Saturday, 04.05.08

Barr None

Eric S. Lesser / Getty Images News

Former Rep. Bob Barr, once an ardent Republican and one of the architects of the effort to impeach President Clinton, is on the verge of entering the presidential race as a Libertarian.

Had Bob Barr won his race for Georgia's Seventh Congressional District in 2002, it's easy to imagine him having stayed a fairly loyal Bush Republican. Though Barr had raised objections to the USA Patriot Act, he was never a dyed-in-the-wool dissenter in the vein of Rep. Ron Paul. Since leaving office, however, Barr has been radicalized by what he sees as the erosion of our civil liberties. Once known for his zealous opposition to medical marijuana, he has reversed his old stand on the Drug War, and he is almost as passionate in damning the invasion of Iraq as Paul himself. Can Barr become the Ralph Nader of 2008 -- spoiling the election for Republican conservatives, or perhaps for anti-war Democrats? Almost certainly not. All the same, this year's most interesting presidential debate will likely happen within Bob Barr's Libertarian Party.

Though the left has the money and the momentum, the fragmentation of the political right is entering a new and fascinating phase. Long-suppressed populist and nationalist currents reemerged in 2006, shaping the backlash against immigration reform as well as the Democratic campaigns of Jim Webb and the failed congressional candidate Paul Hackett. In this year's GOP primaries, both Paul and Mike Huckabee mobilized small yet passionate constituencies eager to build an alternative to movement conservatism as we know it. In Paul's case, this populist and nationalist anger was tied to an idiosyncratic libertarianism founded in constitutional principle. Some Paulites claimed to be returning to the Republican Party's Reaganite roots. But of course they were in fact advocating a return to the verities of Robert Taft's day, and to the scrupulously independent foreign policy of George Washington's Farewell Address. Is there any future in this brand of politics? Hundreds of thousands of youthful activists seem to think so. If Barr can keep them energized, he may well change the face of national politics for years to come.

Meanwhile, Mike Gravel, the erstwhile Democratic presidential candidate, has also thrown his hat into the ring for the Libertarian nomination. For all his strident anti-imperialism, Gravel never developed a real constituency on the left. But his politics offer an intriguing way forward for Libertarians. His plan for overhauling the welfare state, devised by the far-from-insane Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff, promises to put entitlements on a sound footing and deliver healthcare to all Americans, all while sparking an investment-led economic boom. This isn't the kind of platform that normally appeals to flinty individualists, but the case can be made that the plan is in some important sense freedom-friendly. Provided you found the right messenger -- namely, someone slightly less loopy than Gravel -- it might even resonate with the public.

— Reihan Salam

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