The US Libertarian Party’s nomination race won’t make much of a splash in the media (for the usual reasons all minor parties encounter), but if Gary Johnson wins the nomination again he might be the most normal candidate in 2016:
Gary Johnson, not yet an official 2016 Libertarian Party candidate for president, spoke to the two-day LibertyFest 2015 at the Warsaw hall in the Williamsburg neighborhood of New York City this weekend. He defended freedom in all its forms, from the unregulated entrepreneurship of Uber and Lyft to marijuana, reduced taxes, and reduced warfare.
Yet even I — an anarcho-capitalist, as you may recall — am beginning to wonder if it’s necessary to emphasize philosophy for Johnson to shine in the strange setting of the 2016 race. I mean, if the Republicans end up offering someone as odd as Trump or Carson, and the Democrats offer a criminal such as Clinton or a socialist such as Sanders … couldn’t Johnson plausibly just run as the non-weird candidate for whom America has been waiting?
And believe me, I know how strange it sounds to be talking about the Libertarian as the normal one for a change. (Jimmy McMillan, the “Rent Is Too Damn High” guy, spoke on the same stage a couple hours before Johnson, and it’s not clear McMillan is even a full-fledged libertarian — maybe more of a Georgist? Or just an interesting, earnest character?)
Let us assume for the sake of argument that Johnson beats other would-be Libertarian Party nominees including Austin Petersen, who gave an energetic LibertyFest speech about mobilizing libertarian activists as if for war and hopes he’ll one day get the chance to institute a flat tax. Much as Libertarians usually worry about having a candidate who lacks the guts to push their philosophy in a full-throated way (witness their occasional wariness about Rand Paul), might this be a good year in which to skip ideology and use mere sanity as a wedge issue?
