Reason Magazine - Topics > Campaigns/Elections

Let (Some) Criminals Vote

bill.flanigen@reason.com (Bill Flanigen) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:53:00 EDT

At The Atlantic, Patrick Appel writes a quick appeal to America to "let criminals vote." He makes a solid argument. Disenfranchisement raises concerns about racism and the abuse of civil rights for partisan political gain. It's a foolish way to go about punishment if we're at all interested in rehabilitation:

[I]t's hard to see how implementing a form of civic death helps former inmates reintegrate into society. Even if one grants that certain morally challenged offenders—murderers, say—do not belong in the voting booth, surely we could have judges determine who is fit to vote on a case-by-case basis, rather than excluding all criminals in the blanket laws of state constitutions.

Unfortunately, Appel overstates his case. What standard would those judges use to determine which criminals deserve to be enfranchised? Appel doesn't answer that question, probably because answering it would drain rhetorical force from his writing. ("Let Criminals Vote" becomes "Don't Let Criminal X Vote. Do Let Criminal Y Vote.") Describing such a standard would mean writing at length about the classes of wrongdoers who surely don't deserve the right to vote, and he wants to write about the classes who do. Even when he's acknowledging that some disenfranchisement is just, he only does so in a hypothetical: "If one grants..."

The real problem with the criminal justice system is not that it disenfranchises criminals, but that it disenfranchises too many criminals. As long as Appel believes that "citizens should be denied basic rights only when a clear threat is posed to the public good," the burden of proof should rest on the government to prove that a criminal or class of criminals doesn't deserve suffrage. As it stands, the system defaults on stripping so many criminals of the franchise that it risks punishing minor crimes disproportionately.

There are probably good arguments for disenfranchising lots of criminals. Appel doesn't dwell on that fact (though I think he knows it). Giving up the conceit that we should enfranchise all criminals is a good first step toward developing fair standards that could enfranchise most of them.

Democratic Lobbyists Treated Slightly Better Than Ugly Girls

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:55:00 EDT

Democratic lobbyists aren't loving the treatment they've been receiving from the Obama administration, which has made a big fuss about a policy of strictly limiting lobbyist contributions. Quoted in The Politico yesterday, one blue lobbyists described the situation quite aptly:

“It’s almost like the ugly girl that you want to call late at night—but don’t want to be seen with on a date.”

To be fair, though, the lobbyists are getting treated rather better than an ugly girls on a booty call: They've been invited to stay for breakfast.

Being banned from Democratic fundraisers like one held on Thursday night hurts. But luckily, there happens to be a separate and utterly unrelated Friday breakfast happening totally coincidentally at the same Mandarin Oriental hotel as the previous night's dinner where lobbyists are welcome and contributions will be accepted.

How much money is at stake here? Well, the Dems expected to make about $3 million at the Thursday dinner. The parallel Republican event made $14.4 million.

One official familiar with the events sought to put the best face on the situation, arguing that Obama is bringing new money to the dinner that wouldn’t be there otherwise — and that the K Street cash will still come through at the morning-after event.
“We’ll still get the lobbyist money,” said this official.

Former Federal Elections Commission head honcho Brad Smith saw this coming a mile away:

Would You Wear a Serial Killer's Sweater?

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:00:00 EDT

So, would you wear a serial killer's sweater? No blood spatters or anything. Heck, let's even say it has been dry cleaned.

Psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist Bruce Hood has been known to brandish a cardigan belonging to the serial killer Fred West in the lecture hall. West tortured, raped, and murdered at least 12 women. Of course, a moment's reflection will reveal that his sartorial choices probably had nothing to do with his grisly hobby. And there's no possibility of catching serial killer disease from his sweater, right? Nonetheless, most people will refuse to wear the sweater once they know its provenance (false provenance, actually, the sweater Hood uses is not really West's). Odder still, in large lecture halls, members of the audience will physically recoil from the few people who say they are willing to wear the sweater. The crowds, which often consist of highly-educated, secular people, laugh nervously as this little drama is played out, says Hood, because they realize that there is something odd and illogical about their reaction.

Hood has made a study of these intuitive ways of seeing the world. In his new book Supersense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable (HarperOne), he looks at the moments where our intuitions come into conflict with our rational faculty. We're born with a proclivity to see patterns that aren't there, to sense agency where there is only randomness, and to tell stories about cause and effect that may or may not be true. Hood examines religion through this lens, but most of the book focuses on the ways that even people who don't consider themselves religious—or even superstitious—are governed by intuition.

Associate Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward spoke with Hood earlier this week, via Skype.

Reason: So, why do most people get creeped out by the serial killer's cardigan?

Bruce M. Hood: If you talk to people about this in a very analytical way, or you describe it to them, people say "Oh, of course I wouldn't find a problem with that," because they can sit and reason about it. But if you suddenly present them with the real cardigan and don't tell them the context and get them to respond immediately, that's the beauty of the situation, because you get the intuitions automatically being triggered. This is my point: We can reflect on our decisions and we can reflect upon our so-called beliefs. And we can come up with justifications or reasons for the decisions we take. But if you're actually put in a dramatic situation, you will flinch. You will respond in a different way. And that's because there are different speeds at which you make decisions. Some can be very fast and intuitive, and other ones you can reflect upon.

Reason: What is supersense?

Hood: Many people, they don't often recognize they have supernatural beliefs in many of their decision processes and behaviors. For believers, there's a hidden dimension to reality. There are passions out there, there are energies operating in the world controlled by invisible forces. Believers recognize this as the basis for a lot of their supernatural beliefs about the world. But even atheists and non-believers still operate with behaviors which reflect this assumption that there is something invisible operating. So that's what I've done in the book is address what this is and where it comes from.

Reason: You frequently describe these intuitions as being something we "revert" to. Is our supersense inborn?

Hood: The intuitive system is one which is not taught. It's one that's wired into the brain as part of our natural reasoning. We're designed to seek out patterns in the world. We will detect co-occurrences. In doing so, we try to understand what caused them to happen. We can't stop ourselves [from] doing it. You've got two ways of making judgments. You've got one that is very rapid, unconscious, and untutored—the intuitive system. And the second rational experiential system, the one which is analytical, is much slower and laborious. What I think is going on is that when you have a situation where the intuitive system is running riot, you have to suppress it, as it were.

To give you an example outside the context of supernatural belief: Most people, if you ask them about two cannon balls, one weighs 100 times the weight of another and you drop them from the same height, what happens? And most people say, "Oh, the heavy one falls faster and hits the ground." Now, that's not correct, that's a naive misconception about weight and speed, Galileo taught us that centuries ago. But then you can educate people with Newtonian physics and you can tell them about Newton's third law of motion. And on that level they'll be able to tell you that they should land at the same time.

The point is that when you teach people the rational propositional way of understanding that particular problem, they may understand it initially, but when they go away they very quickly forget it again. They revert back to the intuitions. And even when you're teaching people to learn the new law, to understand the scientific law, we know from brain studies that they're actively suppressing parts of their fast, rapid reasoning system in order to acquire what is an unlikely or counter-intuitive assumption. When you get counter-intuitive propositions, you have to inhibit this intuitive way of thinking. If we turn to supernatural beliefs, because I'm suggesting that these are premised on a lot of intuitions, then we may learn more rational models, or more scientific models of the world. But the intuitive models of thinking never entirely go away, and that's why you get people when you're compromising their ability to use their analytical system they can often revert or go back to their intuitions.

Reason: How does our desire to see agency in the world play out in politics?

Hood: The one thing the human brain is not very good at is dealing with random events. We're always seeing structure where there may not be any structure. And we don't like the idea of there being no predictable outcome. That creates a sense of stress or a sense of uncertainty. One way of dealing with uncertainty is to engage in acts or beliefs which you think give you some perception of control. That's why we have superstitious rituals, doing something we believe might have some influence on the outcome, and that then becomes self-reinforcing.

If we're not doing the controlling ritual, then we're very happy to concede or hand over to those individuals who we perceive, or other people perceive, or the group perceives, as actually being someone who can control the outcome. So that's where the emergence of the priests and the captains of industry and the idea that there is a consensus these people have control. Very often that kind of a group consensus is sufficient in itself. There doesn't have to be a lot of objective evidence to prove this person's control. He doesn't have to prove himself each time. So it's very hard to be critical of these individuals who have established themselves, by consensus, as being the people who can do things.

Reason: One example that you give in the book is the case of a child who needs medical attention that will cost $1 million, which the hospital will have to cover. You describe this phenomenon where most people not only have the instant intuition that the child should be saved no matter what, but they are actually disgusted by anyone who tries to do a cost-benefit analysis on the question, even if that person comes to the "right" conclusion in the end.

Hood: It was Philip Tetlock, who is an economic psychologist, who first pointed that out. The fact that you might deliberate over it, the fact that you might even have to apply some kind of cost benefit analysis is in itself abhorrent. Because it's a violation of what should be an instantaneous assumption, something that the group should automatically feel. Leon Kass called that the gut reaction, the politics of decision making, that you should just feel the answer to be correct. These are all driven by intuitions. The moral disgust that we feel is again something that you shouldn't have to think about. But that's really quite arbitrary, because in many ways—I think the hospital administrator example is perfect for that—in terms of what's best for the group, it's clear that these are tough decisions. In fact, it's clearly a decision that people do agonize about. But if you put them into the open domain they'd be very reluctant to say that or to admit that publicly. But that's in fact exactly what does have to go when you're in a position to hold the purse strings.

Reason: How does this play out in health care policy?

Hood: I would suspect that there are decisions made behind closed doors that are generally not discussed in the open domain because they would evoke so many problems. Genetic modification being one of those. We can quite easily talk about inserting various genes, but when people learn they come from jellyfish, for example, then an intuition kicks in that there's some violation of God's law or there's some sort of Frankensteinian type of science going on. You almost have to cover it up with an anonymity of jargon. I think the people who are making the decisions are always quite aware that there's always a sensitive set of issues, which are sensitive because they violate the sacred values.

Reason: So people have strong views about which kind of thinking they prefer—intuitive over rational, in this case—even if they can't articulate it. When we choose our leaders, we want the guy with the right guts and then we'll accept whatever other decisions he makes.

Hood: That's right. The fact that people can't articulate it, that they feel these responses before they've had a chance to actually reason them out, is part of the problem. And of course, not everyone's the same. We should point out there are many people who actually will sit down and ponder things out. But you know, they tend not to be the people who get the votes. We tend to go for the more emotionally charged, decisive, emphatic members of our society who can hit upon these—I think that was why Bush worked so well. He said a lot of stupid things, but he was a very powerful communicator and he was very impassioned. I think he was very good at that. Obama, he's very good as well, but he seems more cautious, more reasoned, a different style, which is very interesting. So we shall see how all that pans out.

Reason: So are you defending a kind of noble lie proposition, to circumvent intuitive responses?

Hood: I'm pretty certain that we probably wouldn't have made such strides and advances in a lot of our medical technologies if everything had been in an open forum and an open platform for discussion. I think there would have been a lot of concerns which come from—I'm not saying ignorance—but more driven by intuitions about what's right and wrong. It's only relatively recently that powerful lobby groups have gone out to try and investigate these things. But, of course, it can create some real problems.

The intuition about the triple vaccine, for example. People try to make sense about autism, which seems to come from nowhere. All it took was one scientist to make a claim about single vaccines and then people started to see patterns everywhere. They started to recognize; Oh, the person they knew who had a vaccination and they see that was causally determined. And you can show them as much statistics as you like, and all the studies that have been done in Scandinavia to prove that there is no relationship between the issue of triple vaccine and autism. And yet people still draw that causal link because of the fact that these things just happen to appear in time. That's an example about the co-occurrence and two events—vaccination and an increase in autism—these people say that they're directly related and it's a very difficult one that's out there, it's very difficult to dispel these sorts of beliefs. So yeah, there are situations where sometimes it's best to keep the information reined in rather than just letting it spill out into the public and then eventually trying to get it back under control. It's just too difficult.

Katherine Mangu-Ward is an associate editor at Reason.

Massive California ballot initiative fail

tcavanaugh@reason.com (Tim Cavanaugh) — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:20:00 EDT

Good news out of the Golden State. As expected, California voters rejected all but one of yesterday's referenda. The ballot initiatives, which would have raised some taxes, extended others, enabled substantial borrowing, and invited more bloat by committing money to various well funded fiefdoms, failed by even wider margins than the propositions in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's disastrous November 2005 Special Election. As Matt Welch noted yesterday, the results also make clear how rotten and out of touch most of the state's newspaper editorial boards are.

The one winner was a trick proposition that would deny pay cuts to politicians under certain very narrowly defined budget circumstances. I voted against that one both for a clean sweep of No's and because the proposition is insulting to the intelligence (though I guess having your intelligence insulted is part of the deal when you live in California). But other than that and the votes for state senator (where my candidate, surfing rabbi Nachum Shifren, got demolished by Democratic party favorite Curren Price) and the all-important Area 6 seat for the L.A. Community College board of trustees (where somebody named Pearlman defeated somebody named Nakahiro), I had a pretty successful voting experience.

Don't believe post-election spin that argues California voters rejected the slate out of pique at having to vote so often. The sore-thumb victory of the salary cap Prop 1F indicates voters were sufficiently attentive to the import of these initiatives that they said yes to one and no to all the others. They may have resented the initiatives on the basis of fatigue (I've had to vote twice since the November presidential), but they rejected the measures on the basis of their content.

Full results of my own ballot:

N 1A "Rainy Day" Budget Stabilization Fund
Yes: 1,327,400 34.1% No: 2,555,519 65.9% (Tim's vote: No)

N 1B Education Funding. Payment Plan.
Yes: 1,452,535 37.4% No: 2,421,906 62.6% (Tim's vote: No)

N 1C Lottery Modernization Act
Yes: 1,368,222 35.4% No: 2,493,770 64.6% (Tim's vote: No)

N 1D Children's Services Funding
Yes: 1,324,252 34.2% No: 2,536,657 65.8% (Tim's vote: No)

N 1E Mental Health Funding
Yes: 1,292,437 33.6% No: 2,549,361 66.4% (Tim's vote: No)

Y 1F Elected Officials Salaries
Yes: 2,859,122 73.9% No: 1,010,457 26.1% (Tim's vote: No)

Los Angeles City Attorney
* Carmen "Nuch Trutanich 131,777 55.74
Jack Weiss 104,622 44.26
(Tim's vote: Trutanich)

State Senator 26th District
* CURREN D PRICE JR DEM 32,693 70.44
NACHUM SHIFREN REP 9,804 21.12
CINDY V HENDERSON PF 3,913 8.43
(Tim's vote: Shifren)

LOS ANGELES COMM COLLEGE - BRD OF TRUSTEE AREA 6
* NANCY PEARLMAN 169,783 61.48
ROBERT NAKAHIRO 106,383 38.52
(Tim's vote: Nakahiro)

LOS ANGELES COMM COLLEGE - BRD OF TRUSTEE AREA 2
* TINA PARK 148,243 54.19
ANGELA J REDDOCK 125,311 45.81
(Tim's vote: Park)

Reason Morning Links: Torture, Tabloids, Terrifying Wikis

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 15 May 2009 08:18:00 EDT

• A former aide to Colin Powell endorses the claim that the torture program was aimed at finding links between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

• Timothy Carney explains why the insurance and pharmaceutical industries support Obama's health care proposals.

• Ron Paul's son looks into a Senate run.

• Mohawk Indians protest a plan to arm guards along the U.S.-Canadian border.

• Your daily horrifying allegation of police abuse.

• Do animals have moral codes?

• A journalist defends The National Enquirer.

• Cracked lists "5 Terrifying Bastardizations of the Wikipedia Model." And on a related note: Wikipedia art.

Kill the Vice Presidency

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:33:00 EDT

Not the vice president, mind you--the office of the vice presidency. So advises Reason magazine contributor and vice presidential historian Jeremy Lott in the Washington Post. His main reason: it leaves people who would not normally otherwise be considered fit for the job as president, either as direct slot-fillers or as unfortunate legacies.

Lott doesn't declare what alternate means he would use to fill the post when the president we've got leaves us, but I might entertain such options as having the caucus of the party controlling Congress (or that of the party from which the president came) picking one.

Or maybe as much as they tend to suck, vice presidents are a necessary evil for that filling the vacancy role. Lott does suggest that if the office isn't eliminated, it should at least be voted on separately. I'm partial to returning to the original idea for the office in the Constitution: that the presidential runner up cop the post.

Gary Johnson vs. Mark Sanford

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:20:00 EDT

Bill Kauffman talks up Gary Johnson as a potential presidential candidate in 2012:

At breakfast the morn of the rally, I sat across the table from a friendly dude wearing a peace-sign T-shirt and looking like an affable old surfer. He introduced himself as Gary Johnson, the former two-term governor of New Mexico. Over the next day, I spent a fair amount of time chatting with Governor Johnson: mountain-climber, triathlete, vetoer of 750 bills.

He told me that he may take a shot at the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 as an antiwar, anti-Fed, pro-personal liberties, slash-government-spending candidate—in other words, a Ron Paul libertarian.

South Carolina governor Mark Sanford seems to be carving out similar space in the GOP. While Sanford's stubborn parsimony within the spendthrift GOP is welcome—he is surely a stream of fresh air in a mephitic party—consider, if you will, Gary Johnson.

Yes, as a congressman Sanford opposed the U.S. intervention in Kosovo under a Democratic president; Gary Johnson opposed a Republican president's war upon Iraq. Sanford reluctantly endorsed McCain in 2008; Johnson emphatically endorsed Ron Paul. Sanford has potential on civil liberties; Johnson, like Paul, has the guts to call for the legalization of marijuana and an end to the drug war.

Eight years ago, when Johnson was still governor of New Mexico, Mike Lynch interviewed him for Reason. You can read that conversation here.

Reason Morning Links: The Deaths of One Writer, Two Banks, 31 Boys, and Countless Newspapers

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:15:00 EDT

• J.G. Ballard, RIP.

• The U.S. threatens war with Eritrea.

• A record fine for the Rev. Al Sharpton.

• Two more banks close down.

• Three visits from George Orwell.

• A history of abuses at the Florida School for Boys.

• Modern trends in the therapeutic state.

• A farewell to dying newspapers—in 1918.

• And from Face the Nation, here's senior presidential advisor David Axelrod on the tea party movement: "I think any time that you have severe economic conditions, there is always an element of disaffection that can mutate into something that's unhealthy." A roundup of reactions to Axelrod here. A leftist offers a semi-endorsement of the tea parties here.

Quote o' the Day

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:07:00 EDT

John Cole on the Alaska Republicans' call for a do-over election:

I sometimes wish these guys would man up and look at their Sore/Loserman t-shirts from 2000 and think for a minute.

Reason Morning Links: Pols Spend Trillions, Police Behave Badly, and Andy Richter Saves the Universe

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 07:15:00 EDT

• The House approves the president's $3.6 trillion budget.

• Mark Sanford gives in and accepts South Carolina's cut of the stimulus package.

• Rod Blagojevich is indicted. With Ted Stevens un-indicted, Alaska Republicans demand a do-over election. And in New York's latest election, we have...a tie.

• How police at the G20 protests "wilfully criminalised and alienated 4,000 innocent people."

• The truth about online sexual predators.

• A "social experiment" with UFOs. (Update: Hoaxsters to face charges.)

• Spain's underground economy blooms.

• The rise of hyperlocal news sites.

• Finally, in honor of Andy Richter's pending return to talk-show sidekickdom, here's one of my favorite bits from his tenure on the Conan O'Brien show. The first half of the clip is entertaining but typical late-night fare. And then, about five minutes in, things take a left turn:

What the hell, it's Friday -- watch this one too:

Slum Pol Millionare

info@reason.com (Jeff Winkler) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:10:00 EDT

It looks as if India has found the best cure for recession. Forget bailouts and stimuli, hold an election!

According to a survey by the Centre for Media Studies (CMS), the month-long general election beginning on April 16 will witness an outlay of something like 100 billion rupees (two billion dollars)...
For the two national parties ...campaigning across India's 2.97 million square kilometre (1.84 million square mile) land mass means air transport bills that will run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Hi Flying Aviation, India's oldest air charter firm, said it had rented out its entire fleet of helicopters and executive jets to campaigners at prices of between 75,000 rupees and 150,000 rupees an hour.

Apart from expensive whistle stops and radio spots, Businessweek says the elections have a wide-ranging effect:

As a large number of party workers and prospective voters participate in campaigning, cash is spent in a way that keeps the morale high. "Sale of alcohol shoots up during elections. With increase in money supply, especially in rural areas, demand for personal care products are also likely to go up," said Edelweiss Securities in its report 'India Election Watch' .
Auto sales are also expected to improve as there will be more demand for vehicles, particularly special utility vehicles (SUVs), for election campaigns, personal transportation and security of politicians, said the report.

Ok, so there's concern that "India's democratic process is being hijacked by the sort of spending-power politics associated with US elections," a minor setback if it means an economic boast. There's also the fact that the election is short-term in nature.

The solution: India should take the lead as the world's largest democracy and throw an economy-reviving, hip-thrust-inducing, year-round election celebration:

Getting into Bed with Gov. Mark Sanford?

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:47:00 EDT

Former Reason staffer Dave Weigel checks in with the tattered remnants of the Ron Paul REVOLution and finds them warily circling South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, the anti-stimulus standard bearer of the moment.

Sanford might build another source of early support: the anti-government supporters of Rep. Ron Paul, who raised $35 million for their candidate in the presidential primaries. Paul and Sanford had been friendly when both men served in the House, said Paul’s spokesman Jesse Benton, the congressman’s grandson-in-law. “If Dr. Paul voted no on a bill and Sanford voted yes,” said Benton, “Sanford would come up to Dr. Paul afterward and talk it over. He would give a thoughtful consideration to why he’d voted the other way.”

Sanford recently wrote about his request to use his discretionary portion of the stimulus to pay down debt in his state—an activity forbidden by the terms of the stimulus—in The Wall Street Journal.

Last week I reached out to the president, asking for a federal waiver from restrictions on stimulus money. I got a most unusual response. Before I even received an acknowledgment of the request from the White House, I got word that the Democratic National Committee was launching campaign-style TV attack-ads against me for making it.

On the off chance that the public decides the whole stimulus scenario has gone pear-shaped, Sanford may be in the enviable position of being one of the few people in government left with relatively clean hands. (Perhaps similar to Ron Paul's opposition to the Iraq War, which left him as the only credible anti-war candidate in the race).

People are all atwitter about Sanford as the next Barry Goldwater, which may be a case of careful-what-you-wish-for.

To get a bigger dose of Sanford radicalism check out this American Conservative profile.

I was totally into Sanford before he was cool. Read all about how he used to sleep on a futon in his congressional office here.

Putting Politics Before Principle

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 07:00:00 EST

When Republican Helen Chenoweth ran for Congress in Idaho in 1994, she not only endorsed term limits on members but pledged she would leave Washington after three terms no matter what. But something strange happened in 2000, when it was time for Chenoweth to step down: She did it.

What was she thinking?

In 2000, when Republican Timothy Johnson ran for Congress in a central Illinois district, he promised he would serve a maximum of six years. Voters may have been skeptical, since Johnson had spent the previous 24 years in the Illinois Legislature, but he was adamant.

"There's a lot of opportunity for disconnect if you stay too long in Washington," he declared. "I'm still a citizen legislator now. Having term limits would make you more responsive to your constituents, rather than to bureaucrats." That vow may have been the difference in the election, which he won with 53 percent of the vote.

But the citizen legislator has since made the transition to congressman-for-life. He announced in 2002, during an easy re-election race, that he had thought the matter over and decided it would be better for his constituents if he took the paper his promise was written on and lit a match to it.

"I've got to say in all candor, the innate advantages that an incumbent member of Congress has, particularly after redistricting, are really pretty dramatic," he confessed. He was also perceptive enough to notice that there were advantages for him personally: "When I go to Carmi or I go to South Streator, you're a celebrity."

Johnson, however, has plenty of company on Capitol Hill. In 2006, there were nine House Republicans who once vowed to leave after the coming election but later decided they'd rather stay. Former U.S. Term Limits spokesman Paul Jacob, who in 2000 made a campaign appearance with Johnson, says that in all, at least 25 members of Congress (not all Republicans) have broken such promises.

This brings to mind Lily Tomlin's remark: "No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up." When Republicans managed to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994 after 40 years in the minority, they owed the victory in large part to their support for term limits, an idea that was much in vogue. Better yet for them, they got the benefits of that bargain without ever having to subject themselves to it.

In 1995, the Supreme Court ruled that congressional tenure could not be curbed except by constitutional amendment. And as it happened, enough House Republicans voted against a constitutional amendment to scotch that option once and for all.

But that didn't necessarily kill the entire concept. The fact that term limits can't be imposed by statute does not mean they can't be self-imposed—as they were by so many House candidates when they first ran. The Supreme Court decision, however, gives these Republicans a way to justify a change of heart. Stepping down, you see, would amount to unilateral disarmament that would help Democrats regain a majority.

It's a brilliant excuse whose only disadvantage is that it isn't true. Of the nine turncoats who chose to run this year, eight got 60 percent or more of the vote in 2004. The other, Barbara Cubin of Wyoming, won by a comfortable 13-point margin.

Most of them occupy seats carefully drawn to keep them in GOP hands until the twelfth of never. The obvious exception is Cubin, whose district consists of the whole state of Wyoming—which President Bush carried with 69 percent of the vote the last go-round.

So it would be no sacrifice to the party if these lawmakers all stepped down. They could keep their promises, and the Republicans could hang on to their seats. But here's the thing: They don't want to leave.

They have come up with lots of rationalizations for sticking around. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., had the best one: "I still don't plan on staying forever, but after Sept. 11, I felt like I should renew my commitment to public service."

That's one way term-limits champions could make the case for abandoning the commitment they made when it was politically advantageous. Or they could try the explanation once offered to a lobbyist by Louisiana Gov. Earl Long about a campaign promise he didn't keep: "Tell them I lied."

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Editor's Note: Steve Chapman is on vacation. This column was originally published in 2006.

The President Is Not a Gun Slinger

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:00:00 EST

Politically savvy gun owners have long distrusted President Barack Obama, and for perfectly fair reasons—even (or perhaps especially) after he went out of his way to tell them that lawful gun owners have nothing to fear from his administration.

Perhaps, Obama seemed to be gently suggesting, they could cool it with the spike in gun purchases since he won the election. December showed a 24 percent rise in FBI instant background checks for gun purchases from the previous December, and there was a 49 percent such hike the week of his election.

Obama’s famous gaffe about “bitter” people who “cling” to guns merely brought this existing tension to wide public attention. Despite his insistence that he respects the doctrine settled by the Supreme Court in June’s Heller decision—that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms—Obama has a far narrower vision of what that means than, say, your average National Rifle Association (NRA) member.

During his political career, Obama has supported Chicago’s handgun ban (as well as D.C.’s ban, overturned in Heller, a decision he later claimed to agree with) and voted for, or expressed public support for, such gun restrictions as banning concealed public carrying of weapons and barring gun sales within five miles of schools or parks.

Furthermore, a statement on Obama's gun intentions that had disappeared from his campaign site has now reappeared on the White House website. These details in particular raised hackles in the gun rights community:

Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade…. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.

And his attorney general designate Eric Holder is a straight-up foe of gun rights. He was a principal in the Clinton administration’s perceived attacks on gun owners’ rights; he’s for registration and licensing, mandatory waiting periods, and gun purchase limits. Holder also signed on to an amicus brief on D.C.’s side in Heller, and clearly does not agree with the case’s Second Amendment-affirming decision. He’s been a magnet of discontent for the gun rights community, though in a contentious move, the NRA has chosen not to openly testify against him or count votes for him against congressmen or senators in their NRA scorecards.

Moreover, as certain alarmed folks in the gun rights community will note, there’s plenty that Holder will be able to do as the head of the Department of Justice, including the harassment of gun dealers by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. There are also fears that Obama may issue executive orders restricting the importation of certain kinds of weapons or ammunition.

I don’t doubt that Obama and Holder have little respect for gun rights. Obama’s pandering during the campaign was almost certainly insincere. But what is politically important is not whether he meant it; it’s that he thought he had to do it in the first place. He even had to run ads in such potential swing states as Ohio and Pennsylvania aimed at countering NRA ads that tagged him as an enemy of gun owners.

That indicates what Obama—and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel—has at the front of his mind: the Democratic Party’s institutional memory of its own personal gun-related tragedies of 1994 and 2000 (and maybe even 2004). Gun control fever was running high in the early 1990s, with the Brady Bill and the original “assault weapon” ban passing in ’93 and ’94.

Then came the Republican takeover of both houses of Congress in 1994, blamed by no less savvy a politico than then-President Bill Clinton on the Democrats’ rousing of the gun rights movement. Al Gore’s 2000 losses in such states as Tennessee and West Virginia, and thus the White House, are also widely attributed to the wrath of the NRA and its allies.

Irwin Nowick, a hyper-detailed watcher and chronicler of gun issues on the California and national level, had a cogent argument for why even some of the things Obama explicitly says he wants on the gun control front are apt to go nowhere:

Federally, Obama and….Emanuel [do] not want to cause problems for Labor or “swing voters” which include persons who own guns. Emanuel remembers Clinton and he understands how tenuous Democratic control of the House in fact is…. In addition, what people do not understand is that the type of Democrats who controlled the House during the first two years of the Clinton regime is not there any more. They were wiped out in 1994 and by the movement of House seats from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and West. Those seats that did exist in the Rust Belt were sliced and diced in redistricting in 2001. Indeed, in this cycle—as in 2006—you had the growth of NRA Democrats.
…People can forget about a new “assault weapon” ban—that one is not getting any traction—Labor is opposed and Rahm Emanuel is not putting his boss or a Democratic majority at risk.... The 1994 crime bill which included “the ban” passed because Republicans voted for it. Many of those Republicans are gone and because of the movement of seats because of the 2000 census and resulting redistricting, many of the Democratic seats where the members voted for it are gone as well.

So far, there is no sign of incipient serious gun action on the Hill, or out of the White House. Two new bills that have generated much gun community chatter are sitting mostly sponsorless for now in the Judiciary Committee. Second Amendment enthusiasts are excited about Florida Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns’s National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2009 (H.R. 197) (co-sponsored by Virginia Democrat Rick Boucher), which would create cross-state reciprocity for states that issue concealed carry permits, allowing a gun owner who has one in his home state to essentially use it in other states. (Stearns has authored essentially similar bills in the past, which got nowhere.)

And they are alarmed by Illinois Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush’s bill, a “Firearms Licensing and Record of Sale Act,” which would pretty much do what the title implies. It too is currently sitting in committee, with zero co-sponsors. Radical pro- or anti-gun action is just not much on Congress’ mind right now.

Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation is still quite wary of Obama and nervous about what the next four years will mean for gun rights, though he granted in an interview this week that “we don’t see any legislation on the immediate horizon whatsoever; the few bills introduced, I don’t believe will go anywhere. [Rush’s bill] is asking too much; it’s never gonna happen.”

Still, Gottlieb is concerned about how a Holder-run DOJ might behave in any future lawsuit intended to extend gun rights in which the federal government is a party. He's also worried about how Holder’s BATFE could use existing laws to stymie gun and ammunition dealers. And he fears that any effective new gun control will come without warning from Congress. “Something bad could appear and head to hearings quickly and not be telegraphed months in advance,” seriously harming the gun rights community’s ability to man up and stop it.

But as far as actual action to restrict gun rights on the federal level, not much is imminent or moving. Congress and the new president are very, very busy spending the U.S. further into hyperinflation or bankruptcy and figuring out exit strategies (or not) from Bush-era foreign policy entanglements. While Justice Department's focus on enforcing existing gun laws may well increase, we're unlikely to see any significant new federal efforts that infringe on the Heller-certified constitutional right to own common weapons for self-defense in the home.

The gun rights community, in other words, is most likely wrong about the extent to which the Obama administration will try to restrict gun rights. (Not that, even in a post-Heller age, they don’t have reason to be worried; short of D.C.-style total gun bans, lower courts so far seem sure that any other gun regulations go under the ruling.) The political irony is that being mistaken about the magnitude of the threat can guarantee they achieve their goals—being wrong, especially convincing the gun rights rank and file to grossly overestimate the Obama threat, will help ensure that the threat never becomes real—even if it never would have.

In the face of an administration that undoubtedly only respects gun rights to the extent that its supporters have the political power to harm it, gun rights forces do need to keep their powder dry; perhaps even excessively stocked. Paranoids may not always have real and effective enemies, but in politics, as in life, paranoia can keep you safe.

Senior Editor Brian Doherty is author of Radicals for Capitalism (PublicAffairs) and Gun Control on Trial (Cato Institute).

Friday FAIL Link: Kucinich Inaugural

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:54:00 EST

On my walk to work today I happened upon this curbside scene, a fitting end to the presidential aspirations of Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio):

Check out the empty beer bottles in the upper left corner, and the bottle of (diet!) tonic water in the lower right. And of course, the Whole Foods bags are appropriate for the last stand of our first vegan presidential candidate.

(NOTE: While I doubt this was actually the wreckage of a Kucinich family inauguration party, you never know—he and his very lovely wife have been known to gallivant in the Dupont Circle area.)

Ashton Kutcher, Renaissance Man

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:26:00 EST

God, how I miss cynicism.

Americans are on the brink of the Newer Deal where we will join hands in an effort to resurrect the pride in a government that supports us in supporting ourselves. Our new leader understands the value of our collective voices...

That deathless prose is from the pen of political philosopher and Punk'd impresario Ashton Kutcher, who then goes on to describe a meeting (summit?) four years ago where he sat down with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Peres said nice things about America. Which caused Kutcher to bite his lip—because of our "national pursuit of Middle Eastern oil," etc., etc.—and then, a mere three years later, Kutcher and his wife Demi Moore decided to decide to do something:

A year ago my wife and I looked one another in the eye and promised to dedicate ourselves to finding a cause to champion.

Read about the bold action you can take to end sex slavery by signing an Obama quasi-loyalty pledge on MySpace, plus more political philosophy from Ashton Kutcher.

Or read some coherent and insightful words on sex trafficking and slavery from Reason's Kerry Howley (plus links to other Reason ladies on the topic) here. Your call.

A Well-Deserved Impeachment

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:00:00 EST

In 1776, the authors of the Declaration of Independence noted that "governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves." But Illinoisans know, as those patriots did, that at some point you just can't take it anymore.

For most, that point came after Gov. Rod Blagojevich got himself arrested in December on charges of soliciting bribes. It took less than a month for the House to vote to impeach him. The real mystery is not that people became completely disgusted with the governor so suddenly, but that the process took so long.

His conduct over six years in office suggests that his only goal was to see how far he could push his luck before it ran out. Or else to prove journalist H.L. Mencken's claim that "government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."

The House vote set the stage for the Senate trial to decide on his removal. As it happens, neither the House nor the Senate needs any reason to act. The U.S. Constitution provides for impeachment and removal in cases of "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." The Illinois Constitution, by contrast, provides for it in any instance where the General Assembly feels the urge. Legislators could eject Blagojevich because they detest his hair, and who could blame them?

But to their credit, lawmakers have never been disposed to resort to impeachment just to get rid of someone whose personality or policies they find obnoxious. They treat it as a last resort, to be used only for the most intolerable behavior.

In the case of Blagojevich, that gave them plenty to choose from. From wiretapped conversations, federal law enforcement agents concluded he schemed to trade a U.S. Senate appointment for lucrative favors, tried to coerce the owner of The Chicago Tribune to fire his editorial board, and demanded a campaign contribution from an executive at a children's hospital that was hoping to get state reimbursement for pediatric care.

Amid all these revelations, you could almost forget that Blagojevich had been practically begging to be evicted for years. During the bribery trial of Chicago developer Tony Rezko, there was testimony he traded state contracts for campaign cash. He tried to import flu vaccines and prescription drugs in defiance of federal law. He expanded a state health care plan without any legal basis. And along the way, he did just about everything possible to make a buffoon of himself.

But his earlier sins were only proof of how hard it is to get oneself removed from office. In all of the republic's political history, only seven governors have ever been impeached and convicted. Americans are often disappointed with the performance of those they elect. But as a rule, citizens seem to think that if they were foolish enough to install a clown or a crook, they deserve to suffer the consequences.

In this case, the voters of 2002 could be excused for assuming any Democrat would be an improvement on Republican incumbent George Ryan, whose own envelopment in scandal dissuaded him from running again. Blagojevich—I am not making this up—got elected on promises of reform. As a Chicago Tribune story put it during his first gubernatorial campaign, his main theme was "a promise to overhaul the scandalous culture of Springfield and install new leadership imbued with hope, idealism and, of course, opportunity." Ha. Ha. Ha.

By 2006, people didn't expect that from Blagojevich anymore than they expected palm trees to sprout on Michigan Avenue. But thanks to great piles of campaign cash, weak opponents, and widespread despair at ever achieving good government in this state, he was able to win re-election. Like many a politician, the governor benefited from his talent for fostering cynicism.

The victory, however, seems to have fed his own worst instincts. After being forced to resign as governor of Connecticut in 2004 and serving time in prison, John Rowland reflected that what brought him down was a "sense of entitlement" and the "arrogance of power." He's not the last politician to display those flaws—or to learn that the public's patience is almost unlimited, but not quite.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

RNC Hopefuls on Ron Paul

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:56:00 EST

At the Western Standard (where they are tracking Canada's heroes of liberty), Kalim Kassam sums up the comments various seekers of the job of chairman of the Republican National Committee made re: Ron Paul at a debate hosted by Grover Norquist.

While Kassam frames it as if they are all smartly recognizing the potential importance of Ron's libertarian, anti-interventionist, anti-fiat money crew to the GOP, the quotes he presents sound a lot more hesitant and grudging than that to me--less "these Ron Paul people are a valuable part of our coalition and should be heeded" and more "we ought not utterly and firmly bar these strange and disturbing people from crossing our threshold, if they really, really wanna help us out."

But check out the summary quotes and video here and decide for yourself, as exciting new media technologies allow us to do. The Wall Street Journal coverage of RNC hopefuls and Paul, which Kassam quotes.

One of Those Other Up-in-the-Air Senate Seats...

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:43:00 EST

...is a little closer to resolution. But still maybe a lawsuit away. Details from AP:

The state Canvassing Board was posed to certify the results of the recount in Minnesota's grueling Senate election in Al Franken's favor — but that doesn't mean the race is definitely over.
The board was to meet Monday and was expected to declare which candidate received the most overall votes from nearly 3 million ballots cast. The latest numbers showed Franken, a Democrat, with a 225-vote lead over Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.
But after the announcement, there will be a seven-day waiting period before an election certificate is completed. If any lawsuits are filed during that waiting period, certification is conditional until the issue is settled in court.
Coleman, who led Franken on election night, hasn't ruled out a lawsuit challenging the results, claiming there were irregularities that gave Franken an unfair advantage.

The head of the Senate Rules Committee--which sits in mighty judgment over contested elections to his body--thinks it's all over, apparently:

New York Sen. Charles Schumer....said Sunday that Franken had won the election.
"While there are still possible legal issues that will run their course, there is no longer any doubt who will be the next Senator from Minnesota," Schumer said. "With the Senate set to begin meeting on Tuesday to address the important issues facing the nation, it is crucial that Minnesota's seat not remain empty, and I hope this process will resolve itself as soon as possible."

Republicans, meanwhile, unsurprisingly are being procedurally scruplous and saying the seat should remain empty until all legal questions are resolved.

I did not once make any "Al Franken Decade" jokes. At least not in this decade.

Outside Agitators Now Welcome in Oklahoma

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:33:00 EST

Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit overturned Oklahoma's ban on signature gathering by nonresidents for ballot initiative campaigns. Four circuits have now held that such laws violate the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. "The 10th Circuit correctly affirmed the fundamental right of Americans to travel from state to state to advocate for political change and protected the free and open political debate that is essential to American politics," says William Maurer, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case. The court rejected the state's argument that banning signature gatherers from other states was a reasonable safeguard against fraud.

The text of the decision is here (PDF).

The Lure of Royalty

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 07:00:00 EST

If New York Gov. David Paterson wants to appoint a senator distinguished by global star appeal, a long family tradition of public service, royal bloodlines, and obvious availability, it's easy to think of the perfect candidate. Caroline Kennedy? That's setting his sights too low. If I were him, I'd put in a call to the Prince of Wales.

Really, what assets does Jack Kennedy's daughter have that the son of Elizabeth II doesn't? Both owe their prominence entirely to their ancestry. Both are immensely rich thanks to the sacrifices and achievements of people who went before.

Both have often represented their families at the funerals of prominent people. Neither has ever had to stress about finding a job, meeting a payroll, or keeping government functions going during a budget crisis.

And here's the most newsworthy similarity: Both expect to attain a high office without the bother of having to submit themselves to the voters. And both will probably get their way.

Kennedy is a well-spoken, pleasant woman who is indistinguishable from many other rich folks who would never be considered for a seat in the nation's highest elected body. Indistinguishable, that is, except for her name, which in some minds confers magical powers denied to ordinary mortals.

If she had been born Caroline Kelly, no one would indulge her expressed desire to become a United States senator. But because of her pedigree, Paterson appears to think she's doing him a favor instead of the other way around.

Kennedy is the latest example of the rise of "branding" in American politics—in which merely coming from a particular family is taken as a qualification for office. For most of his life, George W. Bush was famous mostly for his meager accomplishments. But because his father was president, he was able to get himself elected governor of Texas and then president as well.

A lot of people assumed he would have some of his father's better traits: a habit of hiring smart people, a measure of humility and the good judgment not to occupy Iraq. Instead, the younger Bush seemed to spend his presidency trying to show how different he was from the old man. Mission accomplished.

That experience should prove that political brands are not comparable to automobile brands. If you buy one model of Toyota rather than another, you can be confident it will live up to the maker's reputation for quality and durability. But just because a family produced a president and a couple of senators, all reasonably well-regarded, doesn't mean other members of the clan will do well.

In the Kennedy case, of course, not everyone would agree that Caroline's Uncle Ted has been a boon to the nation during his years in the Senate—quite the contrary, since he has long been one of the most liberal lawmakers on Capitol Hill. That's without even taking into consideration the minor matter of Mary Jo Kopechne, the young woman he killed in a mysterious car wreck in 1969.

Other Kennedys have fallen short in office. Joe Kennedy, son of Robert, was known as a telegenic lightweight during his time in the House of Representatives. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), son of Ted, has made news mostly with his drug use and traffic accidents. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, daughter of Robert, was elected lieutenant governor of Maryland, but in 2002 managed the feat of becoming the first Democrat in more than three decades to lose a governor's race in that state.

So what kind of Kennedy would Caroline be? Beats me. One way to find out would be to let her run for some entry-level office where she could learn the trade and make her quota of beginner mistakes without doing much harm. But she apparently feels no obligation to show she's up to the job before taking the oath.

You could say the same about her predecessor, Hillary Clinton, who had never held elective office before. But Clinton at least gave the citizens of New York the chance to assess her qualifications before ascending. Kennedy sees no need for such tedium.

Under the customs of hereditary monarchy, her appointment would make perfect sense. But if New York prefers that method, it might as well go with the real thing. Last I checked, Prince Charles didn't have any better offers.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Why Do Radical Voters Go Out With Centrist Candidates?, or, More on Progressives' Obama Buyer's Remorse

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:09:00 EST

Following on to Michael Moynihan and Damon Root's blogging yesterday on some left-wing Obama regrets, Daniel Larison at American Conservative, spinning off of Glenn Greenwald's commentary on progressive laments about the mainstream nature of Obama's appointments, offers some reasons why non-centrist voters will inevitably live to be disappointed by supporting centrist candidates:

At every stage, the “impractical” purist hears that he should not withhold his support from the marginally preferable candidate under any circumstances. He is urged to be realistic, and so he and those like him do not insist that the candidate make strong commitments on policy positions that are deemed by someone to be out of the mainstream. The candidate pays some minimal lip service to the purist’s “values,” and this is supposed to count for something. In the name of pragmatism, the purist decides that he has to support the candidate, because the candidate represents the best chance of advancing his views, but even before the election is held the purist has already given so much away in the name of pragmatism and realism that he and those like him have no leverage at all. Having yielded and given away their support in exchange for nothing more than lip service, the purists are scarcely in a much better position than before. They can take satisfaction in being on the winning side, but for the most part this means that they will bear the burden if the public turns against the candidate after he is elected and otherwise they will scarcely get much of anything. The purists-turned-pragmatists will receive the blame for enabling the administration in whatever it does, but they will receive no credit or acknowledgement that their support was important enough to merit meaningful concessions to their concens. Having refused in the first place to exact a price for their support, they have made their support worthless and ensured that they will have no influence.

This applies to libertarian support of most Republican candidates as well.

All My Rowdy Friends Are Filibustering Tonight

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:07:00 EST

Hank Williams Jr. says he plans to run for the Senate in 2010. I'm picturing a pro-pot, pro-vigilante, pro-pro football platform -- and maybe, down the road, a Brooks/Sumner-style showdown with Al Franken on the Senate floor.

Bonus links: Hank, meet Millie Jackson.

Bob Barr Looks Back

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:00:00 EST

WASHINGTON—"Life was a bitch," says Bob Barr.

We are sitting in the coffee nook at the Mayflower Hotel, the aged Washington, D.C. institution where, some 76 years ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote his first inaugural address. We are not yet talking about the campaign for president that Barr finished in fourth place with 512,000-odd votes. Barr is talking about his habit of downing a high-single-digit number of espressos every day, and how hard this was before Starbucks came along.

"Most countries I'd lived in had cultures of much heavier coffee," Barr explains. "In South America you've got café con leche. In the Middle East you need a knife and fork to drink the coffee. It was hard to get strong coffee here—I was delighted when Starbucks made it big."

Barr is in Washington to speak with fellow alumni of Georgetown Law School at a meeting of the Federalist Society, and to build up the client list for Liberty Strategies, his consulting firm. "I absented myself from producing income for about eight months," Barr says. "I'm a working stiff." Hence the coffee, and hence a packed schedule that's meant to introduce Barr to the people who can get him back in the black.

Over the course of a six-month campaign, Barr spent more time than he might have liked dealing with intra-Libertarian squabbling, lower-than-expected fundraising numbers, and what his running mate Wayne Allyn Root called "the ghost of Ron Paul"—persistent media attention on the indecisive Republican candidate who, contrary to some expectations, did not endorse the Libertarian ticket. Over coffee, Barr hashed out how he got the nomination, what went right and wrong, and what he's doing now.

reason: What did you get out of your stint in the Libertarian National Committee?

Bob Barr: From my standpoint, it gave me an opportunity I've not had before to learn the personalities in the Libertarian Party, and to learn the structure of the party. It gave me the opportunity to assure at least some Libertarians that I wasn't a Trojan horse. I wasn't a Republican trying to use the Libertarian Party to further the Republican agenda, or some such nonsense. I think I accomplished that working with the LNC.

reason: There are still LP members who aren't satisfied—less than there were in May, but various voices on the web who make this argument.

Barr: In any political movement you're never going to be able to satisfy everybody. Reagan didn't. I really don't think that anybody with a straight face could make that argument now. I really don't. Which does not mean that everybody in the Libertarian Party loves Bob Barr. I doubt that that's the case. I do think that over the course of the campaign, the people that we worked with, the issues that we presented, I think gave lie to any lingering doubts that I was not a Libertarian.

reason: In December of last year, you proposed, and the LNC passed, a resolution asking Ron Paul to drop his GOP bid and run as the Libertarian candidate. Was that more for attention, or was it a real attempt to get him to run?

Barr: I meant it exactly how it was worded. I saw at that point, and I don't think anyone saw otherwise, that Ron was not going to get the Republican nomination. He had, in fact, built up a significant amount of public attention, a persona as a libertarian with a small l, and my thought was, "Let's make a serious effort here, an honest effort to get him formally back into party and take advantage of what he's done." At the time, had he taken advantage of it, it would have been a significant boost for him and the Libertarian Party.

reason: You had joined the LNC saying you would not run for president. When did you privately decide to make the race?

Barr: I introduced Ron Paul at CPAC. His speech came a few hours after Mitt Romney left the Republican race, which made it much clearer that McCain was going to win the nomination. For whatever reason that's when I started being approached very consistently by a lot of Libertarians about throwing my hat in the ring.

reason: Why did it take two months for you start an exploratory committee and another month to announce? I've heard two explanations. One was the financial consideration of losing your clients, which you've already talked about. The other explanation I heard was that you could not risk running and losing the nomination.

Barr: I was never assured to win the nomination. Some people might have thought that. I didn't. I knew it would be a battle right down to the wire, which it was. I didn't get into it because I was sure I would win. I ran because I thought it was important to do it. Most of the time between February and May, I was working through the personal side of the run—talking to my wife, my son Derek.

reason: Throughout that period, though, and really up to the Republican convention, the big mainstream media story about Libertarians was what Ron Paul would do. Michael Badnarik, the party's 2004 nominee, told me in May that he was still waiting to see if Paul could win the Republican nomination before he supported the LP again. What was the effect of all this?

Barr: It was a not-insignificant frustration, let's say. It was somewhat difficult to convince people of the fact that we had a real timeline here. Certain things had to start being done in order to have the chance for the impact I knew we could have. Every day that went by with people sitting around for something to happen, which common sense told you was not going to happen, was a day lost. It was very frustrating.

reason: You were polling well through the summer, but you took a hit after John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. What was the impact of that on your campaign?

Barr: I don't think that Palin really mattered that much. Initially, perhaps, when her name was first announced and there was all of this unbridled excitement over Sarah Palin, I think there was some concern that it would stanch the flow of Republicans ditching the ticket because of McCain's liberal credentials. But by the time all the dust settled on election day, I think a lot of them realized that she was not the great savoir for the conservative movement that she was put forward as nationally, but I don't think that really mattered all that much. What killed us in the end is that the election came down to a referendum on Barack Obama, period. Nothing else seemed to matter to people.

reason: What did matter? Campaign funds? At the convention, Russ Verney told me that he hoped to raise $30 million, and the campaign eventually raised about $1.2 million.

Barr: If certain things had happened that we expected to happen early on, like gaining access to certain lists very quickly, I think we could have gotten there. But those lists turned out to be not available, unfortunately, and that prevented us early to turn over and over again into significant fundraising. We didn't get that seed money early on that we anticipated. We realistically anticipated it. We didn't sit around say ‘it would be nice to have all that money.'"

reason: Was one of these Ron Paul's fundraising list?

Barr: All I can say is that it appeared very realistic that we would have a list that let us raise a large amount of seed money that we could build on. And that didn't happen.

reason: What effect did your own running mate, Wayne Allyn Root, have on the ticket?

Barr: I enjoyed having Wayne on the ticket very much. I enjoy him personally very much. I mean, he's a very gregarious person. I enjoy his family as well. I think he brought a lot of energy to the campaign, a new dimension to the campaign, and a business perspective that got him booked on Fox Business and CNBC with sufficient regularity to have a little breakthrough there.

reason: Did you expect Root to be more of a fundraising asset?

Barr: Everything in a campaign doesn't always work out like you hoped. What can I say?

reason: You and Root both spoke frequently about bringing conservatives into the Libertarian Party from the GOP. Are you still focused on that?

Barr: First things first. I'm not going to bring anybody into an organization unless that organization is ready for it, has the groundwork laid for it, has a degree of receptivity to make it productive to bring them in. There's a lot of work that has to be done to move the party down the road it started on under [former executive director] Shane Cory into a truly professional viable political entity. There are still those in the Libertarian Party that do not want to go down that road, and there are some in the party that will have to make an important decision about that: whether they want to build themselves into a professional viable political party, or whether they don't.

If so, we've got a tremendous opportunity to increase the size, power, influence of the party. The Republican Party is in absolute disarray. And I think it'll get worse for them. I don't even think they've even reached bottom yet. If the Libertarian Party were at the point I'd like to see it at, we could shine in this atmosphere. We'd be on the news, media would seek us out, to provide the counterbalance that no one else is capable of doing.

reason: After this year, and all of the tension and different timelines and goals of your campaign and the Paul campaign, is the libertarian movement stronger or is it more divided?

Barr: Absolutely, it's stronger. Absolutely. The way I look at it, it isn't as if Ron Paul built this foundation over here and our campaign built this one over here, and they're discreet components. We're building one foundation. What Ron Paul did was a tremendous benefit to the Libertarian movement in making people aware of the movement, of our philosophy, of elements people don't usually hear about in a coherent way. The monetary system, and so forth, which Ron talks about very eloquently.

reason: What mistakes were made this year that the LP has to avoid making again?

Barr: We have to not look backwards. If we are serious about being a real political party we have to set political goals, educate people, have a consistent message, organize at all levels, and look for opportunities. You don't wait for opportunities to be handed to you. Where's the Libertarian Party in these debates about the incoming administration? It needs to be there. But what do I know?

David Weigel is an associate editor of reason.

Frankbusters

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:23:00 EST

When I wrote my review of Tom Frank's The Wrecking Crew, there was a passage in the text that I didn't have space to address. It demonstrates the ways even the one genuinely worthwhile section of the book -- Frank's history of '80s conservatism -- can go awry:

When Conservative Digest asked Abramoff whom he supported in the 1984 presidential contest, the young roughneck exploded: "Are you kidding? Wally Mondale is a boring wimp." Others on the right taunted "Fritz" Mondale as a "quiche eater," after the squishy food for which "real men" were said to have no appetite, and a squad of CRs [College Republicans] mocked the "wimp" to the catchy theme from Ghostbusters, dancing and singing "It's Ronnie's time; Fritz is a slime." The group reportedly sold almost fifty thousand T-shirts emblazoned with their "Fritzbusters" logo and along the way gave me my first taste of the tradition of gleeful malice that is observed so carefully in conservative circles.

A footnote points out that "'Fritzbusters' images can be found wherever one digs in the right-wing student literature of those days, and the shirts and stickers can still be found in thrift stores and on eBay."

I don't have any interest in sticking up for the mid-'80s College Republicans, but as evidence of a particularly conservative form of "gleeful malice" this is pretty thin gruel. Not just because it wasn't especially malicious by campaign standards, but because it wasn't limited to the Republicans. As a teenager in North Carolina at the same time, I owned a "Helmsbusters" button with essentially the same design. And there was plenty of "Ronbusters" and "Reaganbusters" merchandise out there as well.

The striking thing here isn't that Frank is apparently unaware of the equivalent material on the left. At the time he was a conservative teenager in a conservative state, and I'm not surprised if he didn't see the buttons, posters, and T-shirts available on the other side of the spectrum -- especially in a year when liberals weren't exactly omnipresent. What's striking is that he would use that CR kitsch as evidence of something peculiar to the right without checking whether Democrats also adopted what was, after all, a pretty obvious pop culture reference. If Frank was already running "Fritzbusters" searches on eBay, how much work would it have been to type in "Reaganbusters" as well and see what comes up?