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."

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here: chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.” The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

Libertarian National Committee Deathwatch Part 1

As the LNC continues to lurch towards collapse, with the latest news of mass layoffs at HQ, I've decided to begin tracking those things leading the national party to irrelevance, even as state and local parties gain power. As news, rumors and rhetoric break out, I shall chronicle them in this ongoing series at Delaware Libertarian. Organizations approaching failure have a number of characteristics. One of the most striking is renunciation of their purpose and effort to reinvent themselves as a "me-too" provider of services in the marketplace. In this, the LNC has been on a collision course with destiny for a while now. Recently, for example, it hired Republican Party web site developer TerraEclipse to redesign the LNC web site . Terra created a web site very similar to those of the clients it brags most about -- far-right Republican conservatives like Tom McClintock and BJ Lawson. A quick look at the web site they built for the LNC is instructive. The tagline on the ...

The disturbing decline of the Delaware blogosphere: a very unfortunate Around the Horn (even if it's not Friday)

I've noticed a change in my own blog-checking habits over the past several weeks, and I don't know if it's just me or the reality of the last month of a divisive political campaign. I automatically used to check out Delawareliberal first and several times a day, because it was where I could find edgy, thought-provoking, and (dare I say it) funny banter going on. These days visit several other spots first, and my visits to DL are both shorter and less engaged. Why? Because the combination of invading neo-con commenters with the stridency of some of the major contributors has led to such pleasant exchanges as a post dedicated to labeling another blogger racist by donviti, whose own sense of provocative humor is generally so far out there that he makes John Belushi doing Samurai bartender on the SNL look positively pro-Asian. Or I can find Delawaredem and jason periodically spewing the idea that anybody who is not a liberal or progressive Democrat is somehow a non-American,...

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