The Libertarian Party
chose to nominate Chase Oliver as their
presidential candidate this past weekend. The good news: We have our first major presidential candidate of 2024 who is not eligible for Social Security.
President Biden turns 82 shortly after the election, and
Donald Trump turns 78 next month.
Jill Stein just turned 74, Cornel West turns 71 this week, and
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. turned 70 in January. In the unlikely event that all of these candidates qualified for a debate, the 38-year-old Oliver would stand out like actor Steve Guttenberg
among his fellow cast members of “Cocoon.”
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More good news: The Libertarians didn’t nominate Jacob Hornberger, the
guy who pledged to “abolish the Border Patrol and ICE and all controls on the free movements of people across borders.” I suppose that by declaring it to be legal for everyone to cross the border, you have technically solved the problem of illegal immigration. Yeah,
that’s the way to handle the 2 million or so illegal border crossings each year over the past three years.
The bad news: Oliver
wants a path to citizenship for 8 million people who entered the country illegally, which is just another way of rewarding people for breaking the law.
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Libertarianism is a beautiful philosophy cursed by its advocates. This is the third straight presidential cycle in which Democrats and Republicans have nominated unpopular figures. On paper, this is where a nice, normal human being who talked about reducing the scale and size of government, and maximizing liberty, should be remarkably popular. But for some reason, the 2016 Libertarian nominee, Gary Johnson,
thought it would be cute to stick his tongue out during an interview with MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt, and you couldn’t find Jo Jorgensen on the side of a milk carton in the 2020 news cycle. (The tongue guy had the best performance in the party’s history, with 3.3 percent of the vote nationwide in 2016.)
During an appearance at the Libertarian Party convention that went off the rails this past weekend, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump sneered at the booing crowd: “Maybe you don’t want to win. … Keep getting your 3 percent every four years.”
Of course the Libertarian Party is happy getting 1 to 3 percent every four years! No one joins the Libertarian Party because they love winning elections so much. Libertarianism as an abstract philosophy of limited government and maximum freedom is broadly appealing. Unfortunately, libertarianism as an actual political party is best represented by
that fat guy stripping on stage during their 2016 nominating convention.
Oliver is likely to be a more amiable candidate — really good odds of never sticking out his tongue the entire campaign — but he still is advocating for some policies that will be a hard sell. Many Libertarians are functionally isolationist, and Oliver wants to “close all overseas bases and immediately return active-duty personnel to domestic bases.” Good luck, NATO! Oliver also wants to end all “aid being directed to nation-states currently at war. This includes Israel and Ukraine.” Vladimir Putin and
Hamas must be high-fiving over that suggestion.
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Oliver also wants to “decriminalize possession and use of all drugs.” If I thought legalization would lead to fewer people suffering the devastating and sometimes fatal consequences of addiction, I’d be all for it. Alas, widespread accessibility to the hard stuff — in particular, heroin and fentanyl — makes people’s lives worse not better.
Even progressives in Portland, Ore., are reversing decriminalization effort from several years ago, seeing record overdoses and desperate, mind-addled addicts lying on their sidewalks.
Americans keep asking for a normal presidential candidate, and the Libertarians keep mishearing it was “a NORML presidential candidate.”
The Libertarian Party attracts the kinds of people who would rather be right than compromise one iota to be more popular and win more votes. Lo and behold, a party made up of people who hate making any changes to work within a larger group to achieve a goal isn’t great at building a broad coalition or avoiding infighting.
Sometimes, that willingness to defy orthodoxy makes you a daring, visionary iconoclast. And sometimes, it just makes you a maniac.
Oliver is probably going to get that traditional 1 to 3 percent or so, and the Libertarians will consider it a victory. Certainly, it isn’t likely to be enough of a disappointment to think about changing or compromising the party’s stances on any issues.
