The Case for Libertarian Bob Barr

By Andrew B. Lohse | Friday, October 31, 2008

Editor’s Note: On October 21, The Dartmouth Review and Beta Theta Pi fraternity sponsored a speech and Q&A from Libertarian Presidential Candidate and former Congressman Bob Barr. This event was covered by NBC Nightly News and broadcast in part with an NBC interview. Review writer Andrew Lohse also interviewed Congressman Barr on October 9. The Dartmouth Review is not endorsing any candidate this election season.

I have a problem. I’m voting for a third party candidate—Bob Barr. Barr is the Libertarian presidential candidate. My parents, glaring speechlessly and wondering what happened to the young Republican who cried when Bob Dole lost in ‘96, tell me I’m throwing my vote away. I haven’t even made this confession yet to my grandfather, a lifelong “common sense” Republican, but I shudder to think what he’ll say. My other grandfather also cried when Clinton won in ‘96, so he might understand why I’m voting for the man who tried to send “42” back to Arkansas.

This election season, Obamamania is feverishly hot; news stories of women fainting at rallies, pious displays of Obama as the Messiah, and even Obama’s own claims to “stop the sea’s rise” allude to the fact that the Democratic party is obsessively consumed by the cult of personality erected around “The One.” “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” he tells crowds of supporters.

For the GOP, a party I no longer identify with, there is much less excitement. McCain’s not exactly electrifying, and the hype around Sarah Palin has fizzled out. But what’s worse is that the Republican ticket is confirming what the Bush II presidency already established: that to be a Republican these days is to be something different than a conservative.

So to other disaffected conservatives disgusted by the bailout, the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, excessive spending, and the Federal Government running roughshod over the states, I offer you an impractical alternative: vote for Bob Barr.

Well known as a Congressman elected in the infamous Republican Revolution “Class of ‘94” to serve Georgia’s seventh district, Barr was a legislator of the highest degree who played a leading role in the Clinton impeachment.

I had the privilege of interviewing the Congressman and seeing him speak at Beta, and can honestly say that in Barr, the American people can find a rare amalgam of principle, persistence, and philosophy that no other major party candidate has. I mean, come on, when was the last time Barack Obama—former Constitutional law professor—cited the Federalist Papers in his stump speech? When was the last time John McCain mentioned the Constitution or the Bill of Rights at a Town Hall meeting?

Watching Barr rail against the American two-party system should have been inspirational for any politically-minded Dartmouth student. When asked about the woes of this system, Barr points out that “the lesser of two evils is still evil,” and summarizes his campaign as “trying to convince the American people that they deserve better. They used to never be satisfied with that sort of notion, that they had to pick between two poor choices, but since the two party system has become so ingrained, it’s now endemic. I could not support either of them.”

Barr left the Republican Party in 2006, or more accurately, “The Republican Party left me,” he says, echoing Ronald Reagan. Since 2006, Barr has hadno problem angering the GOP establishment—he’s the only true “maverick” in the race.

For a man who has spent his political career advancing conservative causes, Barr is exasperated that conservative ideals are suddenly on the “outside” of the Republican Party. It wasn’t Barr who changed when he switched identification in 2006. If voters had each candidate’s stances on the issues outlined before them in the 2008 election, they would see that Barr is the only candidate who stands for mainstream ideas like smaller government, spending cuts, a less interventionist foreign policy, increased civil liberties, and states’ rights—all traditional conservative positions that have been abandoned by the current Republican Party.

However, even the rare principled politician like Barr can be deceived. In the first Bush term he voted for both the Patriot Act and the Iraq War, two votes he describes as his biggest regrets. In his own words, “My vote to authorize the war was a mistake, and I realize it now. The administration gave inaccurate, unsound intelligence. I voted to depose Saddam Hussein—the Bush administration used that resolution for a multi-year occupation of Iraq. Unlike McCain, I don’t appreciate the fact that the administration did a bait and switch; but that bait and switch doesn’t seem to bother him.”

When asked about how he is different from the two major party candidates, Barr describes the philosophical and pragmatic divides. Obama and McCain “both support the expansion of government powers to watch its own citizenry. This shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the fourth Amendment and of our intelligence agencies; surveillance should be about targeting and focusing resources.” Barr, by contrast, is for limited government and the protection of civil liberties.

Bob Barr knows about intelligence, having served in the CIA for eight years. After that, Barr was known as a firebrand in Congress and this reputation suits him, though he complements it with fact-based analysis and wonkish integrity. This sets him apart from his opponents, who, according to Barr “don’t have the foggiest notion of the basic elements of human nature and the role of government.”

On the “bailout” bill, Congressman Barr, a true conservative, occupies the ground surrendered by Congress’s impotent Republican minority and its presidential candidate—Barr opposed the bill. Barr says that “The tone that has been set in the bill is very disingenuous. The government’s goal is to increase control over the economy. One of the ways they are doing this is by using tactics and the rhetoric of fear to get people to conclude that they must give more power to the government. This is a false premise. There is not a single example of a government that centrally controls and plans its economy that has succeeded.” Barr is a staunch supporter of fiscal conservatism, in contrast to McCain and his proposal to add an additional $300 billion to the taxpayer funded bailout.

Barr also boldly discussed the Federal Reserve, which is something most politicians either are too afraid to mention or do not understand. Clearly, the Federal Reserve is not a “hot-button” political issue, as frankly no one really cares about it, despite the fact that it is the most important and least controlled currency regulator.
Barr tells The Review:

So few Americans understand the Federal Reserve. It will take a period of educating the public about what it is and what it isn’t. We should look at alternatives. For the people to blithely and blindly buy into the notion that unelected people can control their currency is outrageous—but again, there is so little understanding about the economy or repealing the Federal Reserve, and that makes the issue difficult. What I do think it’s about is control—government wants to control. It has a desire for power; John Adams cautioned against it, so did Edmund Burke. It’s just fundamental human nature: government exists to gain, exercise, and increase power. Our founding fathers understood that, so they instituted checks and balances to mitigate human nature’s effects.

Barr may not be the smoothest political candidate running in this election, but he is capable of discussing the issues, government, and philosophy in a way that most modern-day candidates are not.

With the election just around the corner, and an Obama victory almost unavoidable, it is not too late to shift gears and send a message to the Republican National Committee that we true conservatives want Barr’s version of conservatism—not McCain’s or Palin’s. The Republican Party needs to realign itself with the traditional political right, and the more votes Barr gets, the more the RNC will understand that its version of pseudo-conservatism is no longer acceptable. This is not changing the Republican Party; this is reminding it of its roots.

Barr says it best: “I will not believe to my dying day that America has passed a point of no return. Every day that goes by is a chance to change America for the better and return it to the way that its founding fathers and Constitution envisioned it.”

The Case for Libertarian Bob Barr

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