The Ballad of Gary Johnson

[Published in the January 2012 issue of Charlatan, and written weeks prior to Johnson switching parties to pursue the Libertarian nomination.]

Gary Johnson is an accomplished entrepreneur, having grown a one-man business to employ a thousand. He's an experienced mountain climber, having summitted Everest. He's a seasoned triathlete, and an avid skier. He's built his own home. And also, he's a two-term governor of New Mexico who for months has been campaigning for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.

Not that you'd be expected to know this. Most Americans are scarcely aware of Johnson at all. He's been in a few debates (and even delivered a zinger or two), but has been excluded from most of them, and been generally ignored by the media.

Piqued by his ideas and candidacy, I participated this fall in some media conference calls with Gov. Johnson and then did a one-on-one interview with him for The Objective Standard.

Johnson is an unconventional Republican who calls himself a classical liberal and views the proper purpose of government as "protecting you and me against individuals, groups, corporations (and other countries) that would do us harm, whether that’s from a property perspective or physical harm." He cited for me the differences between his own classical liberal views and that of social conservatives: "I think the conservative agenda would criminalize behavior that a lot of individuals engage in, and I’m now talking about 'bedroom crimes,' I’m talking about how gay individuals should be able to enjoy freedoms and liberties extended to heterosexual couples. And smoking marijuana in the confines of your own home, doing no harm to anyone, arguably other than yourself — that shouldn’t be a crime. Should it be a crime if poker players in this country play poker online? That was Republican conservative legislation that got passed. Ten million Americans who were playing poker online can no longer do so. I would argue government has no place in that equation, other than the rule of law, contract law, [etc.]"

His stand on marriage equality garnered attention earlier this year when he criticized a conservative-circulated "marriage pledge" as "un-American," "intolerant," and "offensive." And he's doesn't simply take the standard counterpoint. Echoing the same message as a previous article I wrote, Johnson calls for government to "get out of the marriage business" altogether.

His divergence with typical Republicanism goes beyond social issues into the economic realm. Since my own take on Republicans is that they have no defining moral-economic principle, I posited this to him:

"Although Republicans allegedly stand for lower taxes and greater freedom, for over half a century they’ve defined and conducted themselves in relation to Democrats—who have grown progressively socialistic. Republicans were once against an income tax, but then accepted it, and we got higher and higher rates. They were against Social Security, but then accepted and expanded that. They were against Medicare, but then embraced it. And they were against welfare, but accepted most of that. How much of a role has this Republican slide played in causing the current fiscal crisis? How much are they to blame?"

"I really believe both parties are," he answered. "I just go back to a few short years ago when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency, and passed a prescription health care benefit—which at that time was the largest entitlement program ever passed—and ran up record deficits. So I see Republicans as part of the cause. I have not seen them as the solution here. Basically, I am a Republican because I’ve always felt that Republicans do a better job when it comes to the checkbook, but, of late, I just see it as status-quo on both sides.”

Johnson believes that a monetary collapse is eminent if things continue on the present course laid by Bush and Obama and their predecessors. "What America needs is a radical departure from business-as-usual, and that’s what my candidacy for president is all about."

"This radical change starts with not spending more money than you take in," he says. Johnson commits to slashing all government spending by 43% (the amount he says we are currently overspending every year, counting entitlement debt). Not spending more than is taken in sounds like the basis of fiscal sanity, yet how many others are truly dedicated to it?

Johnson advocates abolishing the IRS, throwing out existing tax code, and instituting the FairTax, a very simple consumption tax which Johnson says is, like the name implies, quite fair. For starters, it does away with a tax code so complex that it takes two work days every year for each American to comply with in filing taxes. And does away with the loopholes and unfairness inherent the monstrosity we have today.

"I am promising to submit a balanced budget in the year 2013 and to veto any expenditures that exceed what I consider to be 'balanced.' You could argue that they’ll just override that veto, and they probably will. But I would have been elected President promising to submit that balanced budget, and I think that budget, those expenditures, will come a lot closer to being balanced with a president who’s not going to accept any expenses or expenditures that aren’t balanced, as opposed to a president who’s going to do this over a fifteen to twenty year period, because 'that’s the only prudent way to go about this.' To me, that’s just the end. I think the day of reckoning is here—I really believe that—and that it has to be addressed, and that we can do it.”

It may all sound like political bluster, except Johnson has the proven record of integrity and results when it comes to the kind of radical steps he proposes. As governor of New Mexico, he vetoed more bills than the other 49 states' governors combined. In addition, he cut twelve hundred state job positions, cut taxes, reformed Medicaid, promoted school vouchers, privatized prisons, and, most importantly, helped eliminate the state’s budget deficit.

"There’s nothing in my résumé, nothing, to suggest that everything that you and I have talked about, that I am not going to pursue. I have every intention to pursue everything that I’m talking about."

It's a shame that even he has to say it. Because when he says it, he can only sound like a politician, and we’re conditioned to politicians as salesmen promoting themselves to gain status and power, conditioned to take their words with a grain of salt (if you're cynical enough, sometimes with a shot of whiskey).

And therein lies the rub. One sees no trace of power-lust in this guy — none of the phoniness, none of that long-resigned, long-compromised leveling of sophistication and sophistry which characterizes the today’s unstatesmanlike statesmen who aggressively seek political office. Here's a guy who just wants to do all he can to get the country back on the right track so he can go back home and better enjoy his time on his beloved Taos ski slopes.

Conventional thought would tell us that it's hard for politicians to make a difference and do great things in office, because of Congress and "the system" and the “need to compromise,” etc. I believe politicians welcome that notion as an enabling crutch. Johnson, against expectation, and unprompted, tells me, "I found good government easy—I didn’t find it difficult. I found it easy to stick by your principles, and that, by sticking by your principles you can really make a difference. That’s why I’m in this."

He's right. When you're not out to compromise left and right to make everybody happy and make everyone like you and hold on to your office and power, when you're not concerned of what people think, but rather reality and results — sticking by your principles is all there is to it.

I’m not trying to shamelessly promote a candidate here, but to point out as sadly salient to those of all political leanings that someone of Johnson's qualifications — his integrity, results-oriented record, and contrarian ideas — is being ignored, isn't even being allowed in the game. That a Goldwater-style Republican has little place today in the party Goldwater stewarded. That of the eight or so Republicans on the debate platform, no place is afforded for even one who is not a social conservative. That someone who stands for freedom across-the-board is received as an unwelcome oddball in what is supposed to be the Land of Freedom.

Johnson admonishes the media for picking winners and losers, and I could cite examples of their doing that, unfairly manipulating polling statistics to exclude him from debates. But it's more than that. The media just function as a sort of "electoral college" for helping define public palates, and are merely carrying out their duty in such colorless, oafish fashion as the public “votes” them to do. More Americans are turning away from independent thought for simplistic labels and ideology. They don't want to think, and gravitate to false polarities. And they’re getting what they deserve: Democratic liberals who always believe in government to solve everyone's problems through collective self-sacrifice and the money which they seem to think grows on trees. Republican conservatives who are only a tad less fiscally insane, but who make up for that tad by embarrassing themselves and America with bouts of ignorant, intolerant religiosity.

Americans seek the opiate of political demigods of shallowly magnetic charisma who assuage their fears with Leftist or Rightist altruism and emotionalism, not with reason and independent thinking and honest diligence. I believe these "hot debates" between Tweedledum and Tweedledumber eventually lead toward nothing but a divide over which dictatorial egomaniacs we want as our dear leaders, nothing but contests over which form of economic suicide America should commit.

The greatest American presidents were the least kingly: independent thinking, accomplished, real-world oriented, and actually most preferring their time out of political office. But Americans, more and more, want more of a king: someone who will rise up and seize power and use it against all and everyone they’ve demonized as the source of problems in the world. Not a quietly self-assured sort who sees Constitutional principles and American ideals as the real savior, the kind of leader who told me:

“The best thing that I can do for society, the best thing I can do for my fellow human beings, is to be the best that I can be. And that by doing that and by leading by example that’s how I positively affect other people’s lives. I believe that. I believe that’s fundamental.”

Amidst its hope and heartening rallies, Johnson's earnest, frustrated GOP efforts have unfolded before me like a ballad capturing the disappointment and angst of a failing America, of failing Americanism. It's not unlike how all of our country's actual hymns to independence and liberty seem to grow ever more elegiac.