My Super Duper Tuesday endorsement

Registered Libertarians in California, and all voters in Missouri (open primary -- you decide what party you're in when you pick up that party's primary ballot), are eligible to vote their preference for the Libertarian Party's 2008 presidential candidate tomorrow.

No one should be surprised by my endorsement of Steve Kubby for that nomination (I'm a member of his campaign staff). However, it's worth elaborating upon:

To put it as simply as possible, not only is Kubby the best of the declared candidates for the LP's presidential nomination, he's the only remotely credible candidate on the list.

Kubby's policy positions are better than those of the other candidates

Kubby's not anti-immigration-freedom like George Phillies or Wayne Allyn Root.

Kubby isn't a trade protectionist like Phillies, nor is he pro-war like Root.

While Christine Smith has attempted to play the "libertarian purity" card (and the "consistency" card!), the fact is that her policy positions have changed even in the midstream of her campaign. I'm willing to believe that she's sincere rather than merely pandering, but I prefer a candidate who chose the right ground in the first place and has publicly stood that ground for, verifiably, more than a decade now. Some of Smith's policy positions also smack of dissociation from reality. Kubby is the most libertarian of the candidates in his policy positions. He's also the most consistent and the most practical.

Kubby has real political name recognition

Not huge political name recognition, but real political name recognition. He played a key role in starting America's "compassionate use" (medical marijuana) revolution, which has now spread to 12 states. His show trial for having done so, his exile to Canada, and his return to the US and near-death in detention before being released received significant media coverage. At the very moment I'm writing this, he should be en route home from San Francisco, having shared a press conference stage earlier today with a state senator and several city supervisors to protest the latest round of federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in California.

None of the other candidates come close.

Wayne Allyn Root does have some name recognition -- just not political name recognition. Until recently, his name recognition has been due to his business background: He sells football picks to gullible sports gamblers, and he does so using infomercials. When transferred to the political arena, his recognition manifests itself ... well ... sort of like this, from the New York Post:

Shame on the Discovery Channel for selling infomercial time to self-promoting blowhard, Libertarian Party presidential candidate and longtime braggart, liar and sports scamdicapper Wayne Allyn Root ...

Er ... next.

George Phillies has been building political name recognition, of the "novelty human interest" variety, by issuing a constant flood of "news" releases sans any actual, um, news ("Phillies opposes the war!" "Phillies campaign promotes National Mobilization Facilitator to National Facilitization Mobilizer!"). His strategy of "campaign by snarky grandiose pronouncement" pays off for him in the short term -- he even picked up the endorsement of a Missouri newspaper:

Not a "mainstream" candidate, Phillies took a little more research.

Sigh ... if only they'd actually done the research instead of just mentioning it. I'm torn between suspecting that the Rolla Daily News has a fetish for physicists (Rolla is home to the University of Missouri campus most associated with the sciences) and fearing that they just want an LP candidate they can make fun of for a week in June and then easily ignore (they can ignore all of them -- Phillies and Root are the easiest to mock first, though).

Christine Smith's claim to fame is having authored a book on "the spirituality of John Denver." Well ... Kubby's written two books. George Phillies pumps out a couple of books a year. Wayne Root wrote an aptly titled book: Millionaire Republican. None of them are famous authors. I suspect Kubby's books have sold as well as, or better than, any of the others.

Anyway, I've given you the links to the major candidates and a couple of key points ... but there's more to due diligence than letting a campaign operative tell you who to vote for. Check these people out. Hell, check out the minor candidates, too. You can find a reasonably comprehensive list here.

Inform yourself. Voting for Kubby will follow from that pretty much automatically.

[Update: I've never before deleted, or even edited, non-spam comments on this blog. In this particular case I've made an exception. Comments on this post (ANY comments on this post) will be deleted as soon as I notice them. As it happens, the two comments deleted as of this update were from operatives of another campaign. One of them makes an implied claim that I can neither verify nor disprove (for lack of a working soundcard at the moment); I've edited this post so that that claim is not at specific issue. The other is from a guy who got caught in several flagrant public lies awhile back and apparently remains angry over the thrashing he took for them; he accuses me elsewhere of, wouldn't you know it, "slinging mud." Since I'm not giving my endorsed candidate's opponents comment space on this post to slam him, I'm going to be even-handed and delete "I love Kubby too" comments as well - TLK]

[Second update: At least one individual took umbrage at my decision to not accept comments on that post. Since taking umbrage over pretty much everything seems to be that individual's avocation, I'm not especially worried about it. BUT ... now that the point of the post, which was to make an election endorsement, has been accomplished, comments are welcome again. I'll also be posting a new article/thread specifically dedicated to umbrage-taking for your edification, or at least gratification - TLK]

Striking the Root, part one

As I've previously disclosed, I recently resigned my position as campaign manager for Steve Kubby. My resignation was primarily a result of fallout from my comments about another candidate for the Libertarian Party's 2008 presidential nomination, Wayne Allyn Root.

In case I didn't make it clear enough the first time, I don't have a problem with this, and I don't think anyone else should, either. The correctness or incorrectness of my evaluation of Root wasn't and isn't the issue. The issue was that I acted unprofessionally. Kubby, the candidate I work for, wants to run a positive campaign -- a campaign based on how his issues positions, campaign approach, name recognition, etc., stack up against those of his opponents. What he doesn't want to do is get in a personality-oriented shit-slinging match with those opponents. To the extent that I'm thought of as speaking "for" Kubby, I did him a disservice and a clear dissociation of Kubby from that disservice was 100% the right thing to do.

Now, however, I'd like to get back to the subject of Wayne Root himself. I'm going to say some things that are not nearly as negative about him, but some prep is required for that. If you just can't bring yourself to wade through this whole post to get there, then at least go to the bottom and get to the reasonably positive part. But first:

I'm not going to apologize for "shooting first and asking questions later." For one thing, that's not what I did. I put a reasonable amount of research into the factual claims I made. For another, for better or worse, we need to realize that 99% of voters perceive candidates on the basis of the worst, rather than the best things that can be said about them if those things are even facially accurate.

Really. Play some word association or "first thing that comes to mind" games:

If I say the name "Joe Biden," the first word that comes to your mind is likely to be "plagiarism." It's unlikely that you (probably a reasonably informed American if you're reading a political blog), let alone the "average voter," are going to tell me how many terms Biden has served in the Senate (he's on his sixth), what important legislation he's been responsible for creating or sponsoring (the Violence Against Women Act, the creation of the office of "drug czar," the RAVE Act, etc.), or possibly even what state he represents (Delaware). Hell, I had to look up all of those things except the last one myself.

If I say the name "Bill Clinton," you're probably going to think about Monica Lewinsky before you think about welfare reform.

If I say the name "Newt Gingrich," you're probably going to remember that he filed for divorce from his wife while she was in the hospital with cancer, not that he led the charge for the "Contract With America."

Nixon went to China. Nixon ended the war in Vietnam. Say his name, and 99% of the people you say it to will remember Watergate first.

It's just natural, folks.

As Libertarians, we're in an even worse position than those guys. They have some negatives to get past, but they're much more likely than "third party" candidates to get exposure above and beyond those negatives so that they can pitch their resumes to the voters and try to get over the wall and into contention. "Third party" candidates are lucky to get noticed at all, and if their first exposure is negative, they're going to be dismissed, not kept in hand for further consideration.

My operating theory, at this point, is that the immediate perception Wayne Root creates among voters is going to be more negative than positive ... but I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.

It's not that I think gambling is bad (I've written a book on roulette myself). I don't even believe that most Americans think that gambling is bad. But I'd be willing to (ahem) bet that most Americans would immediately discount a gambling business figure as a political candidate. Why? Because even (maybe especially) those Americans who gamble regard "the house," the bookies, the touts and such as shady guys who make their living from rooking the gullible.

It's not that I object to infomercials or telemarketing, either. Not all infomercials are scams, and not all telemarketers are scammers. But, once again, I'd bet that "scam" is one of the first words that the average American would blurt out if asked to play word association and then given the word "infomercial" or "telemarketing."

As Libertarians, we concern ourselves a lot with what's right and wrong, and with what's factual or incorrect. Those things are important. But another thing that we don't concern ourselves with as much, and that's just as important, is what voters BELIEVE to be right, wrong, factual or incorrect. We have a very limited window of opportunity to convince voters that our positions, which go against everything they've been taught, are correct. If we start with a negative "knee-jerk first impression" factor, we're slamming that window down on our own fingers.

If I hadn't said the things I've said about Wayne Root, someone else would have. As a matter of fact, some others did. And we have to ask ourselves what will be said about Wayne Root if his campaign gains any momentum and starts attracting attention outside of the small circle of LP activists who are concerned with it right now. Will "the public" react positively or negatively to a Root campaign? Will the public's reaction be good, or bad, for the Libertarian Party and for the cause of freedom in America?

BUT ... here's the thing. I've heard from Wayne Root personally. We've emailed back and forth a couple of times. I'm more than willing to stipulate to a few things about him:

- That he's a "good guy" with lots of friends who like and trust him;

- That he's a family man who genuinely loves his wife and children;

- That he does have some important media credentials above and beyond the infomercial arena ...

... and I'm asking YOU to help ME take a harder look at Wayne Root and make sure that I'm not giving him an undeserved bad shake with respect to the respectability of his business dealings and the impression that those dealings might create with the voting public.

Harry Browne once said "it's easier for you to accuse my sister of being a hooker than for me to prove that I don't even have a sister." Harry was right, although I trust I've made the case above that perception is an important thing aside from the accuracy or inaccuracy of the in-depth factual basis for the perception ... something we need to take into account when evaluating candidates.

If I'm wrong about Wayne Root, I want to know. And if I'm convinced that I'm wrong about Wayne Root, I'll make my admission of error just as publicly as I made the error itself. I don't have any personal investment in slagging the guy. For me, this is all about what's good for the party and the movement.

Don't take this as an offer of future endorsement -- I disagree with Root on a number of key political issues, and also see many of his prior political associations and statements as negatives -- but I'll cover those in another post, and they're also "fair game" for his opponents. If I've been wrong about Root in the narrow area I've so far hit on, I owe it to him, and to you, to correct myself and to apologize.