Today (September 8 2016) Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson actually got on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program, which would normally be great exposure, especially for a third party candidate trying to get into the national debates. But frequent panelist Mike Barnicle of The Daily Beast asked him at one point, what would you do about Aleppo? Johnson responded, “And what is Aleppo?” And Barnicle said, “You’re kidding.” Host Joe Scarborough asked, rationally, “do you really think that foreign policy is so insignificant, that somebody running for president of the United States shouldn’t know what Aleppo is, where Aleppo is, why Aleppo is so important?” Johnson demurred, “I understand the crisis that is going on,” but at this point his stammering defense wasn’t convincing.
Never mind that Barnicle himself forgave Johnson’s flub, apparently on grounds that not too many other people know what and where Aleppo is. For example, the reporters at The New York Times. It doesn’t matter. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
Not that I am much for public speaking myself, but if asked, I would probably say something like: “Aleppo is a humanitarian crisis. But it is a crisis because of Bashir Assad. As a libertarian, and believer in constitutional government, I think that America should only involve itself through humanitarian aid. But that may not be enough. If it is not enough, the president has to ask Congress if it is worth going to war against Assad. I don’t think it is, but I could make that case, because Assad’s war is the main cause of the refugee crisis that affects Greece, Turkey, and NATO partners further in Europe. If we withdraw, that situation will get worse, and Russia and Iran fill the vacuum. Any decision we make will have consequences, including the decision to do nothing. What we CANNOT do is do what Barack Obama did, which was to draw a line in the sand, and then do nothing when Assad crossed it. We cannot wash our hands of the thing and then act surprised when Russia brings Syria into their sphere of influence. And we cannot cluck that ‘someone needs to stop the bloodshed’ and then contribute to it without doing anything to conclude the war.”
One of the problems, if not the problem, with American politics is its tribalism. Rather than follow a party because it holds to your favorite policies, more and more, people change their policies to promote their party. So I suppose one good thing about being a “third” party supporter whose candidates have slim to no chance of election is that we do not have to bend over backwards to pretend bending over backwards will help them. Unlike, say, Paul Ryan, we can call a spade a spade. So I’m glad that the libertarian community’s general reaction to Gary Johnson’s brainfart is about the same as everybody else’s.
You cannot ask to be on the same stage as the big kids and then, when asked a debate-level question, give a non-response that isn’t even Trump-level bullshit. This is why I have kept saying: If you’re in a third party you need to be able to answer the question of what you would do when you actually have power. Because not only are major-party candidates not sufficiently grilled on that matter themselves, the less serious the two major parties become, the more people will look for alternatives, and someday some journalist will actually come to you, Third-Party Candidate, and ask a serious policy question- in the expectation of a serious answer. And guess what? That someday was today. And as we have since observed, the media which pretended you didn’t exist no matter how much you jumped up and down for attention will give you ALL THE ATTENTION IN THE FUCKING WORLD as long as it causes the maximum embarrassment to you and your political movement.
Which goes to something else I’ve said: Take the process seriously, so that people think you deserve to be elected. Because you will not be carried. There is a double standard against you. The system does not change, because various people, including the Beltway press and the Commission on Presidential Debates, make a living by not letting it change. You are PETA, and they are Colonel Sanders. Their people will be given every excuse, and they will damn you to Hell for one mistake. You are not “cool.” You are not Donald Trump. You will not be given credit for being the smartest paste-eater in the Special Ed class just because your daddy bought the school.
But speaking of which:
The biggest political news last night prior to the Johnson fiasco was the ultimately bigger fiasco with the “Commander-in-Chief Forum” hosted by a veterans’ organization and broadcast by the NBC networks. If there is anyone who has been more ridiculed than Gary Johnson, it is Today‘s Matt Lauer, who was hammered in real time by social media for being as hard on Hillary Clinton as he was easy on Donald Trump. But while both Clinton and Trump were asked not asked about the city in Aleppo in particular, they were both asked about Middle East policy, and their answers were hardly more satisfying than Gary Johnson’s. I am not sure if that is consoling or depressing.
Hillary Clinton had to take questions from both military Right and pacifist Left members of the audience, and was at pains to stress why she had taken positions – especially on supporting the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq- that are now unpopular. While she now takes responsibility and regrets that mistake, she defended her more recent decision as Secretary of State to support the overthrow of Qaddafi in Libya, knowing that if the US did nothing, his regime would cause a humanitarian crisis. Which is a great point actually, but it doesn’t change the fact that, as with Iraq, we intervened and did not do a good job of helping to create a stable, effective and responsible civilian government for the country, even though the Libya rebellion was a spontaneous uprising and not an American takeover like the conquest of Iraq. And while Clinton defensively insisted that we will not go back to having boots on the ground, it’s been pointed out that the Obama Administration has already sent “advisors” and even Special Forces to help Iraq against ISIS on the Mosul front.
After that, Lauer started his interview with Trump, who boasted that unlike Hillary, he was always against the Iraq War – even though Clinton had warned Lauer minutes before that Trump was in fact in favor of the war at that time, and had said so in interviews with Howard Stern and others. And when Trump was sort of pressed on what he would do to defeat ISIS in Syria, Trump at first said he had a plan, but “I don’t want to broadcast to the enemy exactly what my plan is.” Isn’t that like where Nancy Pelosi said, “we have to pass the bill so that we can find out what is in it“? Oh, I forgot, it’s okay when YOUR party has the White House.
But that should give you an idea of how fucked America and the “international community” will be after this election: On the matter of Syria, Trump is doing his usual con man spiel, Clinton will “take responsibility” for her past policies but has no vision for how to resolve the conflict without getting us further involved, and Gary Johnson, the last hope of sensible people, has no grasp of the matter whatsoever.
The best a libertarian can say for Johnson – and this is charity – is that he is no more clueless than the two “respectable” party nominees, to say nothing of a superficial mainstream media that has decided for the rest of us which two candidates get to be “respectable” and which are beneath notice. But if you’re no less clueless than the establishment, that defeats the purpose of replacing it.