off of McCain's November 4th total.

So, McCain's back to Plan A: Slag Barack. And in the process, consign Palin to the role of pretty lil' thing tied to the railroad tracks ... and gagged, so she doesn't have any lines to blow.

Obviously a desperation move, and one that just ain't gonna work. By November, I'll be surprised if dragging out Dorothy Parker's old zinger² on Palin even raises an eyebrow.

-----
NOTES

1. Not that either faction needed to be dragged in. They've been looking for excuses to support McCain since he wrapped up the GOP nomination, and they'd have found those excuses before November without the Palin pick.

2. Sigh ... if you must know and are too lazy to Google it ... Querent: "Construct a sentence using the word 'horticulture.'" Parker: "You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think."

Variety is the spice of politics

"Ballot bar lower for presidential race," laments the headline in the Denver Post. "For a $500 filing fee and a valid list of nine electors, candidates in Colorado can apply to be on the presidential ballot with any party, regardless of the party's size or time in existence," writes author Tim Hoover, trying hard to come off as objective but with a nudge and a wink. "[A]fter [the Democrats, the Republicans, and a couple of token third party types], the candidates and parties on the list may be more obscure to voters."

KRDO Radio's gloss doesn't even bother with the pretense: Minor-party presidential candidates crowd ballot."

Translation: Colorado voters are, well, stupid. Give 'em too many choices and their brains may explode right there in the voting booth.

Can you imagine the reaction if the Denver Post's film critic accused the readers of being too unsophisticated for "Babette's Feast" and urged the local multiplex to stick to "Batman?"

Or if KRDO's restaurant reviewer admonished a local eatery to stick to hamburger or cheeseburger, fries or rings, Coke or Sprite, as a menu "crowded" with mahi mahi and hot wings and such would just confuse the diners?

Why is it that variety is the spice of life in film, in literature, in food, in music ... but in politics, anything beyond the big two and perhaps a couple of value menu items is a calamity?

Tim Hoover spent 350 words coquettishly decrying the inclusion of so many candidates on Colorado's ballot today. If he spend the next seven Tuesdays giving 175 words to each of the "minor party" presidential slates, maybe they won't be quite so "obscure."

That Other Speech

John McCain is not known as a great orator, and tonight's speech offered no one cause to reconsider him on those terms. That doesn't mean it was a bad speech. Just means he's not a rock star in the speechifying department, that's all.

What he is is a patriot -- a man with a deep love of country, a love which he credits to his experiences as a POW -- and that came through in his acceptance speech.

I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for.

Think I'm hypocritical for appreciating that quality in him? Well, feel free to think what you like. The fact that I'm able to overcome instinct and conditioning¹ in favor of reason doesn't make me entirely immune to the pull of either, nor would I want it to. Real patriotism grabs me by the balls. That's just the way it is.

Not that I believe that "war hero," POW, or even basic honorable veterans' credentials are prerequisites to the presidency -- and neither do the Republicans or we'd never have seen George W. Bush or Dick Cheney within a mile of the White House -- but they at least get those who possess them a respectful hearing from me.

It is McCain's distinct personal misfortune to have grasped his party's nomination at a time when those qualities don't carry much weight, having been cynically abused and appealed to by the Bush administration in its seven-year effort to turn America into East Germany Part Deux at home and the Golden Horde Part Deux abroad.

That's not the first time McCain's been screwed over by Bush in much the same way. I first began to realize what a turd Bush really is back in 2000 when he allowed his campaign to try to make up for his own dishonorable military record (specifically, desertion) by spreading scurrilous rumors about McCain's military record in North Carolina after McCain beat him in the New Hampshire primary (a technique he perfected in action four years later versus John Kerry, and now well-known as "Swiftboating").

But anyway ... good speech as such things go, but it won't save McCain. The only way for McCain to win is to make this race all about Barack Obama, 24/7. If it's about John McCain, well, John McCain loses. George W. Bush has severely devalued McCain's primary credentials in nearly every area, and Barack Obama has painted McCain as the second coming of George W. Bush.

The Palin pick was supposed to be a game-changer, but it's already going south on him. The brighter the spotlight on her gets, the more apparent it becomes that, as one commenter on this blog noted, "the bitch is a fruitcake."

That wouldn't be as big a problem as it is if McCain wasn't showing his age ... but he is, big-time. By November, it is going to be very much on voters' minds that a vote for McCain is likely also a vote for Palin to serve out his unexpired term if, as is likely, he's laid low by a heart attack or stroke or some other septuagenarian-style affliction.

Given the speed with which Palin has gone from "fresh new face" to, in the words of one wag, "Dan Quayle with mammaries" -- and headed fast toward forcing Gary Larson out of retirement by mid-October just to keep up with her descent into weirdness -- she'd be a drag on any ticket. But she's utter poison to this ticket for the simple reason that if elected she's as likely to find herself promoted in four or eight months as in four or eight years. By November, a majority of American voters are likely to express sheer horror at that prospect -- and vote accordingly.

Which, really, is a shame. I don't think McCain would necessarily make a good president (as I've said before, I'm not sure there's any such thing), but I do think he's a good man: More honest than most of those who clamber as high up the political ladder as he has, and, no matter how misguided, probably reasonably well-intentioned. But in the Great Poker Game that is American politics, the Bush administration dealt him a pair of deuces, and dealt his "major party" opponent a straight flush. Then he failed to improve his hand with his VP pick. He'll go all in anyway, of course, and who can blame him? He always has, and his age this is the last hand he'll ever play. I don't have to want him to win to feel badly that this is the way he goes out.

-----
Notes

1. I was conditioned at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, California, in 1985 and served in the Corps for a decade, including as an infantry NCO in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Clue time for "libertarian Republicans"

She entered politics at the city council level, campaigning in support of a new sales tax and for "a safer, more progressive Wasilla."

As mayor, she pushed through an increase to that sales tax to pay for a government-owned, eminent-domain-enabled ice rink and sports complex that requires a $100k+ annual taxpayer subsidy to this day (down from more than half a million per year early on). She also hired a lobbyist to tag down $27 million in federal pork for the town -- at its current population, more than $4,000 in government largess for every man, woman and child in Wasilla.

As governor, she was for the "Bridge to Nowhere" before she was against it, signed the largest operating budget in Alaska's history, advocated a welfare program to provide each Alaskan with an "energy debit card," and hectored half a billion dollars in corporate welfare "seed money" out of the state legislature for a company to begin building a natural gas pipeline.

Surprised by the orgiastic reception Sarah Palin's vice-presidential candidacy is receiving from "libertarian Republicans?" You shouldn't be. To the extent that libertarian politics resembles the film industry, "libertarian Republicanism" is very much the equivalent of the red carpet at the Oscars. Inside the building, films and those who work on them are at least theoretically rated on quality. Outside on the carpet, it's unashamedly all about who showed up with who and in what dress (and whether or not her goodies might accidentally fall out of it on camera).

Generously assuming that each and every one of the proliferating left-wing blogosphere rumors is either untrue (book-banning, for example) or irrelevant (proxy-mothering, for example), Sarah Palin's record is, well, fair to middling as Republican politicians go, but not "libertarian" in any meaningful sense of the word.

Her "libertarian" resume consists, pretty much, of cultivating a friendly relationship with key members of Alaska's Libertarian Party during her gubernatorial campaign so that they'd support her instead of their own candidate (and apparently that candidate himself was one of the successfully so cultivated!).

Sow's ear ≠ Silk Purse

Sarah Palin is an attractive, congenial, skilled politician. Those are important attributes in any political race, but an attractive, congenial, skilled social conservative is an attractive, congenial, skilled social conservative, not a libertarian.

Three down, 47 to go ...

OK, so we're not going to get another 47 this year, but there may still be a few more states coming up.

The Boston Tea Party's presidential slate is on the ballot in Colorado, submitted petition signatures and elector statements in Tennessee earlier this month, and submitted elector statements in Florida today.

Although I'm the national vice-presidential nominee, so far I'll only appear alongside presidential nominee Charles Jay on the ballot as such in Tennessee. I've been encouraging the BTP's state parties to run "favorite sons or daughters" in each state, so the BTP's VP slot is filled in Colorado by Dan Sallis, Jr. and in Florida by John Wayne Smith.

I suppose we could stretch this to five states: The BTP's national committee has endorsed the Libertarian Party's ticket of George Phillies and Chris Bennett in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Congratulations to the BTP on accomplishing so much, especially given its bumpy road to reorganization and reactivation earlier this year!

Too little, too late, but better than the alternatives

The press is reporting (here's a St. Louis Post-Dispatch flash) that John McCain has selected Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Like I said back in February:

There's not enough bumbo in the world to get me to pull the lever for the Republican presidential ticket, but "libertarian Republicans" need something to justify their their allegiance, and Palin on the ticket as VP fits the bill.

I'm sure Eric Dondero is greatly relieved that he no longer has to try selling Mitt Romney as a "libertarian Republican" in order to have an excuse to vote for McCain. Not that there's any such thing as a "libertarian Republican." But if there was, Palin would at least vaguely resemble the description.

However, I don't think that even Palin as a running mate is enough to give McCain a fighting chance to crawl out from under the Obama steamroller. Not after That Speech last night. On the other hand, running under McCain this time puts Palin in a good spot to seek the top slot herself in 2012. She already has more executive experience than Barack Obama -- and if she holds on to her position as governor and wins re-election, that will still be true four years from now. Of the names that have been floating around, she was far and away the best pick for McCain to make.

I'm already seeing comments from Dems that their veep nominee, Joe Biden, will "bury" her in debate. Don't bet on it. This lady has repeatedly taken on her own party's establishment in Alaska and she usally whips them like red-headed stepchildren. I rather expect that Palin will mop the floor with Joe Biden in any debate encounter. She's a scrapper -- and he's a political has-been whose foreign policy line is warmed-over Bushevism and whose demeanor ... well, let's just say there are now two used car salesman types running for vice-president.

That Speech

Now see here ... I'm not going to vote for Barack Obama. Ain't gonna happen. Not in a million years. Yellow dog before I'll vote duopoly again. And That Speech was full of premises, promises and plans I wholeheartedly disagree with.

Honestly, until tonight I considered Barack Obama ... well, not quite an empty suit, understand, but more or less a suit with nothing but an over-inflated ego filling it.

For more than a year -- starting when his nomination campaign was at its low point and others were taking bets on when his campaign would end -- I've been predicting that John McCain would win this election in a walk.

But: Oh, That Speech. Out. Of. The. Friggin'. Park.

It's going to take a miracle for the GOP's national convention to come off as anything but anti-climax, like the part of the film credits where even the diehards have satisfied their curiosity about the supporting actors and who wrote the score, and just want to get out of the damn theatre and find a good place to eat.

Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and independents across this great land — enough! This moment — this election — is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive. Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On November 4, we must stand up and say: "Eight is enough."

Bam. That's the campaign right there. Make no mistake about it: Barack Obama isn't running against John McCain, he's running against George W. Bush. Tonight, he finally and firmly stood McCain next to Bush and stuck an "I'm With Stupid" t-shirt on him.

This isn't just any old election. This is America deciding whether to stand the Republican Party in the corner for four or maybe eight years, or to drag it down to the principal's office, paddle its ass but good, bounce it out to the sidewalk, and stamp "EXPELLED: PERMANENT" on its file. Barring some truly bizarre and catastrophic development, there just ain't no gold stars or smiley-face stickers in the GOP's immediate future.

Will he be a good president? I'm not the guy to ask -- I don't think we've had a really good president since at least, oh, Grover Cleveland ... if ever.

Will we get good government from Obama? If we do, it will be the first time in history that said mythical creature has been observed, in the wild or in captivity.

Will the Democrats do a better job than the Republicans? It's tempting to assume that they couldn't do a worse job ... but if politics throughout history has proven nothing else, it has proven that things can always get worse, and frequently do.

I do think we'll get a genuine commitment to "America" ... at least in the way that Barack Obama understands that word as idea. His understanding is defective, but does include some truths. That's not enough to make me a Democrat. It's not enough to get me to vote for him. However, it is enough to make me hopeful that some small diamonds may yet be hauled out of the pit of Democratic ideas.

But on the bright side ...

After a disappointing primary night, I'm back on the horse ... and things are actually looking pretty good!

I expected the Democrats to field a strong candidate and really contest Missouri's 2nd US House district for the first time in eight years. That pretty much narrowed my job down to going after entrenched incumbent Republican Todd Akin from the usual "Libertarians are kind of right-wingers" angle and trying to beat him down enough to make the race competitive.

I wasn't very comfortable with that job description. "Left-libertarian" is a self-description I take seriously, and I kept finding myself coming at this thing from that direction no matter how hard I tried to fit into the conventional wisdom mold. I mean, c'mon: I support impeachment. My campaign is carbon-neutral. I support marriage equality. I support unconditional withdrawal from Iraq. My tax cut proposals are "bottom-up," not "trickle-down." I can't imagine that I've been breaking loose many Republican votes.

The Democrats surprised me -- they nominated Bill Haas. He's a "political solution in Iraq" fence-sitter and an "America must defend Israel" interventionist. He's not sure whether he supports marriage equality or wants the government to inspect flies and look up skirts. Also ... well ... some of Haas's co-partisans seem to think he's insane.

Not having met the man, I can't testify as to his mental status, but I'm just sayin'. Third party candidates almost automatically get pigeonholed as marginal. It can't hurt my vote totals to have one or both of the major party candidates perceived as even more far out, and not in good ways, than the Libertarian in the race.

Much to my surprise, I appear to be the candidate of the principled Left in this election. Not at all what I expected, but definitely what I'm most comfortable with.

Even more surprisingly, I also seem to be a strong contender for the "Least Likely to be Arrested While Running Down the Street Screaming 'Wildman! Wildman! Wildman!' Naked (Except for Wearing Someone Else's Head as a Hat)" nod.

As the first order of post-primary business, I have challenged my opponents to a series of six debates. I'm willing to add a seventh "Competitive Rorschach Inkblot Test" event if anyone's interested.

On Testicular Fortitude

Voter: Really, I’m a Libertarian at heart.
David Bergland: Well, when it reaches your balls, give me a call.

That's from a post at Positive Liberty by Jim Babka of Downsize DC. Best. LP. Quote. Ever.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking: Knapp's gonna give Babka what for over his treatment of the Boston Tea Party and Charles Jay's excoriation of Barr.

Nope. I want to talk about that, but not in precisely the way you might think.

It's true that I've sworn off my support for the Barr campaign, and that I've described Barr's candidacy as Dixiecrat 2008, and I stand by that characterization. Having already rhetorically positioned Barr alongside Strom Thurmond, George Wallace and Lester Maddox, I didn't feel any great need to weigh in on his Jesse Helms eulogy. Coals to Newcastle and all that.

And I do want to respond briefly to Babka on two points, so let's get that out of the way:

I don't know if this party will have their candidate on a single ballot. They appear to exist entirely for unherdable cats, hell-bent on criticizing the LP.

As it happens, the Boston Tea Party's presidential ticket is on the ballot in Colorado, will be on the ballot in Florida and Guam, and will likely manage several other states (we're looking at possibles in Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and New Jersey). We've got nine state affiliates with more organizing right now. We got started too late this year to run down-ticket slates of our own, but we're endorsing and aiding a number of independents and candidates of other parties who in turn endorse our platform. One prospective endorsee, an LP candidate, just emailed me to mention that she had received a campaign contribution just from asking for our endorsement.

Ultimately, we're not anti-Libertarian Party ... we're pro-libertarian. Conditions are such that that may be less than perfectly clear to all right now, but we'll get there.

I'm not going to apologize for Charles Jay's critique. He said some things that needed to be said -- not just because they're true, but because at this point in its existence, the Boston Tea Party very much needs to explain itself to the rest of the freedom movement. We need our fellow libertarians to understand why we're doing what we're doing.

Nonetheless, I don't think that Jim's criticism is entirely unjustified. So far, the BTP's existence and career as a party has been closely tied to various critiques of the LP. That's just a fact. There's no disputing it and I'm not going to try.

Babka refers to the BTP as a "spin-off" -- but I think maybe he's giving us too much credit. We haven't really spun off yet. Rather, we've remained, to a large degree, in the LP's orbit. Our criticisms have so far largely been leveled at the LP and its presidential candidate rather than at the status quo parties and their candidates. On the positive side, we've been happy to endorse LP candidates who meet our standards.

This election cycle is the adolescence of the Boston Tea Party.

In our infancy (from 2006 to earlier this year) we were half-in, half-out of the LP. I offered a resolution at the BTP's organizational convention which would have constituted it as an internal caucus of the LP. That resolution was rejected by the members, but we didn't go in the opposite direction that year, either.

This year, we've decided to start doing the things a "real" political party does. We've nominated candidates for office and we're working to put those candidates on the ballot. We're chartering state affiliates so that we can hit the ground running in 2010 with congressional and state legislative slates. We're establishing recruitment efforts that stand on their own and don't rely on the internal LP "dissatisfaction grapevine."

Between now and 2012, I expect that the BTP will grow into young adulthood, establish itself as a proven, permanent third party ... and of course make its best attempt to do better than other third parties have done and break into "the big leagues."

The reality is that there are now two libertarian political parties on America's electoral landscape, and that (in certain respects at least) the newer one is coming up fast in the older one's rearview mirror.

Breaking up is hard to do ... but perhaps it needn't be as painful as we're making it. Can we just be friends? OK, well, maybe not, at least for the three months and change while the LP conducts its "great experiment" and the BTP embarks on its "maiden voyage." But ...

Odds are that there will always be cross-traffic between the LP and the BTP as angry or discontented libertarians of one seek expression in the other (or, as is now the case, participate in both). It's a safe bet that the two parties will bring different approaches to the longstanding and vexing problem of electing candidates to office. Hopefully as time goes on, the two parties will learn to, well, learn, from each others' mistakes and from each others' successes instead of just going at each other.

I'm not going to promise to go easy on Bob Barr. The LP made that bed, and now it (we -- I'm still an LP member and candidate) gets to lie in it. But I can, and do, promise you that I'll do my best as a member of the Boston Tea Party to make that party about more than internecine freedom movement conflicts. We have bigger game to hunt, and we're just now getting our boots on.

Blast from the Past: Deus ex (Goldberg) Machina

Everybody want to go up to heaven
but none of them, none of them want to die

Peter Tosh, "Equal Rights"

Which pretty much sums up the "conservative" position on bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: "We're gonna do it, but gosh darn, wouldn't it be nice if someday someone didn't?"

McCain's on board. Video here -- sorry, embed is disabled on it. Here's the back-and-fill Dixiecrat edition, though:



Apropos of which, a piece I wrote a few years back:

Deus ex (Goldberg) Machina
by Thomas L. Knapp
01/16/02@Rational Review

A visitor from another planet, dropped into the typical American living room, in front of the typical American television, would surely leave convinced that public policy is contrived, debated, adopted and implemented by a gaggle of talking heads who spend 24 hours a day in rotation between shopping for the most stylish double-breasted suits, commuting by limousine from one talk show studio to the next, and hobnobbing at White House receptions.

The truth, of course, is both more prosaic and more horrifying.

The typical American politician, at the federal level, is a harried hack, jetting back and forth between Washington and his fiefdom ... er, constituency ... to raise funds, whip recalcitrant allies into line, raise funds, shake hands, kiss babies and, of course, raise funds.

This typical politican, when in Washington, is too busy paying off favors to those donors and recalcitrant allies to accomplish much relating to the ideas that probably inspired his entry into politics in the first place.

Yes, he was a young idealist once. He had priorities. He wanted to help people. He wanted to make his country a better place, restore a sense of honor to its highest institutions, work with the statesmen he saw nightly on CNN to guide the great ship of state safely over the waves of the uncertain sea of policy.

Now, he scurries.

He scurries to the House chamber to cast a vote on a bill he's never read, because his party's leadership wants it. And those who don't "work with" the party leadership end up with the last office in the Rayburn building: the one behind the door marked "Custodian."

He scurries to the studio for a talk show appearance, prepared to mouth some lines whipped up by his staff, because the media demands it. And those who don't "work with" the media find themselves the targets of investigative reports, coverage custom made to benefit their next opponent for election or, worst of all, simply ignored.

He scurries to dinner with a major donor who happens to be in Washington, because money is the mother's milk of politics. He can't afford to lose that donation. Moreover, he can't afford to lose that donor's support.

At the end of the day, he scurries off to the White House in bow tie and cummerbund, works his way through the reception line, and stands around drinking weak cocktails and being ignored. If he's lucky. If he spills his martini on the envoy from Sierra Leone, there'll be hell to pay. If he doesn't show up at all, well, the president may not have time to campaign in his district this fall.

If he scurries adroitly enough -- zigging across the floor of House America to avoid the great boots of media oppobrium, political desertion and financial insolvency, zagging to catch the crumbs that fall from the randomly piled plates of power -- he can one day look forward to similarly corrupting his nemesis: the next young idealist to take a tentative step into the corridors of power.

This is the life of one cog -- the typical U.S. Representative -- in the machine called "hyperpluralism," that American governance has become.

The surprising thing about hyperpluralism isn't that it creates a divide between legitimate public purpose and actual public policy. It isn't that it chews up, digests and assimilates even the most honest public servant, making him just another extension on a conveyor belt moving toward the incinerator of totalitarianism . It isn't even that it can produce only centralization of power and deliver that power only to those least likely to either eschew it or exercise it with extreme caution.

The surprising thing about hyperpluralism is that it works at all.

When I began to write this piece it was, surprisingly enough, intended as a rebuttal to Jonah Goldberg's critiques of libertarianism. That's still my intent, but I've found another Goldberg in the woodpile. His name is Rube, and his presence shines some light on my discomfiture with Brother Jonah's ponderings.

Jonah Goldberg is the current golden boy at National Review, journal of record for "conservatism" in the Day of Dubya.

Rube, of course, is the cartoonist whose wonderful images of complex machines designed to accomplish simple tasks engaged and delighted an audience of millions.

"Conservatism" in the Day of Dubya is Jonah's application of Rube's ideas to politics.

That, of course, is the nut of the matter. Goldberg's problem with libertarians isn't that we're thin-skinned. It isn't that we're simplistic or that our ideas aren't relevant to the debate at its root.

It's that a polity based on libertarian ideas would not need an army of "liberal" Rubes to design it or a horde of "conservative" Jonahs to crawl over its superstructure, continually tightening bolts, checking welds and adding kitchen sinks, mousetraps and bathtubs to its bewildering assortment of features.

Or to explain what the hell it is that they've built.

National Review prides itself for "standing athwart history yelling stop." That pride is misplaced. All too often, the "conservatism" of Goldberg and Company is more reminiscent of the prayer of Augustine: "Give me chastity and continence -- but not just yet."

History, thus far, is the record of continuing state encroachment on individual liberty -- with occasional interruption due to technical difficulties. The piercing "STOP!" of the modern American "conservative" movement is invariably followed by a throaty, whispered "but not just yet" as "conservatives" rush to assimilate the latest development, make it their own and defend it to the death.

Contra Goldberg (Jonah, not Rube), libertarians don't suffer from "accumulated resentment at being in the backseat of the right-wing coalition." No such coalition exists, nor can it exist except on libertarian terms. The backseat of American politics is already occupied by the "conservatives," busily engaged in making babies with the "liberals."

The libertarian malady is more physiological and less petty than resentment. It's called nausea.

Leading By Example: Knapp Campaign Goes "Carbon-Neutral"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
07/11/08
POC Thomas L. Knapp
admin@tomknappforcongress.com
314-750-6993


LIBERTARIAN TO RUN CARBON-NEUTRAL CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN

St. Louis - Voters normally expect a certain amount of hot air from politicians, but Libertarian congressional candidate Thomas L. Knapp announced this morning that he intends to cool things down by running a "carbon-neutral" campaign.

"It's just the right thing to do," says Knapp, 41, of Greendale. "Every politician I see out on the stump has big plans for addressing climate change ... but those plans never seem to include leading by example. I want to look back in November and know that I was part of the solution rather than part of the problem."

Knapp arrived at his campaign's estimated carbon footprint by running projected travel mileage and electricity use through several online footprint calculators. "Then," he says, "I added a fudge factor to account for things like printing and shipping of campaign materials." He purchased a six ton Verified Emissions Offset credit for about $40 from a firm which in turn invests in emissions-reducing projects such as generation of electricity from landfill gas in Illinois. He plans to revisit his calculations in October and purchase additional offsets if necessary to maintain carbon neutrality.

"Libertarians believe that the market provides the most efficient avenue for addressing problems like pollution and climate change," says Knapp. "We also believe that Americans are, in general, responsible individuals who will do the right thing when they can. I switched to energy-saving CFL lightbulbs and a gasless 'reel' lawnmower without anyone in government forcing me to." His campaign platform includes ending corporate welfare that subsidizes polluting industries, and leaving far more money in taxpayers' pockets, where he predicts that it will combat climate change more effectively than it would in the hands of Washington bureaucrats.

Knapp is unopposed in his candidacy for the Libertarian Party's nomination in Missouri's 2nd US House district. He'll face off with incumbent Republican Todd Akin of Chesterfield and an as-yet unchosen Democratic nominee, in November. The Libertarian Party, founded in 1972, is America's third largest political party and has been an established party in Missouri since 1992. Their 2008 slate includes candidates for statewide office as well as congressional, state legislative and local seats.

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CAMPAIGN WEB SITE:
http://www.tomknappforcongress.com

Only 82 shopping days 'til the election ...

... and some people still haven't made up their minds yet. What are they waiting for, double coupon day or something?




... but seriously, this is the portion of the electorate that's ripe for third party picking. People who haven't picked a candidate after two years of balls-out campaigning obviously aren't thrilled with what the big guys are offering them.