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Now Playing at Reason.tv: Bob Barr's Closing Statement from the First Presidential Debate; Plus Q&A!

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:19:00 EDT

On Friday, September 26 at Reason Magazine's Washington DC Headquarters, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr participated in the presidential debates with a live studio audience. Here, he makes his closing statement and fields questions from the audience; the moderator is reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch.

The whole video will be posted soon here, YouTube, and reason.tv.

For a slideshow of the scene at Reason's DC HQ, go to St. John Photographics. Sample image below.

Bob Barr Live Blog Thread

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:15:00 EDT

Tonight, as a nation watches Barack Obama and John McCain duke it out in Oxford, Mississippi, we here at reason will be breaking new techno-political ground by having a third-party candidate, the Libertarian Party's Bob Barr, participate remotely in a debate whose ground rules are controlled by and for the country's two major (and majorly boring) political parties.

To watch live streaming of Barr's running commentary and a post-debate Q&A session, click here, beginning at 8:55 p.m. EDT (or look now for a revolving loop of reason.tv videos and clips of Bob Barr interviews).

For a quick and dirty running transcription of Barr's remarks, keep hitting the "refresh" button on this here blog post. In addition, we will have various blog commentary about the debate on the page above you as the evening progresses.

Thanks for watching/reading, and donate today to reason's first-ever webathon!

Also: If you have a follow-up question for Barr, please leave it here in the comments, and we'll be sure to ask at least one.

Special thanks to Mike Riggs for transcribing this for us.

8:55- [Bob Barr enters room, crowd goes wild]

8:56- [Matt Welch introduces event, makes unfunny joke: "Welcome to reason, the magazine of free minds and what used to be free markets."

9:01- [Bob Barr makes opening remarks, jokes that neither party can get anything started on time.]

9:03- Bob Barr: The latest problems that we're facing in the economy will come up in some way in the program this evening. Let's take a few minutes to listen in as the candidates start up.

9:04- Bob Barr: [Moderator asks the candidates positions on economy] Who said I was not prescient? Let's take a listen.

9:05- Bob Barr: They're going to protect tax payers by taking a trillion dollars of tax payer money. That's Washington. I'd like to see a show of hands of everyone who thinks they're going to get their money back.

9:06- Bob Barr: Typical class envy. Their solution is that they're going to take more and more from everybody.

9:07- Bob Barr: [Response to McCain] Danger sign! Republicans and Democrats getting together and deciding how to take another trillion dollars from us in addition to the 3.1 trillion they're taking for the budget, to me, is not a good sign.

9:08- Bob Barr: [Response to McCain's opening remarks] What he's doing, of course, is one of the old debating tricks. You bring in something that is utterly and completely irrelevant, that is the energy crisis, and you throw it on the table as en effort to find something everybody agrees with, even though it's irrelevant. The bailout plan, anyway you slice it, is a bad idea for America.

9:10- Bob Barr: [Response to Obama's response on would he vote for the plan] The only one of the major party candidates to not vote for the plan is Bob Barr.

9:11- Bob Barr: [Response to McCain's "corruption" remarks.] Where is the DOJ? It is the one branch of government that has a legitimate purpose and a system and a way to protect the peoples' resources and rights.

9:14- Bob Barr: [Response to McCain] Typical Washington. He's saying that the best way to help that worker is to take that worker's money and create more regulation.

9:15- Bob Barr: He speaks out against $17 billion in earmarks, and then votes for a trillion-dollar buyout.

9:16- Bob Barr: You can do away with every one of those earmarks and still have spending problems. They end up in an appropriations bill, where you have no idea where the money is going! McCain likes to be a spending hawk, but it's not true.

9:18- Bob Barr: What Sen. Obama is talking about has nothing to do with shrinking the size of government.

9:19- Bob Barr: [Responding to McCain saying, "I didn't win Ms. Congeniality in the Senate"] He's right about that.

9:20- Bob Barr: [Responding to McCain on spending and business tax cuts] I don't know if it would fix our problem, but cutting the rate of taxation on capital gains back to zero is a damn good idea.

9:23- Bob Barr: [Responding to Obama's criticism about low taxes for rich people/big business] What's the problem?

9:24- Bob Barr: [Responding to Obama criticizing the market] We have taxed ourselves so much, so far from the idea that the market is the forum for these things, that they can now make fun of the idea of an open market.

9:26 Bob Barr: [Responding to McCain's proposal for a dual tax code] Did he almost mention the word cap and trade? He might have caught himself. Sen. McCain is a great proponent of cap & trade, which would leavy another trillion dollars in income for the government.

9:27- Bob Barr: [Responding to Obama and what he'll have to give up to accomplish his agenda] Tax revenues are slowing down, so their solution is to bail out businesses to a trillion dollars, that taxpayers will have to pay for, which wil lead to even slower taxes, to...whatever? But I don't think they'll follow it there.

9:28- Bob Barr: [Responding to Obama and the Chinese space walk] He's talking about all these things that are going to spend more.

9:29- Bob Barr: [Responding to McCain on cutting spending, post-bailout budget, plus-cost contracts] Actually, the federal entitlement programs far outstrip the defense budget.

9:32- Bob Barr: [Responding to Obama investing in alt. energy] He has to be careful, or else he'll get all the environmental wackos mad at him. He's coming awfully close. He has to be careful here.

9:33- Bob Barr: [Responding to moderator saying Obama or McCain will be president come Jan.] WHOA!

9:34- Bob Barr: These people are hardwired for largesse. They cannot bring themselves to talk about really cutting anything. They'll do it general, but when it comes to specifics, they can't do it, either one of them.

9:35- Bob Barr: [Responding to McCain on spending] Somebody should have given the moderator the national taxpayer union figures. The program analyzed statements each of the three of us made. Sen. Obama was the biggest spender, Sen. McCain was right about that, Sen. McCain is not that far behind, I think somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 Billion in new spending.

9:38- Bob Barr: [Responding to McCain] Didn't he oppose then support the president? Isn't that what they accuses [John] Kerry of doing?

9:40- Bob Barr: [Responding to McCain on staying and learning in Iraq] None of these folks want to address the underlying issue. The underlying issue is not, "Did the surge work or not?" We'd be in real bad shape if it didn't. Neither of them is addressing what we're doing there in the first place, and whether or not its consistent with our notion of defense or our history. Notice Sen. McCain did not say when the troops would be coming home. He's joked about hundred years, but he hasn't spoken to a specific issue.

9:44- Bob Barr: [Responding to Obama vs. McCain on Iraq] Bob Barr!

9:47- Bob Barr: [Responding to time table argument] Is there a rule in the Constitution that once we commit troops, Congress cannot exercise its authority to bring them home? This is one of the false notions we see played over and over and over again.

9:49- Bob Barr: [Responding to Bin Laden] Is Bin Laden in Afghanistan? I don't think so. We had an opportunity years ago, when he was in Afghanistan, to take him out, and we did not. All we're talking about now is withdrawing troops from Iraq with a nebulous time frame and shifting them to Afghanistan. I'm not at all sure that that is an appropriate use of U.S. troops and U.S. resources.

9:52- Bob Barr: [Responding to more troops in Afghanistan] What commander on the ground ever doesn't want more troops? That's the point. They always want more troops, that's the nature of a commander. Both of these people are doing what Bush did, when it's not convenient to answer hard questions, they raise the flag of patriotism and say, "Oh, it's for the commanders on the ground." What goal is not being met by not having more troops on the ground in Afghanistan? If it has to do with shoring up Afghan troops, that's not the U.S.' responsibility.

9:53- Bob Barr: [Responding to pulling the trigger] What is the U.S. national security interest goal that is being met by providing millions of dollars of aid to Pakistan?

9:54- Bob Barr: [Responding to more troops] In other words, a massive influx of troops in Afghanistan. That's what worked in Iraq, McCain is saying that's what we need in Afghanistan. He's wrong.

9:58 Bob Barr: [Responding to Iraq] They haven't talked yet about McCain's bellicose attitude towards Russia. Poking the Russians' eye with missile systems in Poland. What exactly is the foreign policy that McCain would employ? It seems to be one that would make the Bush Doctrine look like a peacenik solution. We're already seeing, for example, that the unnecessary move to put missile systems in Poland, the Russians have countered that by getting more involved with Venezuala and Cuba. I doubt anyone in Washington thought about the way Russia would respond.

10:00- Bob Barr: [Responding to Obama on terrorists still being active] On that point, Obama is absolutely correct.

10:02- Bob Barr: [Responding to McCain being a silly insider] When you get up in Washington Insider stuff, you lose the American people.

10:04- Bob Barr: A league of democracies?!? The collective foreign intelligence assessment was that Iran can't development nuclear weapons.

10:05- Bob Barr: [Responding to more McCain on Iran] Does that mean that he favors a military action, either direct or through surrogates, against Iran? It seems that's what he's implying, but he's not being pressed on it. That would be extremely dangerous, if not fool-hardy.

10:07- Bob Barr: [Responding to Obama on Iran] Are we not already funding an arms race in the Middle East, and have we not been doing that for years with funded military assistance?

10:09- Bob Barr: [Responding to McCain on Obama not hating Iran enough] I don't that he ever took a course in philosophy, but that does not all logically follow. All of those things do not follow simply from the premise that maybe we should communicate directly with this government. That is a gross fallacy.

10:11- Bob Barr: What is a "rogue regime"? A regime we don't agree with?

10:12- Bob Barr: [Responding to McCain on the Bush administration] This is ridiculously naive. Pres. Nixon met with Mao Tse-tung. If you look back at the rhetoric against the United States, I guess you would be left in the very same situation, which is that we should not have dealt with China, we should not deal with any nation that says anything nasty about us or anyone else--if the senator believes that. Perhaps he's saying it for political purposes.

10:20- Bob Barr: [Responding to NATO] I'm not sure any of these folks have any idea what this organization is. Its mission is what any particular nation wants it to be at any particular time. It ought to be disbanded not expanded. We should replace it--if we need to--with an organization that reflects 2000 Europe and not 1940s Europe.

10:22- Bob Barr: [Responding to Obama on Georgia] We have to rebuild the Georgian economy? We're already rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, they want to rebuild Afghanistan's, and we have to rebuild Georgia's economy? What world are these guys operating in? No one quesions their nonsense.

10:25- Bob Barr: Sen. McCain is trying to play it both ways. He was opposed to offshore drilling, and now he's for it. But he's really not. He's opposed to it in certain other areas, such as the Eastern Seaboard and the western coast of Florida.

10:28- Bob Barr: [Responding to post-9/11 safety] What he really means using the word "reorganization" is growth in government. They added more bureaucracy to the foreign service apparatus of our government. So what they're doing is not streamlining, but growth.

10:30- Bob Barr: [Responding to McCain on nuclear proliferation] We're spending a few hundred million on nuclear proliferation? Does he mean "anti" nuclear proliferation? I'm not sure what he's talking about....McCain is playing both sides of the issue.

10:30- Bob Barr: [Responding to McCain's devotion to blood & treasure] McCain oughta withdraw and have Gen. Petreus run. He should just step aside and let the man who he thinks is the very best person run for president instead.

10:32- Bob Barr: [Responding to Obama] It never enters his mind that if we stop spending that money in Iraq, we should return it the American people. The only thing he's interested in is spending that money.

10:34- Bob Barr: [Responding to Obama's name] Highly relevant, I suppose.

10:36- [Round of applause for Bob Barr, none for Obama or McCain.]

10:38- Bob Barr: [Responding to questions from reason audience] I don not believe that it is at all inappropriate for militaries to take action against those people who imminently posed to take action against us.

10:41- Bob Barr: In many respects, our relationships with so many countries around the world have cooled as a result of the manifestations of the Bush doctrine.

10:43- Bob Barr: [Responding to, "What is the Bob Barr doctrine?"] The Bob Barr doctrine would be a constitutianal doctrine. It would put the "defense" in "defense policy." Which means we should continute to employ our military to protect our sovereignty, insofar as we never know from day to day where the next crisis, the next attack will occur on U.S. facilitues. It is important to maintain overflight agreements with as many coutnries possible, and port-docking agreements so that we can exert our force when and where necessary. it means demanding and relying on goood foreign intelligence, that we do have the capability of developing, but that we have politicized in recent years.

10:48- Bob Barr: [Responding to question, "What should we do about the bailout?"] Start prosecuting. The fact that we have hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars of bad paper out, floating in the U.S. economy as the result of bad-use policies to push home ownehership. That clearly says to me that there was fraud involved. The fact of the matter is that there have been no overt investigations, much less prosections. What we ought to be doing is creating more transparency in the law we have, not creating more regulation, more control. And we should use bankruptcy to get some liquidity to boost the us dollar.

10:48- Bob Barr: [Responding to, "Final question: You had a very public falling out with Ron Paul. What went wrong? And what would you say to Paul supporters?"] They out to be disappointed in Ron Paul. Endorsing a theocratic candidate makes little sense whatsoever. What we're trying to do is what we hoped Ron Paul would have done, which is to provide true focused leadership.

Two Parties Good, or, McObama Makes Texas Ballot in a Non-Squeaker

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:21:00 EDT

In perhaps the week's least surprising news, Bob Barr's lawsuit to get the state of Texas to hold to their deadlines and bar the two major parties from the presidential ballot was tossed out with no comment.

LP Founder Declares Barr Campaign Dead

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:08:00 EDT

David Nolan, founder of the Libertarian Party, has had it with Bob Barr's campaign. Why?

There has been evidence all along that the Barr '08 campaign has been mismanaged. Ballot access drives were begun late, and conducted erratically. As of today, it appears that Barr's name will be on the ballot in 46 or 47 states. (Harry Browne appeared on 50 ballots in 1996 and 49 in 2000. Michael Badnarik made it onto 48 in 2004.) Barr has failed to achieve ballot status in West Virginia...and there are lawsuits pending in five states (LA, MA, ME, OK and PA) to determine whether Barr will be on the ballot.

Fundraising has also been a flop. As I write this, the fundraising "meter" on the Barr '08 website shows the total raised by the campaign at $881,500 -- about $700,000 since the Denver nominating convention. That works out to about $6,400 a day or $200,000/month. In the days leading up to the nomination, Barr's people were throwing around numbers like $20 million. The reality is likely to be barely more than $1 million.

Not only is Barr's campaign inept, Nolan feels, it's also failing even in what outreach it succeeds in in growing the LP brand:

Following advice from his campaign manager, Russ Verney, Barr has avoided use of the "L" word wherever possible. There's a big empty space in the banner at the top of the Barr '08 website, where the word LIBERTARIAN could (and should) appear. It doesn't, despite several suggestions that this be remedied. Barr's campaign literature, signs and bumper stickers do not include the "L" word either. And a press release issued by the campaign earlier this week describes Barr as a "Former Congressman" with no mention of the Libertarian Party.

Clearly, Barr is not running as a Libertarian; he's running as an independent candidate: "Former Congressman Bob Barr." Which may be just as well, given the way he's been behaving.

While some LP activists of my acquaintance think the whole dustup this week over Barr's dissing of Ron Paul's ecumenical "Campaign for Liberty" will cripple him (whatever that means for a campaign clearly never destined to break 1 percent anyway--it did though create this online petition to have the LP's National Committee pull Barr's nomination), I expect most of the hundreds of thousands out there likely to vote Barr or LP probably will little note nor long remember these sort of blog-world dustups; no amount of LP voices speaking out like this are likely to cause Barr to do any worse than he would have anyway.

Still, there was some promise in the Year of Ron Paul that another ex-GOP congressman could do a bit better at ginning up positive publicity, energy, and cash than Barr has so far.

Talking Barr, Paul, and the Libertarian Movement on Berkeley's KPFA

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:19:00 EDT

I'll be chattering about the latest regarding the Barr campaign, the Paul movement, and libertarian impact on politics in this election year on Berkeley's Pacifica radio station KPFA, 94.1 on the FM dial, this morning at 8:05 am pacific time. You can listen live here. I'm told it will be about a 15 minute segment, but things can and do change abruptly and unexpectedly in radioland.

And my book on the libertarian movement, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, is now out in paperback and makes a perfect mid-September gift for all your mid-September gift-giving needs.

The Radical Center

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:30:00 EDT

Ron Paul's press conference today has been taking a beating in the Hit & Run comment threads, mostly from people who can't see the point in appearing with non-libertarians like Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, and Chuck Baldwin. I'm more impressed that Paul managed to get two of the most prominent left-wing figures in the country to declare that "there should be no increase in the national debt" and to attack the Fed's "arbitrary power to create money and credit out of thin air behind closed doors for the benefit of commercial interests." (Though I suppose they might still favor the power to create money and credit out of thin air if it's not done behind closed doors or for the benefit of commercial interests.)

More important, I appreciate the small-pieces-lightly-joined nature of the lineup, especially when you focus not on the figures who took the stage but on their jumbled bands of supporters, a collection of dissatisfied outsiders who aren't necessarily committed to a particular political outlook but are searching for an alternative to the status quo, mixing and matching all sorts of ideas in the process. I saw a similar potpourri when I covered the fractious Reform Party a decade ago, but because this loose coalition formed around Ron Paul rather than Ross Perot, its inclinations are much more libertarian.

Anthony Gregory reacts enthusiastically to the occasion:

I've dreamed of this: The good leftists and good rightists all agreeing on gutting the empire, dismantling the national security state and ratcheting back the profligate corporatism. Anti-Fed and anti-war, a wonderful, cross-spectrum, short-term American populist program that would do away with the worst of the national leviathan.

And how wonderful that Ron Paul is in the middle, the true moderate.

I doubt anything concrete will come out of this press conference (other than the damage to Bob Barr among what ought to be his strongest supporters). But the event reflects something interesting and valuable that's happening out there in the ideological long tail, a collection of conversations that cross the ordinary political lines. In essence, two leftists and a paleocon just held a press conference to say, "We're listening to the libertarian." They did this because actual leftists and actual paleocons are listening to libertarians. And even third-party candidates -- or some of them, anyway -- have sharp enough political instincts to respond to their constituencies.

Bob Barr in Politics Magazine

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:14:00 EDT

Politics, formerly Campaigns & Elections, has an interesting story on Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr. Some snippets:

We wander back out into the club's lobby, and Barr tells me that he hopes my story displays a respect for third-party candidates. Then, before I leave, I ask one last, intentionally provocative question. If, just theoretically, he had no choice but to vote for either McCain or Obama, who would he pull the lever for? I'm met with a completely unamused, bespectacled glare, and then Barr sharply proclaims that he could not "in good conscience" cast a ballot for either one of them. "I have better things to do with my vote that was bought with the blood of many, many patriots over the years [than] to simply hold my nose and vote for the lesser of two evils."...
"We're seeing Barr pick up several fragments of the vote," says John Zogby, president and CEO of Zogby International. "He's getting more traditional conservatives-libertarian conservatives, who would have gone Republican otherwise, and still might come home. But it's clear they're disaffected with Bush, and some have become disaffected from the Republican Party after the scandals, high deficits, the Patriot Act, and other elements. So do I think Barr will get 4 to 6 percent overall? No, but could he make the difference in some states? Yes, absolutely."...
"I don't think Bob Barr will have any impact on the race," says Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of the Rothenberg Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter that analyzes American political campaigns. "I think that people who vote for Barr would not have voted for John McCain under any circumstances. So these are Bob Barr voters, and if he's not on the ballot, then they're staying home."

Whole thing (including cameo by reason's own Matt Welch!), here.

Zogby: McCain Leads; Rasmussen: It's All Tied

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:03:00 EDT

Take all of this for what you will, what's it worth, etc. But here are two polls about that there presidential election in November that show Republican John McCain doing well about Democrat Barack Obama:

The McCain/Palin ticket wins 49.7% support, compared to 45.9% backing for the Obama/Biden ticket, this latest online survey shows. Another 4.4% either favored someone else or were unsure.
The Ticket Horserace
9-5/6
8-29/30
McCain-Palin
49.7%
47.1%
Obama-Biden
45.9%
44.6%
Others/Not sure
4.4%
8.3%
In the two-way contest in which just McCain and Obama were mentioned in the question, the result was slightly different, with McCain leading, 48.8% to 45.7%.
One-on-One Horserace
9-5/6
McCain
48.8%
Obama
45.7%
Others/Not sure
5.5%
In a Zogby Interactive survey conducted last weekend, just after the McCain announcement that Palin would join his ticket, McCain Palin won 47.1% support, while Obama/Biden won 44.6% support.
The interactive survey of 2,312 likely voters nationwide was conducted Sept. 5-6, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 2.1 percentage points.

More here.

In the first national [Rasumussen tracking] polling results based entirely on interviews conducted after Sarah Palin's acceptance speech, Barack Obama gets 46% of the vote and so does John McCain. When "leaners" are included, it's all even at 48%....
This past Tuesday, Obama's bounce peaked with the Democrat enjoying a six-percentage point advantage. Before the two conventions were held, Obama had consistently held a one or two point lead over McCain for most of August (see recent daily results).
Tracking Poll results are based upon nightly telephone interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. As a result, tomorrow (Monday) will be the first update based entirely upon interviews conducted after McCain's speech. By Tuesday or Wednesday, the net impact of both political conventions should be fairly clear....
Forty-two percent (42%) of voters say that economic issues are most important this year and Obama holds a 34-point advantage among these voters.
Twenty-four percent (24%) of voters say the national security issues are most important. Among these voters its McCain by 39.

More here.

Forget about Tuesday or Wednesday—I suspect we'll have a clearer sense of where things are in a week's time, after the memory of the conventions has faded (thank god) and we've got a solid week of slinging back and forth from the campaigns.

It does seem that the presidential debates (and to a lesser degree, the vice presidential version) might have a really serious impact on the presidential vote this time around. And it should be an interesting matchup, with two very different personalities and oratorical styles on display.

I'm very interested to see how Bob Barr fares over the next couple of week, too. He was pulling 5 percent in a Zogby poll a week or so back, and polled as high as 8 percent in an Ohio survey, but seems to have faded since then.

The Road to Damascus

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:00:00 EDT

The Onion summarizes "Bob Barr on the issues."

(1995–2007) Trying to control the faith, sexuality, reproduction, drug use, and national allegiance of every single American.
(2007–) Aw, Fuck it.

Did Bob Barr Already Win Texas?

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:56:00 EDT

His campaign says both the Democrats and Republicans missed the filing deadline to put their presidential candidates on the ballot. It’s a near-certainty that they’ll be given a mulligan. And that, Barr’s campaign correctly explains, is the problem.

Over the past several decades, Libertarians have spent millions of dollars, filed countless numbers of lawsuits while being sued countless numbers of times over their right to be on the ballot. Thousands of people have put in their time, energy, earnings and passion in an effort that, in the end, simply allows a voter to see a candidate’s name printed on the ballot.

Throughout every battle that we engage in each election season, we must dot every “I” and cross every “T” or face the consequences of failure for our ballot drives.

Even when we follow the letter of the law, as we did in Pennsylvania, we still face challenges that drain our financial resources and strain our staff.

Should we give Barack Obama and John McCain a pass in Texas and look the other way? Would they do that for us?

Leftists for Barr

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:00:00 EDT

Radical columnist Alexander Cockburn expresses annoyance at Ralph Nader ("Nader seems to be dropping his bid to the level of knock-about") and embraces another presidential contender:

Face it, if you want to stay true to reason and conscience, the man to vote for is Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate.

Let America See Bob Barr Debate Those Other Two Bores!

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:32:00 EDT

According to a Zogby poll, 55 percent of likely voters want Libertarian candidate Bob Barr included in the presidential debates:

Should Bob Barr Be Included in Presidential Debates?
Men
Women
Big City Dwellers
Suburban Dwellers
Married
Single
Yes
60%
52%
56%
54%
54%
61%
No
35%
36%
35%
36%
36%
34%
Not sure
5%
12%
9%
10%
10%
5%

Thirty-nine percent of Dems and 41 percent of GOPpers do not want the former Georgia congressman to horn in on their parade.

Sadly, Barr has no shot of getting in the debates, which are run by the Commission on Presidential Debates, "a private non-profit corporation that has organized debates in the last several presidential election cycles."

The CPD requires that to be included in their debates, candidates must appear on enough state ballots to have a mathematical chance of winning a majority of Electoral College votes, and must be winning at least 15% support in national public opinion polls before the debates.
In this latest Zogby Interactive poll, Bob Barr won 6% support.

More here.

Screw 'em! Here's a different rule to consider: Any candidate whose polling covers the spread between the two leaders should be allowed to bore Americans to death on national TV just as much as the major-party candidates.

Not that Barr would be boring. Take a gander at him (and Mike Gravel, Vern McKinley, and Wayne Allyn Root) here:

Americans Should Be Outraged by the Bill I'm Voting For!

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:02:00 EDT

John McCain has issued a curious response to the housing bailout bill. Here's how it begins:

Americans should be outraged at the latest sweetheart deal in Washington. Congress will put U.S. taxpayers on the hook for potentially hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

With combined obligations of roughly $5-trillion, the rapid failure of Fannie and Freddie would be a threat to mortgage markets and financial markets as a whole. Because of that threat, I support taking the unfortunate but necessary steps needed to keep the financial troubles at these two companies from further squeezing American families.

This strikes me as a classic example of intervention's inescapable logic: We broke it, so we bought it, and now it's too big to fail, even though it all sucks in the first place.

On that latter point, McCain has some interesting things to say:

[I]f a dime of taxpayer money ends up being directly invested [in Fannie/Freddie], the management and the board should immediately be replaced, multimillion dollar salaries should be cut, and bonuses and other compensation should be eliminated. They should cease all lobbying activities and drop all payments to outside lobbyists. And taxpayers should be first in line for any repayments.
Even with those terms, sticking Main Street Americans with Wall Street's bill is a shame on Washington. If elected, I'll continue my crusade for the right reform of the institutions: making them go away. I will get real regulation that limits their ability to borrow, shrinks their size until they are no longer a threat to our economy, and privatizes and eliminates their links to the government.

What about Obama?

I'm heartened that the President has decided to support this bipartisan bill that will help ensure that mortgages remain affordable for American families and to prevent hundreds of thousands home foreclosures. In the months since this housing package was announced, nearly a million additional families have faced foreclosure, and our economy has continued to deteriorate. We cannot wait for a million more foreclosures before taking additional action to help struggling families and strengthen our economy. That's why I've also proposed a second stimulus of at least $50 billion with energy rebates for families struggling with high gas prices, relief for states facing budget cuts, and additional measures to protect homeowners from foreclosure.

Bob Barr? A bit like McCain (interview is 10 days old):

I think right now, doing nothing would not be advisable. As much as a Libertarian, we don't like to see − and I don't like to see − the government get further involved with yet another sector of the economy.
I think, because the government has caused this problem, similar to the savings and loan problem that the government caused a generation ago, it has to do something. [...]
Yet, as long as it is done with the thought in mind that there has to be long-term congressional action here to restructure and reformulate the very way Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae operate, I think that would be an advisable solution, but not doing nothing. [...]
But the ultimate goal, I think, has to be a very firm commitment to restructure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Bob Barr Claims to Have Sense of Humor

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:25:00 EDT

In an online Q&A session sponsored by The Washington Times, Brendan Conway dares to ask Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr the question on everyone's mind: Has he seen Borat yet? Barr's reply:

It's still true that I haven't seen the movie. I also hear that he's making another film so we're on the lookout to make sure that we don't get taken again. ;) My staff does its best to get as much background information before an interview takes place. They did the same for "Borat's" interview. They called the numbers provided, found a web site through a search and felt it was legitimate. Clearly that was not the case. While it was in good fun and no harm was done, I'm not a fan of this style of movie making as the terms are not honestly presented to the person or group being interviewed.

You have to give Barr credit for signaling (twice) that he understands Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was a comedy. I'm not sure if that proves he has a sense of humor—something I wondered about last year, after Barr discussed his Borat appearance with Arlen Specter during a Senate hearing on the privacy implications of data mining. It might just be that Barr realizes people like a politician who can take a joke. Also note this exchange from a Village Voice interview last May:

VV: Do you have a good sense of humor about it?
BB: Hell yeah! If you can't have a good sense of humor about this business, the way I look at it, you have no business being in politics.

Obama By Seven Points Over McCain

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:37:00 EDT

A new Reuters/Zogby poll of likely voters in the presidential race says:

More than a month after kicking off the general election campaign, Obama leads McCain by 47 percent to 40 percent. That is slightly better than his 5-point cushion in mid-June, shortly after he clinched the Democratic nomination fight against New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.
But Obama's 22-point advantage in June among independents, a critical voting bloc that could swing either way in the November election, shrunk to 3 points during a month in which the candidates battled on the economy and Obama was accused of shifting to the centre on several issues....

Voters seem more interested in the economy than anything else:

The economy was ranked as the top issue by nearly half of all likely voters, 47 percent. The Iraq war, in second place, trailed well behind at 12 percent. Energy prices was third at 8 percent.

And what about candidates Ralph Nader and Bob Barr?:

When independent candidate Ralph Nader and Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr, who are both in the process of trying to add their names to state ballots, are included in the survey Obama's margin over McCain grows to 10 percentage points, 46 percent to 36 percent.
Nader and Barr each picked up 3 percent, but nearly all of their support came from McCain.

More here.

The LP Struggles to Get on the Ballot as a Party in Ohio

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:20:00 EDT

The Libertarian Party is working to get its presidential candidate on the ballot as a Libertarian in Ohio and elsewhere. They've got a lawsuit brewing in the Buckeye State, one that will be heard in a couple of weeks. Some background via the AP:

A rule put in place by former Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell required the party to turn in more than 40,000 signatures 120 days before the presidential primary. That law was struck down as unconstitutional in 2006 by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati because it violated the party's First Amendment rights of free association by preventing access to the ballot.
The Ohio Legislature, however, failed to craft a new law according to the court's guidelines, and current Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner had to come up with her own requirements. The Libertarian Party, however, still believes her directive violates the spirit of the court ruling. A hearing is set for July 14 in federal court in Columbus.

Brunner's magic number? 20,000 sigs 100 days before the primary.

More here.

Ballot-access restrictions are a continuing problem and should be a national outrage, regardless of the party in question. Especially in cases such as this one, where the law works to keep candidates from identifying themselves as belonging to a group that clearly and concisely gives information to voters in the ballot booth.

Bob Barr on the Patriot Act, Medical Marijuana, and His Mustache

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:37:00 EDT

MobLogic sits down with Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr and gets the skinny on his conversion from conservative to libertarian, his changing positions on various policies, and why he won't shave his mustache. Check it out here:

And then check out reason.tv's path-breaking interview with Barr from before he snagged the LP nod.

Matt Welch and Ramesh Ponnuru on John McCain and Bob Barr

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:20:00 EDT

A few days ago I strapped a strange contraption onto my head, stared at a camera, and talked on the phone with the National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru about John McCain, Bob Barr, restless libertarians, and the ever-shrinking Reagan Coalition. You can watch it here:

Some supplementary reading material:

* In March 2007, as his magazine was building up to an endorsement of Mitt Romney, Ponnuru made a cover-story Case For McCain, complete with Q&A. By that October, Ponnuru was advocating a one-term pledge for the senator from Arizona.
* In April 2007, I made a cover-story case against, for reason. The long-form version of that analysis is available at Amazon for the low, low price of $18.45.
* In our conversation, I mentioned a couple of perceptive National Review attacks against McCain's National Greatness Conservatism. They are Rich Lowry's February 2000 "TR and His Fan," and Jonah Goldberg's May 2001 "Grading Greatness" (which is best read in tandem with Franklin Foer's fascinating and ultimately premature May 2001 eulogy for National Greatness, "The Great Escape: How Bill Kristol Ditched Conservatism").

Bob Barr on The Colbert Report

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 07:02:00 EDT

Here's the video for Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr's appearance on The Colbert Report, whose teaser for the segment notes, "Stephen asks Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr if he's afraid the government will make him register his mustache."

It's all good. And pretty funny.

Watch it here.

More reason on Barr.

Barr talks on reason.tv:

A Time to Fight...the War on Drugs, Among Other Things

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:42:00 EDT

Flipping through A Time to Fight, the new book by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), reason contributor Daniel McCarthy finds some passages about drug policy he considers encouraging, saying they indicate "a better, more humane policy than what the Clintonites and Republicans are offering," one that's "about as good as what Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr has been saying lately." I disagree.

Webb's observations about opium in Afghanistan are perfectly sensible as far as they go:

The reality is that the opium production in Afghanistan is an example of basic market economics at work. The Afghanis grow opium, sometimes in fields so vast that they resemble the rice paddies of Vietnam, because there is a foreign market for their crops, a market that they could not duplicate with any other known product.
If you want to reduce the opium cop, you'll have to find a way to reduce the demand for heroin at its destination point.

Here Webb gets points for candor, I guess, but it's sad that politicians are deemed praiseworthy simply for acknowledging the plain truth. And when it comes to policy prescriptions, Webb does not sound any better than Barack Obama or, for that matter, a "compassionate" drug warrior like Joe Califano, president of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse:

The time has come to stop locking up people for mere possession and use of marijuana. It makes far more sense to take the money that would be saved by such a policy and use it for enforcement [against] gang-related activities. We should also fully fund the increasingly popular concept of drug courts, where drug offenders are allowed to enter treatment instead of prison and have their drug offense expunged from their records if they successfully complete treatment....

Drug addiction is not in and of itself a criminal act. It is a medical condition, indeed a disease, just as alcoholism is, and we don't lock people up for being alcoholics. Most Americans understand this distinction, even though the political process seems paralyzed when it comes to finding remedies to address it. Our country urgently needs more funding and more treatment centers for treating this disease, not more prison cells for punishing people who have fallen into conduct that, at bottom, is more harmful to themselves than it is to our society.

That first sentence would make sense if it had been written, say, 40 years ago, when simple possession of marijuana was still a felony in most states. Nowadays, it is not true that the government is "locking up people for mere possession and use of marijuana," if by "locking up people" Webb means sending them to prison (as opposed to making them spend a night in jail after arresting them). If Webb had said "the time has come to stop arresting people for mere possession and use of marijuana," that would represent progress, since around 830,000 people still get nabbed for marijuana possession each year, an experience that entails substantial costs, even if they don't include serving time. But any politician who today says people should not go to prison merely for smoking pot is not advocating any real change in policy.

Califano, who passes off minor twiddling with the status quo as a "revolution" in his prohibitionist screed High Society, would also be perfectly comfortable with the rest of Webb's comments, equating drug addiction with disease and justifying forced re-education of drug users. As I said in my review of Califano's book, this pseudomedical talk is a way of asserting that drug users' wishes and choices need not be respected because they are symptoms of a disease. Even if we accept the disease model of addiction, Webb and Califano display an irrational prejudice against certain kinds of addicts. After all, neither advocates forcing alcoholics into "treatment" under threat of imprisonment (unless they commit a crime such as driving while intoxicated).

For that matter, neither advocates alcohol prohibition based on the observation that some people drink too much. Yet both are committed to the continued arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of people who participate in the production and distribution of the currently illegal intoxicants. These are the people who represent the vast majority of the half a million drug offenders who are currently behind bars in this country. According to Califano, they deserve sympathy only if they happen to consume the product they sell. Because then they're "sick," you see.

John McCain is certifiably awful on the drug issue, refusing even to say that states should be free to set their own policies regarding the medical use of marijuana, a popular, eminently conservative position that would not require him to say anything nice about cannabis. Obama, by contrast, has promised to stop interfering with state decisions in this area, and he otherwise sounds at least as good as Webb. He seems similarly confused about which drug offenders go to prison, saying (through a spokesman) "we are sending far too many first-time, nonviolent drug users to prison for very long periods of time" (emphasis added). A few years ago, he said he thought marijuana laws should be "decriminalized," which at the very least ought to mean citing pot smokers instead of arresting them, but lately he has waffled on the question. Bob Barr, a former hard-line prohibitionist, has been evasive about the drug policies he supports at the state level, but he seems to favor ending the federal war on drugs, which would be a huge improvement, leaving states free to experiment with various approaches. That goes much further than either Webb or Obama has ever suggested.

Church Chat

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:43:00 EDT

John Lofton, the hardest of the hard-core hard-right Christians, hectors -- sorry, interviews -- Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr. Barr displays remarkable patience, though it's clearly fraying by the end.

If you'd like a quick summary of the candidate's answers, here you go: Barr admires Ayn Rand because of her support for individual liberty, not because she's an atheist; Barr is a Methodist; Barr thinks the role of government is defined by the Constitution, not God; Barr supports laws against molesting children; Barr does not think homosexuality is "lewd and depraved"; Barr does not think the government should punish Sabbath-breaking; Barr is pro-life; Barr thinks the individual states should determine the penalties for abortion; Barr does not care to discuss what he believes the penalty for abortion should be in Georgia; Barr supports the death penalty; Barr does not think the federal government should have been involved in the Terri Shiavo case; Barr does not believe Shiavo's death was a murder. And Barr would really, really prefer to be talking about taxes, education, free speech, and government surveillance.

Bonus link: From 20 years ago, Lofton's interview with Allen Ginsburg, which is -- I think I can say this without hyperbole -- the greatest interview in the history of human conversation.

The Ticket Horserace	9-5/6	8-29/30
McCain-Palin	49.7%	47.1%
Obama-Biden	45.9%	44.6%
Others/Not sure	4.4%	8.3%

One-on-One Horserace	9-5/6
McCain	48.8%
Obama	45.7%
Others/Not sure	5.5%

Should Bob Barr Be Included in Presidential Debates?	Men	Women	Big City Dwellers	Suburban Dwellers	Married	Single
Yes	60%	52%	56%	54%	54%	61%
No	35%	36%	35%	36%	36%	34%
Not sure	5%	12%	9%	10%	10%	5%