Skip to main content

Richmond Times-Dispatch: Is Libertarian Gary Johnson "too honest" to be President?

First, A. Barton Hinkle runs over the positions that make former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson a Libertarian:

Last year Johnson ran for the Republican nomination for president. For reasons known only to the organizers, he was shut out of three early debates, which effectively killed whatever chance he had of gaining traction in the primaries. But those chances were slim to begin with, given his views on issues such as abortion (he believes "fundamentally in the right … to choose"), gay marriage ("equal access to marriage for all Americans is a right," he says, blasting President Obama for giving the matter only "lip service") and national defense (he would cut the Pentagon 43 percent, just like every other department — except Education, which he would abolish).
Equally problematic in the GOP these days, he also believes in evolution. To make matters worse, "I believe in global warming and that it's man-made." And even though he does not use tobacco, alcohol or caffeine, he did use marijuana for three years to ease the pain from his paragliding accident.
On the other hand, he is not likely to win over many Democrats with his views on gun control ("I don't believe there should be any restrictions when it comes to firearms. None"), taxes (he cut them 14 times as governor) or Obamacare (he has said it is unconstitutional).
Given those positions, he's a natural fit for the Libertarian Party — whose presidential nomination he won earlier this month. As ABC News put it, Johnson "intends to hit Obama from the left and Romney from the right."

Then he really cuts to the chase:

Johnson has another political Achilles' heel: He is unflinchingly honest. "Always be honest and tell the truth" is one of his Seven Principles of Good Government. A profile in GQ last year put it more bluntly: "There is nothing he will not answer, nothing he will not share. . . . Johnson is fundamentally incapable of bull****ing." Example: When Mitt Romney made a swing through Michigan, he gushed oleaginously about how "I love this state. It seems right here. The trees are the right height. I like seeing the lakes. I love the lakes." By contrast, when a reporter asked Johnson if he would say the same nice things about Michigan that he had said about New Hampshire, he answered: "No, Michigan's the worst."
With those positions and that level of candor, he'll be lucky to get 0.5 percent of the vote. On the other hand, he will probably enjoy the campaign. As he told another newspaper last February, "The endeavor itself is a great adventure. I'm a Zen kind of guy. … You better darn well like the journey, or the destination won't mean anything."

I got to see this for myself last Saturday, when Johnson appeared via skype at the Libertarian Party of Delaware convention.  When someone asked him a question about the constitutional authority of the Sheriff in Delaware, he took long enough to insure that they were speaking of the Delaware Constitution, and not the US Constitution.  Then he said, "As President I wouldn't get involved in that."  Pressed by the speaker, a supporter who obviously wanted him to use "the bully pulpit" on behalf of the Sussex County Sheriff, Johnson stood firm:  "The President of the United States has no business telling the people of Delaware how to interpret their own Constitution."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

With apologies to Hube: dopey WNJ comments of the week

(Well, Hube, at least I'm pulling out Facebook comments and not poaching on your preserve in the Letters.) You will all remember the case this week of the photo of the young man posing with the .22LR squirrel rifle that his Dad got him for his birthday with resulted in Family Services and the local police attempting to search his house.  The story itself is a travesty since neither the father nor the boy had done anything remotely illegal (and check out the picture for how careful the son is being not to have his finger inside the trigger guard when the photo was taken). But the incident is chiefly important for revealing in the Comments Section--within Delaware--the fact that many backers of "common sense gun laws" really do have the elimination of 2nd Amendment rights and eventual outright confiscation of all privately held firearms as their objective: Let's run that by again: Elliot Jacobson says, This instance is not a case of a father bonding with h

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?