John Nichols: Is Bob Barr libertarian enough?

John Nichols  —  6/11/2008 5:26 am

In Wisconsin and most other states, the Libertarian Party has struggled in recent years to connect politically -- not because its ideas are wrong but because so many of them are so right that they are "borrowed" by Democrats and Republicans. Democrats, such as Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, echo the party's view that the government ought not dictate who we can marry, what legitimate medical treatments we can seek, and whether we should be spied on. Sincere Republicans, such as 2nd District congressional candidate Dave Redick, preach a downsizing government gospel straight out of the Libertarian prayer book.

So the Libertarians are stuck seeking "big-name" candidates who can present a reasonable sampling of their views to voters. It worked in Wisconsin in 2002, when Tomah Mayor Ed Thompson, brother of former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, ran as a reasonably consistent small "l" libertarian and an exceptionally consistent good guy. Thompson won 185,000 votes for more than 11 percent of the total. Four years later, without Thompson, the party wasn't a factor.

This year, Libertarians think they have a national version of Thompson in former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr.

"Republicans and Democrats have good reason to fear a candidate like Barr, who refuses to accept the 'business as usual' attitude of the current political establishment," declares the party, which recently nominated the ex-Republican as its 2008 standard-bearer.

Republicans do fear Barr. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says Barr's candidacy will make it "marginally easier for Barack Obama to become president" in a race against Republican John McCain. The conservative Washington Times goes further, suggesting, "Republicans, both publicly and behind the scenes, are saying that a Barr run could ... sink Mr. McCain's Republican candidacy in the general election."

This may be the case. But the key word here is "may."

The threat Barr poses will depend on the sort of campaign he mounts. At this point, even Libertarians remain unsure of what to expect from their new nominee -- and relatively new party member. (Only after the 2006 elections did Barr enter the Libertarian fold.)

To be sure, a former congressman with a fiery speaking style and some maverick credentials is a catch for a small party that struggles to regain the attention and presidential votes it won a quarter century ago. (The party's record-high presidential vote came in 1980, when lawyer Ed Clark took 921,299 votes, almost three times what the Libertarian won in 2004.)

Barr is more prominent than recent Libertarian nominees. In fact, he is a good deal better known at this stage than the previous Republican congressman turned Libertarian, a fellow named Ron Paul, was when he became the party's 1988 candidate.

Barr has some libertarian -- or at least constitutional -- credentials. Toward the end of his tenure in the House, for instance, he joined liberal Democrats in challenging the worst excesses of the Patriot Act.

But Barr, the bulldog battler for the impeachment of Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1998, never came around -- as did other principled conservatives such as former Reagan administration lawyer Bruce Fein -- to actively supporting moves to hold George Bush to account. While Barr acknowledged that Bush had broken laws, he could never muster the independence to call for impeaching a Republican president.

His inability to break with Bush sums up Barr's problem. He has yet to decide whether he will run as a hybrid Republican-Libertarian or as a genuine "pox on both their houses" Libertarian. That worries small "l" libertarians, who note that he has not always shared the party's anti-big-government line.

Though he has softened somewhat with regard to the drug policy reforms so popular with Libertarian activists, for instance, Barr was once an ardent critic of medical marijuana and an over-the-top advocate for militarizing the "war on drugs."

Barr has also been a big-government man when it comes to restricting abortion rights (he's 100 percent anti-choice), marriage rights (he sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act) and freedom of religion (he once pressured the Pentagon to bar the practice of Wicca in the military).

When Barr was booted from Congress in 2002, Libertarians ran television ads condemning him.

Now he's their candidate.

The party's embrace of Barr did not come easily. At the Libertarian convention in Denver, it took six ballots to settle the nomination.

Even then, the convention choice did not settle whether Barr would campaign as a conservative Republican running as a Libertarian, or a real Libertarian.

How Barr resolves this quandary will determine whether the Libertarian nominee poses any threat to McCain. If Barr presents himself as a conservative Republican with Libertarian highlights, he won't matter. Movement conservatives will, ultimately, rally to McCain -- as they rallied behind Bush the Elder in 1988.

Conversely, if Barr enters the fall competition with a campaign message that extends from Ron Paul's renegade run for this year's Republican nod -- which attracted so much Internet energy, money and support from young idealists -- he might yet be the menace that Newt Gingrich fears.

John Nichols is associate editor of The Capital Times.

John Nichols  —  6/11/2008 5:26 am