"I am running this campaign to win the Presidency," he writes in Why Government Doesn't Work. "I know it is a very long shot, but not nearly as long as it might seem at first glance." Even as he acknowledges the odds, Browne feels a need to murmur that stranger things have happened. In his book, Browne estimates his chances at 100 to 1 (British odds makers have pegged him at 200 to 1).
It is impossible not to wince at such declarations, guarded as they might be. It is like watching a drunk belting out a tune at a karaoke bar: You stare transfixed, cringing at every slurred word, every sour note, wondering who the hell is going to pull him off the stage. Ironically, such claims make Browne a ridiculous figure largely due to his unwillingness to admit the impossibility of his position. The "I can win this thing" stance seems unlikely to win friends, influence people, or even open up many pocketbooks. If anything, it forces prospective voters to consider the ugly, no-win question that echoes a standing question regarding the L.P. in general: Is this guy a nutcase or a lost cause? (Browne's main competitor for the L.P. nomination, tax protester cum amateur magician Irwin Schiff, calls for avoiding the question altogether. "Isn't it time the Libertarian Party stopped embarking on a fool's errand directed at winning a presidential election?" writes Schiff. "Doesn't it make more sense to use this opportunity to frustrate and impede the government's ability to exercise its usurped and destructive powers and thus contribute to creating a more libertarian environment, regardless of who actually wins the election?")
In obvious ways, Browne's candidacy suffers from lack of engagement with political culture (in this, he again echoes the L.P.). On a certain level, this is hardly surprising. After all, in How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, published in 1973, Browne casts aspersions on the whole idea of political solutions: In a chapter titled "The Government Traps," Browne writes that people "waste a great deal of their freedom working to affect the government--through voting, politics, educating others...protesting, etc....[Don't] waste precious time and energy trying to work through the government to become free." The disconnect runs to the core of Browne's campaign. Consider his basic platform. "What could a president do in the face of a hostile Congress on [his] first day in office?" Browne mused during the REASON interview. "I will pardon everyone who has been convicted of a tax evasion crime; I will pardon everyone who has been convicted of nonviolent drug crime; I will pardon anyone who's been found guilty of any gun-control violations--all on a federal level."
It'll be a long first day on the job: "I will empty the Federal Register of all kinds of things that the former presidents have dumped in there. I will force people who are within the jurisdiction of the administration...to abide by the Bill of Rights and either censure, dismiss, or prosecute federal employees who violate the Bill of Rights in any way. I will immediately remove all American troops from any United Nations operations. I will take steps to bring troops home from overseas wherever possible. I will see to it that the United States government never gets involved in Bosnia or Somalia or Haiti or the Philippines." Browne has other, longer-range goals as well. He would legalize drugs, abolish the Food and Drug Administration and the Internal Revenue Service, "get government out of the health insurance business" and education, put the kibosh on "all loans and giveaways to foreign governments and international agencies," repeal federal gun-control laws, end affirmative action programs, and kill welfare--which he calls the worst governmental "helping" program because it consigns "beneficiaries" to a lifetime of despondent dependency.
The centerpiece of his campaign is a proposal to sell off over 90 percent of "unneeded" assets, including national parks, vacant land, oil and other commodity reserves, water and mineral rights, dams, pipelines, vehicles, aircraft, equipment, and buildings. Browne figures that this one-time clearance sale, which would take place over a six-year period, would net around $12 trillion. That would, he says, allow the government to abolish Social Security and buy a private annuity for anyone already dependent on the program or close to retirement; younger folks would benefit by being freed of the 15 percent Social Security payroll tax that is currently split between employer and employee.
The sale proceeds would also mean, writes Browne, "We can balance the budget immediately in 1998--the first fiscal year of the new presidential term." And the money would finance the repeal of all federal income taxes. "Everything you earn from 1998 onward will be yours to use as you see fit. No more keeping records to please the government, no more living in fear of the IRS," writes Browne, who notes that "the remaining taxes would be mostly customs duties and excise taxes." His ultimate goal is a "freedom budget." "If we shrink the federal government from its current yearly budget of $1.5 trillion down to just its constitutional functions, we could get by with a budget of only $100 billion a year plus the interest that has to be paid on the federal debt," he writes.
Give Browne his due: He has thought his plan out. While not exactly a tome of Kissingerian depth or heft, Why Government Doesn't Work is as good as or better than most campaign books. Browne goes into considerable detail on a range of topics, and he explicates his positions clearly, concisely, and logically. Both in print and in person, he has an engaging, winning personality, with a knack for turning a phrase: Discussing the difficulty of publicizing his campaign, he notes wryly, "No one is going to give us respect and recognition just because we're cute guys and have great ideas."
And yet, underlying Browne's whole agenda is a ridiculous fantasy of presidential power. For the moment, let's assume that the numbers add up (and that announcing a fire sale of federal assets doesn't drive the asking prices through the floor). While it may technically be the case that the president can, with the stroke of a pen, excise bits from the Federal Register, it's easier said than done. Bill Clinton found that out when he tried to change military policy regarding gays by executive fiat. And shutting down whole agencies requires new laws, which in turn require congressional assent. Glacial bureaucracy did not simply appear overnight--nor will it disappear in short, fast order.
On a deeper philosophical level, the problem of engagement is even more acute. Browne can point to nothing in today's society that approaches his vision of Galt's Gulch. When he talked with REASON, we asked him if he could identify any model states that came close.
"There are just differences of degrees," he said. "States like New Hampshire and Tennessee have smaller governmental loads than states like New York, California, and Alaska, but certainly none serves as a model." Who did he think was the most libertarian elected official in the country? "I don't think I know of anybody that I would put in that category. I know you're asking for the most libertarian, but there's nobody that stands out in any way to me."
OK, what about past presidents, who's your fave? "I've heard so many good things about Grover Cleveland, Calvin Coolidge, and even Warren Harding, and Jefferson said so many good things. Unfortunately, he said most of them when he wasn't president. Nobody has been able to do what's necessary." (He is more certain on the topic of the worst president: "I think the ones who have hurt us the most are Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon because they...got elected on the basis they were going to turn things around and then went completely in the other direction.")
And then there's the $64,000 question: Has there ever been a time in history, short of a violent revolution, when government has rolled itself back in the ways he's proposing? "No," said Browne.
In a sense, Browne is absolutely correct on all counts. But following his line of reasoning, what we really need is the equivalent of the French Revolution, an event that remains the epitome of what Hayek disparaged as the "fatal conceit"--the idea that men could create the world anew, according to some grand, wise, and judicious plan. Ironically, among the great libertarian contributions to political economy is libertarianism's critique of utopianism and the insight that social institutions are built over time and are sensitive to place. We cannot simply bulldoze the past like a dilapidated building. That insight, of course, leads to a real tension inherent in any libertarian political program: How, then, do you get from here to there, responsibly? Browne, for instance, is adamant that there be no "glide path," no long, easy transition from the old order to the new. And he has absolutely unimpeachable reasons: If there is a drawn-out transition, he says, "It will never happen. The moment you turn your back, Congress will turn back to its old ways." But his own plan would lead to considerable social upheaval which, if nothing else, would probably undermine any political consensus necessary for reform.
But we don't need a revolution, argues Browne, "We just need somebody that's more determined than anybody ever has been. Somebody who has the will and determination to go there for four years, pull this thing off and then go home and enjoy the last years of his life in peace and freedom." That someone is Harry Browne: "I'm the best qualified person because I have the will and determination to make this happen, and I do not know of anybody else who does."
In a way, by spinning out such a ludicrous scenario, Browne performs a meaningful social service: He is, after all, merely saying baldly what all mainstream presidential contenders believe in their hearts. When we hear it come from a marginal candidate, we get a stronger, fresher sense of the hubris and egotism that drives, say, a Bill Clinton or a Bob Dole. (And this is possibly one of the reasons why Big Journalism, invested as it is in the establishment power structure, refuses to take third-party candidates seriously.) But the Great Man theory remains one of the grim specters haunting libertarianism, which is, after all, a political philosophy that exalts diffused power. All we need, it turns out, is Cincinnatus crossed with John Galt--we assume he'll look like Gary Cooper. The Great Man will come in from his mountain hideaway, kick some ass, and go home, leaving in his wake a society dedicated to individual liberty and true laissez faire. Public-choice economics--largely the product of libertarian-oriented economists James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock--casts doubt on such a beautiful dream.
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