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McAfee 2016: Libertarian For Real?

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In September, after computer security pioneer John McAfee announced his presidential candidacy under the “Cyber Party” label, I publicly suggested that he should consider seeking the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination instead.  On Christmas Eve , McAfee announced he’s doing exactly that.

No, I don’t think my suggestion changed his mind. I have no reason to believe he reads my column (or that he even has any idea who I am). But heck, maybe I’m wrong. So here’s another suggestion:

Get very libertarian, very quickly and very convincingly.

McAfee really doesn’t have that far to go. He clearly has libertarian instincts on issues like free speech, privacy, Internet censorship, immigration and foreign policy.

But in other areas, his positions are either too vague to really pin down, or else default to a naive technocratic progressivism that puts far more faith in government than Libertarians are comfortable with.

My working theory is that McAfee allowed the non-specificity and naivete to creep in on issues where he doesn’t have strong opinions, and that if he pays them more attention he’ll get more libertarian on them. At least I hope that’s the case, and that he’ll make the effort.

Why should he re-think? Does he really need to? Maybe not.

The Libertarian Party HAS nominated non-libertarians before. In 2008, big-government “conservative” Bob Barr fooled us into thinking he’d changed his stripes, then went back to his big-government “conservatism” as soon as he had what he wanted from us.

And based on my past experience with the Libertarian Party’s internal politics, a little bit of fame, fortune, glitz and glamour goes a long way.

Maybe McAfee can just waltz into our national convention in Orlando, Florida next May and walk out with our nomination because he’s famous and because he has more personal charisma in his left little finger than  previous (even though unannounced) front-runner and 2012 nominee Gary Johnson — who clings to some un-libertarian positions of his own — has in his whole body.

Then again, maybe not.

McAfee tells USA Today that none of the other Libertarian contenders have “personality.” I don’t know about that, but some of them do have a sincere and visible dedication to the principles the Libertarian Party stands for. That kind of dedication doesn’t always beat out personal fame and charisma, but sometimes it does … and the best outcome would be to get all of those things rolled up in one candidate.

If McAfee is willing and able to be that kind of candidate, the Libertarian Party, and America, could be in for an interesting election cycle. And let’s face it — on his worst day he’s a better pick than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Election 2016: Busted Ain’t Such a Bad Thing

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RGBStock.com Vote Pencil

Let me alert you to three facts:

Fact #1: Donald Trump has a ceiling of support among Republican primary voters.

Fact #2:  While it’s hard to tell exactly how high that ceiling is, it’s almost certainly short of an absolute majority in any state.

Fact #3: The Republican National Committee’s 2016 rules require state and territorial Republican parties holding primaries and caucuses prior to March 15, 2016 — that’s 29 of them — to allocate delegates proportionally rather than in “winner take all” schemes.

Assuming Trump remains in the race for his party’s presidential nomination, he will almost certainly arrive at the GOP national convention without enough delegates to win on the first ballot. Which means the Republican Party faces the prospect of a busted (party poo-bahs prefer the term “brokered”) convention.

Party establishments generally view that prospect with horror, and who can blame them? In 1924, the Democratic National Convention voted 103 times before coming up with a nominee.  The parties have massaged their convention rules over the decades to turn the end phase of their nomination processes into convivial coronations. The last true major party “brokered convention” happened to the Democrats in 1952, although the GOP came close in 1976.

But while busted conventions almost certainly bode ill for parties in the short term — that is, the particular election cycles in which they take place — they’re actually a great thing for both the parties and the public in the long term.

When George Wallace, whom I’m otherwise no fan of, asserted in 1968 that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Republicans and Democrats,” he was uttering a truism that has only become more true in the 48 years since.

Over time, the Republicans and Democrats have come to take for granted their ability to stack up constituencies and, whether those constituencies consider themselves well-represented or not, get the vote out to win elections. After all, where else do those constituencies — of particular interest to me, civil libertarian Democrats and economic libertarian Republicans — have to go?

It’s about time American political parties started having real debates again instead of just stacking hostage constituencies and handing out favors to the people who can deliver those constituencies.

And hey, no time like the present. Since the Republicans seem determined to lose the 2016 presidential election anyway, why not turn that loss into an opportunity?

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Op-Eds

The Stadium Welfairy Tale

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English: Edward Jones Dome - Home of St. Louis...
Edward Jones Dome — Home of St. Louis Rams (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most fairy tales begin “once upon a time, in a land far, far away.” The American sports industry’s fairy tale begins “all the time, right here.” Apart from that, though, it’s very similar to other fairy tales in that no sensible adult really believes the main elements of the story. It goes like this:

The ultra-wealthy owners of an ultra-profitable sports franchise decide their team needs a new stadium. But they have no intention of paying for that stadium themselves. They want the local, county and state governments in the area where the team plays to pick up the tab. And if those governments don’t cooperate, well, they’ll pack up the team and move it to some area with a government that’s more willing to fleece the taxpayers on its behalf.

Here’s where the fairy tale element comes in: Hey, guys, relax — this thing will more than pay for itself! Sure, you’re going to make taxpayers cover the building costs. Sure, you’re going to write all kinds of special tax breaks for the team’s owners into the deal. But the new stadium will create so much new economic development around it that you’ll be swimming in new jobs (and new tax revenues) before you know it. Everybody wins!

Well, no, everybody doesn’t win. Study after study shows that the “economic development”  claims are fairy tales. Stadium projects are at best an economic wash for the locales in which they’re built. The franchise continues to rake in fat stacks of cash; the taxpayers are just out a bunch of money.

My former home area of St. Louis, Missouri seems to be the proverbial sucker born every day.  A decade or so ago, area governments built a new stadium for the local Major League Baseball team, the Cardinals.

Now the city’s National Football League franchise, the Rams, wants one too, at a cost of $1.1 billion, even though the bonds on their current venue, the Edward Jones Dome,  won’t be paid off for another six years. The team’s owner, Stan Kroenke (estimated net worth: $7.7 billion), has threatened to move the team back to California if the taxpayers won’t pick up the vast bulk of the check.

Let’s call this what it is: Welfare for the rich, stolen from regular folks.  The billionaires get a happy ending. Everyone else gets eaten by the bears. Or, in this case, by the Rams.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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