Root Canal for America
The Grifter gets the LP VP nod. Jesse Walker regrets it. Tim Lee isn’t even that happy about Barr. Radley Balko is happier. Radley’s dogs perform a dramatization of the reaction of the so-called "radical wing" of the Party to the new ticket.
I largely agree with Jesse, about the top and the bottom of the ticket. I don’t expect Barr’s candidacy to really get Republicans to, in Radley’s words, "learn that it’s time to boot the neocons and pay more attention to its limited government wing," because I don’t think the GOP’s limited-government wing is either very large or very popular. What might happen is, over the last few years, Republican leaders and para-intellectuals have stopped paying even lip-service to the Party’s libertarianish wing, even expressing open contempt – if Barr/Root cost McCain the election the GOP might return to the era of mouthing limited-government platitudes while reifying the corporate state.
That said. While the name "Ralph Nader" still provokes spittle-flecked fury in some quarters, you can make a case that: Ralph Nader had success in 2000 by arguing that the Democratic Party wasn’t "progressive" enough on economics and foreign policy, and since then the Dems have moved substantially to the left of their official 2000 positions. In other words, Naderism succeeded. (Whether it was worth the cost is an open question.) Theoretically Barr could do the same for the GOP and constitutionalism.
If that happens, we’ll have a marginally better Republican Party, which we need, because the Republican Party isn’t going away, and even if it does get swept this year, it will be back in control of the government later or, more likely, sooner.
Comment by joel hanes —
May 26, 2008 @ 2:07 am
The Democratic Party’s leftward movement since 2000, if it exists, has nothing to do with Ralph Nader and has everything to do with the utter failure of DLC-style “centrist” triangulation and with the fascist excesses of the Republican party.
Nader gave us Bush 43. That’s his legacy, overriding anything else he may ever have said or done. Never to forget. Never to forgive. Fuck him.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 26, 2008 @ 3:21 am
The Democratic Party may have moved left in certain ways, but significant elements of the party’s members in Congress have shown remarkable accommodation toward civil liberties infringements and the continuing occupation of Iraq.
As to the LP, it may very well be that Barr is on the road to Damascus and is no longer the guy who was willing to support the Iraq War and shred the Bill of Rights for drug enforcement. It may be that Root is no longer a hawk. Still, it is striking that even a minor opposition element, one with nothing to lose, has nominated a uniformly rightward ticket. It’s as though the rot in America draws almost everything into its orbit, even those groups with nothing to gain and nothing to lose and hence no reason to join the orbit.
Still, I will say this much: Barack Obama is remarkable among the Presidential candidates for being one of the few to oppose this war from day 1, and for articulating the reasons for that opposition even when it was unpopular to do so. I don’t consider myself an Obama fanboy, but I do admit to respecting him for his consistent and correct anti-war stance.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 26, 2008 @ 3:29 am
BTW, even if Root and Barr are truly reformed, it’s striking that even in the Libertarian Party, an opposition group that prides itself on alleged independence, they’d rather give the spotlight to people who were wrong in 2003, rather than those who were right in 2003. The rot runs deep in America.
I’m guessing that in November there will be only 2 presidential candidates who were right in 2003: Obama and whomever the Greens nominate. I’d like to cast a vote in protest against the Iraq War, and the strongest protest that I can think of is a vote for somebody who was right in 2002 and 2003. That means I’ll probably vote against Barr.
Comment by abb1 —
May 26, 2008 @ 3:46 am
Parties and politicians are only a reflection of their constituencies; the constituencies are defined by their percieved interests, mainly economic interests. Politicians and parties live and die by their sponsors, mostly the big business; ideologies get glamorized or discredited depending on their usefulness to the big business.
Will the investment banking defeat the energy and “defense” industries this year? Who knows, anything is possible. Life is stranger than fiction. Stay tuned…
Comment by jkc —
May 26, 2008 @ 7:30 am
The LP and its conventions might be silly but silly things can have really important consequences in American politics. In 2000, a badly-designed butterfly ballot created a situation where a bunch of elderly, Jewish South Florida voters voted for Pat Buchanan rather than Al Gore (the candidate that they had intended).
Eight years later, we’re stuck spending $120 billion per year for a pointless War in Iraq. Thousands of American and Iraqi mothers and fathers and sons and daughters have been killed. The Middle East has become more violent, less stable.
Thank you, Theresa Lepore!
Now imagine: What if, in 2004, the LP could have run a candidate who would’ve siphoned off rightwing votes? Could Bush have been toppled?
Is it possible that, with different LP ‘04 strategy, we would have been out of Iraq by now?
Comment by Donald Johnson —
May 26, 2008 @ 9:15 am
Very few of the Nader-haters in 2000 admitted that his critique of the Democrats and their DLC tendencies was correct–they were too busy shooting down the notion (which Nader agreed was false) that there was absolutely no difference between the two parties. Not even Joe Lieberman’s presence on the ticket seemed to make any difference. Bush’s first years in office were a demonstration of everything Nader said.
Not that I don’t regret Nader’s candidacy. I think, though, that if Gore/Lieberman had won (or been allowed to win) the Democrats would have accelerated their rightward drift. And if 9/11 happened and Gore hadn’t been bloodthirsty enough in reaction (the Republicans would have portrayed him as a wimp if he didn’t invade Iraq and 20 or 30 other countries), he’d have lost in 2004. Which is all speculative, of course, but then blaming Nader for what happened under Bush is silly, IMO, unless people in 2000 clearly understood that Bush was going to invade Iraq once he was in office.
I’m also a little cynical about St. Gore for the same reason I’m not a total admirer of Jimmy Carter. Politicians are often more honest and likeable once they stop being politicians. Carter out of office has been a champion of human rights. In office he claimed to be, while helping the Indonesians slaughter the Timorese.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
May 26, 2008 @ 9:16 am
“In office he claimed to be”–a champion of human rights, I should have added. It sounds like I was saying he claimed to be in office while in office.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
May 26, 2008 @ 9:26 am
Hmm. Another correction. It’s fair to attack Nader on things like Bush’s record of appointing Supreme Court Justices–Nader said that the Democrats could have some influence there, and clearly, knowing what Nader knew about the Democrats, he should have expected them to roll over and play dead. It’s not fair to blame him for Iraq, IMO. I don’t recall anyone predicting something like that.
IMO, one should blame the Democrats a lot more for not standing up to Bush, but that’s just me.
Comment by David Tomlin —
May 26, 2008 @ 9:47 am
Libertarian Party leaders have been expressing open contempt for their libertarianish wing for years. Maybe the Republicans are copying.
Barr was on CNN this morning, going back on his pretended opposition to DOMA.
I think it’s time to start organizing Libertarians Against Barr. Young people need to be told that Barr’s retrograde attitudes aren’t representative of the movement.
Comment by Bill Woolsey —
May 26, 2008 @ 10:51 am
“Barr was on CNN going back on his pretended opposition to DOMA.”
What did he say, exactly?
Comment by dhex —
May 26, 2008 @ 11:15 am
Nader gave us Bush 43.
you’re taking away a lot of credit from the dems and gore. it wasn’t neck and neck because bush was a grand statesman or electrifying presence even in the gop.
it takes a party to lose an election.
Comment by joel hanes —
May 26, 2008 @ 12:09 pm
you’re taking away a lot of credit from the dems and gore.
A fair cop (although you will perhaps notice that I had cast aspersions on the DLC in passing — the DLC pretty much was the entire Dem leadership in 2000, including Gore).
But W’s coronation as Emperor required a confluence of circumstances: a trivial and Republican-complicit mass media, a win-at-all-costs Republican party that was willing to push gaming the system into felony territory, and an apathetic electorate that could be persuaded to consider the differences between Bush and Gore to be unimportant.
Nader was the proverbial straw.
I hold him in such special contempt because there was a chance, a moment when Nader could have single-handedly saved us from the Great Unpleasantness of 2000 and much of the damage that has ensued.
He did not rise to the occasion; to this day he denies any responsibility for the consequences of his choices.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 26, 2008 @ 12:59 pm
Nader was to a large extent right about the parties, but wrong about the candidates.
The things that Bush and Cheney have done were not pulled out of thin air and foisted on an unprepared nation. We’ve had decades of imperial foreign policy, a well-fed military-industrial complex, poorly policed intelligence agencies, and outsourced torture by the name of “extraordinary rendition.” Something like the Patriot Act would have been unthinkable without the precedent of ever-expanding police powers in the name of the drug war. And all of these things have gone on for decades with broad bipartisan support.
Nader was right that neither party has been saintly on these things.
Where Nader was wrong was on the difference between Gore and Bush. I won’t pretend that Gore would have been a saint–I think he would have responded to events in a manner dictated by a bad status quo. However, there is a difference between continuing a bad thing and taking it to the next level. The way that Bush and Cheney have reshaped rules and redefined power relationships would have been harder for Gore. They have made it so that institutions are now answerable to a small clique in the executive branch (and the contractors tied to that clique) rather than a broader (but bad!) “Washington Consensus.” They have made it so that long-standing practices like torture no longer need to be kept to a “few bad apples” level of deniability.
The beast has gone to the next level. It feels fewer constraints, and it serves fewer (and more ambitious) masters. That’s the difference between Bush and Gore.
Comment by Bill Woolsey —
May 26, 2008 @ 1:13 pm
I saw the written report on CNN about Barr and DOMA. It is nothing new.
Barr has promised to work to repeal the portion of DOMA that created a federal definition of marriage. He committed to that after a libertarian gay rights group explained all the problems it was causing.
He has always said that he stood by the portion that allowed each state to determine its own marriage policy.
Barr’s response to the California Supreme Court’s recent action allowing
for gay marriage was positive. If you
read his press release, somewhere in the
last paragraph he more or less explained that deciding this state by state was the proper method, and California had made its decision. He really didn’t comment on whether this was a good decision by California or not.
We will see, but I think Barr’s day as “culture warrior” are over.
Comment by David Tomlin —
May 26, 2008 @ 2:46 pm
Barr wants it both ways. He tells one audience he wants to repeal part of DOMA. He tells another audience DOMA is fine the way it is and lies about its content.
Comment by Doc Nebula —
May 27, 2008 @ 12:57 pm
Nader gave us Bush 43. That’s his legacy, overriding anything else he may ever have said or done. Never to forget. Never to forgive. Fuck him.
It’s important to understand that Nader did not give you Bush 43. I did. I lived in Tampa in 2000, and I voted for Ralph. Eagerly. Enthusiastically. Blame me. (But don’t fuck me; my wife is very possessive.)
Having said all that, it’s only occurred to me earlier today that what Ralph (and/or I) may have truly accomplished is preventing a Joe Lieberman presidency in 2008. And by the Jesus, I’ll buy that for a dollar.
Comment by Doc Nebula —
May 27, 2008 @ 1:08 pm
And having said all that, let me add this, from one of my years old previous blog posts on the subject of Ralph Nader’s culpability in the results of the 2000 election:
We find it imperative to advise you that slack jawed, slope browed, mouth breathing drool producers who rather vacuously proclaim that those who voted for the most clearly qualified and inarguably best candidate in the last Presidential election, instead of betraying their country with weaselly electoral vacillations in the name of so called pragmatism, in some way handed this country over to an inarticulate jackass who exults in the deaths of uneducated black women at the hands of his State’s executioners (while clearly neither knowing the meaning of, nor being able to pronounce properly, the word ‘exults’) are, in fact, making a rather obvious mistake.
Which is to say, said lackwits are mistaking the few million intelligent people who voted for Nader, for the 40 million or so idiots who voted for Bush.
We hope we’ve cleared this up for you now, and won’t have to go into further detail, in which it might be necessary for us to mention that, had Al Gore had a shred of conscience, ethics, integrity, or simply more concern for his fellow citizens and his nation than he has for his ego, he’d have withdrawn from the race and urged all his supporters to vote for Ralph Nader, which from what we hear, most of them would have preferred to do anyway.
Last but not least, we’d also like to point out that even with Ralph Nader acting as a ’spoiler’, Al Gore did not lose the election, he won the election, and if you are as puzzled as we here are as to how George W. Bush can, in conscience, assume the mantle of President of the greatest democracy in the history of humanity when he knows full well a majority of voters chose someone else for the job, well, that just makes you a rational human being, as opposed to, say, a Republican.
Comment by joel hanes —
May 27, 2008 @ 7:25 pm
doc:
I have no designs on your person, so your wife can rest easy (you’re cute and all, but you’re not my type).
And watching “Recount” last night did in fact cause me to think about what a disaster Joe Lieberman would have been as VP; and that made me doubt Gore’s judgement more than I already do.
But, since we’re whipping the carcase of this particular expired equid :
Ralph Nader would have made a truly awful President. Have you read the interviews with the people who’ve worked with him over the years? He drives them away, he drives them crazy, he drives them to quit Nader’s organization and found a competing organization because although they share his goals, they can’t stand to work with or for Nader. He’s a terrible administrator, a terrible personnel manager, an incompetent bureaucrat. He’s the wrong man for the job, or the Presidency is the wrong job for the man, take your pick.
It’s wonderful that Ralph Nader understands so well and can so clearly articulate the ways that corporatism has undermined our lives, our rights, and our Republic. I think this best suits him for the job of pundit.
But corporatism is only one of the dangers to our lives, our rights, and our Republic, and although Bush 43 has demonstrated that it’s not the most dire of those threats, it’s apparently still the only threat that Nader considers important.
And anyone who thinks that they’re qualified to be President of the United States without having held any previous elective office is so deluded as to be rejected out of hand (I say the same about Jesse Jackson, BTW).
Comment by abb1 —
May 28, 2008 @ 3:35 am
But corporatism is only one of the dangers to our lives, our rights, and our Republic, and although Bush 43 has demonstrated that it’s not the most dire of those threats, it’s apparently still the only threat that Nader considers important.
Could you elaborate, please?
Comment by Doc Nebula —
May 28, 2008 @ 12:09 pm
Joel,
While corporatism is certainly not the only problem we are facing, it seems to lie behind most if not all of the most profoundly dangerous ones — the energy crisis, the imminent collapse of our financial structure, myriad pressing ecological issues (of which global warming is merely the most publicized, at the moment), the astonishing levels of corruption in our government, our health care crisis, the ongoing debacle in Iraq… pretty much all of these things can be traced back to short sighted corporate greed.
You can treat the symptoms, as most reformist politicans recommend, or you can go after the disease. Nader wants to go after the disease, and seems to be very nearly our foremost expert at doing so.
I don’t know anything about how well Nader gets along with other people, but I’m not sure affability is a necessary precursor or concomitant to being an able executive. Many capable executives seem to be dickweeds on a personal level. I have no desire to take Ralph to a prom, or even sit down and have a beer with him. We’ve already seen what happens when the guy half the country wants to get drunk with gets into office.
As to Nader’s inexperience with government, well, yeah, I suppose that could be a fairly big issue, as would his utter inability to schmooze with the players in Congress, and the super-players who pull their strings. Yet let me cherish the notion that perhaps someone who doesn’t schmooze, who would, in fact, probably appoint enough Special Prosecutors to fill a medium sized concert hall, might be exactly what our spectacularly corrupt government needs.
I am, most likely, hopelessly naive… Jefferson Smith almost certainlly wouldn’t have accomplished a damn thing here in the real world, and certainly, Ralph Nader is no Capraesque hero.
Nonetheless, I cannot help but think that if the world would be a much better place now had Gore won in 2000 — something most of us now seem to accept as an inviolable truth — it would be several orders of magnitude better off after even one term of Nader at the helm.
Comment by joel hanes —
May 28, 2008 @ 6:23 pm
Hi Doc
I guess I have this idea that effective institutional leaders work primarily through influence, and that people who cannot work with others tend to be ineffectual institutional leaders, no matter how good their ideas.
Abb1 :
I’ll try to be brief. I see at least two additional threats: environment limits to population, and the rise of authoritarian politics in the US.
(Nader’s statement about the lack of difference between the two major parties can be used as a stencil: we agree that he keenly perceives the evils of corporatism, so whatever important differences there may be between Republican and Democratic patterns of governance, those differences are not differences with respect to corporatism.)
I disagree a bit with doc about the sources of our environmental problems, which I think are created more by human overpopulation and by the tragedy-of-the-commons mechanism than by the tangle of connected government/business pathologies that I label “corporatism”.
First, there’s too damned many humans on the earth, by at least a factor of two in any circumstance, and by a factor of ten if any substantial fraction of those people hope to live with a first world lifestyle for any length of time in a world that isn’t a completely industrialized landscape, and choking on its own waste. Try as I might, I can’t blame the tendency of people to multiply past the limits of their resource base on the evils of corporatism. It’s what human cultures do in times of plenty; when the lean years inevitably arrive, the adjustment process is usually brutal. Lives, liberties, polities, whole cultures are swept away. Babylonia was once a fertile and well-watered land, and could have remained so indefinitely had humans not settled there so thickly. The “demographic transition” is a good thing, but IMHO it has come too late by a century or so.
In addition to population growth, the tragedy-of-the-commons mechanism is a tremendous problem. (I hope you’re already familiar with Garrett Hardin’s seminal paper; if not, it’s well worth the time it takes to read.) It wasn’t primarily corporatism that degraded the surface waters of the US before the Clean Water Act, or that created the Dust Bowl, or that destroyed the enormously valuable and productive forests of Michigan, or that have pumped the Oglala Acquifer dry: it was mostly the sum of individual acts by yeoman farmers and urban smallholders, each acting in his own interest, each seeking to externalize the incremental cost of his actions.
Do I really have to describe the ways that the new politics of authoritarianism threaten our lives etc in the US? We’ve lost the right of habeus corpus, we will soon be legally required to carry ID papers at all times to show to any petty authority who demands them, by force of law. We openly employ torture. We have all but lost posse comittatus, and the President currently claims the legal authority to declare martial law and to use the military for internal law enforcement. The government wiretaps our communications without warrant, and without oversight. This President has brazenly admitted to multiple felonies in office, and committed many others not admitted, and has escaped sanction of any kind. Bush wasn’t even elected in the first place — he siezed power in what amounted to a coup, and dared the rest of us to do anything about it; we demurred. President Reagan set up a private military, with sources of funding not controlled by Congress, and in violation of the constitution — in fact, the funds came from covertly selling arms to an enemy nation — and no one was sanctioned. I don’t think these threats to our lives, etc. much come from the kind of corporatism that Nader identifies (althought that is a contributing factor); rather I think that a prosperous and complacent US populace has decided that it has too much to lose to be fooling around with dangerous ideas like liberty and equality under the law, and has decided to trade its rights for a the illusion of a little security. And an authoritarian governing class has exploited that abdication to cement its hold on the levers of power.
Hmm, that wasn’t brief, was it.
Comment by Mona —
May 28, 2008 @ 7:08 pm
Barr was on CNN this morning, going back on his pretended opposition to DOMA.
And I heard him on some or other cable news show last week disdainfully denying he would ever vote to legalize cocaine or heroin. Now, there is room in there for a decriminalization position, and as I recall it, he was arguing about voting at the state level, but still.
I’ve never been an LP member. Bob Barr is no reason to become one now.
Comment by Jim Davidson —
May 28, 2008 @ 8:50 pm
As a result of the evisceration of the Libertarian Party platform in 2006, Tom Knapp and others formed the Boston Tea Party. We are working on nominating someone for president who would not be a former drug warrior who supported the war in Iraq and hates Wiccans in the military and gay or polyamorous marriages by June the 14th. See our site at bostontea.us please.