How the Libertarian Party Missed Its Chance at the National Stage
In 1992, a president whose popularity had been so high only a year or so before looked vulnerable. It was surprising, because during Desert Storm, Bush’s approval rating had been in the 90% plus range. A precursor of the hyper-patriotism that followed 9/11 and allowed the nation to be goaded into invading Iraq. At the end of 1991, only ONE Democrat had thrown their hat into the ring and that was Bill Clinton. As 1992 had progressed, Bush reneging on his no new tax pledge caused his popularity to plummet. He suddenly looked very very vulnerable. Democrats started jumping in one after another.
Also, a man called H. Ross Perot jumped in as well. It was a crazy time and I felt as if my party might be able to make a real run for once. After all, the Reform Party, Perot’s party, were leveraging Libertarian Party operatives and strategies to make sure they were on all 50 states ballots. The Libertarian Party regularly was forced jump through hoops in different states at different times as the duopoly fought to keep them from making inroads. However, with a nother party with a super rich candidate fighting the duopoly, it seemed like the Libertarian Party might finally have a chance.
Unfortunately, they destroyed their own chance at the national stage through their “purist” notions of what it was to be a libertarian. There were two men competing for the nomination of the Libertarian Party in 1992, Andre Marrou and Dick Boddie. They were both asked a very important question. How will you make sure the party is on the national stage and not ignored by the national media. Marrou was up first and he gave the usual platitudes. Boddie was up next and when asked the same question, he simply stood there and said absolutely nothing…until there was finally a loud cheer and applause throughout the convention.
Why? You see Dick Boddie was a black man. He was making the statement that his race was something that would make him very hard to ignore were he to be nominated by a party that was on the ballot in all fifty states. He made that statement by making NO statement. I was moved and I knew he was probably the guy the party should go with, but he was not.
You see, Dick Boddie was a small ‘l’ libertarian. That meant that he did not buy into all the dogma completely and he certainly understood that once elected there were limitations on how far he could push a libertarian agenda. The Libertarian Party has always been a bit unforgiving of anyone that equivocates on any of the aspects of the party’s planks, like abolishing the income tax or legalizing drugs or…yada yada.
Marrou won the nomination much to my chagrin, because Ross Perot took off like a rocket that year. My party was left in the dust after helping the Reform Party get on the national stage. Then came the debates and because there was a viable third party candidate, the League of Women Voters, who ran the debates back then, wanted not only Perot, but also the Libertarian Party candidates.
Apparently, this was unacceptable to the duopoly and they pulled the debate from the League of Women Voters. The Democrats and the Republicans would not allow the libertarian onto the stage. They were OK with Perot, but not Marrou. Now if the Libertarian Party had selected Dick Bodie at that time the duopoly would have had a MUCH harder time preserving their stranglehold on the national stage.
After the 1992 election, the Libertarian Party began to wane. The Reform Party was the viable 3rd party in the eyes of most. They elected a governor in Jesse Ventura. I began to drift from the party as well and became quite apolitical. I even stopped paying my dues until 2001.
One more year I paid my dues, because after the planes hit the buildings in New York there was a blood lust in the air of the nation. Someone would pay for the attack and that someone turned out to be the Afghan people. I personally felt that the most likely outcome of such an invasion would be a lot of death and destruction, but no bin Laden. The 2000 Libertarian Party candidate for president, Harry Browne, did manage to get on CNN and espouse exactly that point of view. The only national politician to state that the events of 9/11 were a matter for the police, Interpol and the FBI and not the military was a libertarian. I signed up for one more year of being a card-carry Libertarian.
However, that was the end. The party had always suffered from the inroads of “stealth Republicans” unable to get traction in their own party coming to the Libertarian Party. Still the party did have some intellectual honesty that I preferred over the hypocrisy of the duopoly. Sadly, most members of the Libertarian Party were no different than my fellow Americans. They wanted revenge on those that they felt had something to do with the 9/11 attacks. They were gripped with a blood lust as well.
I argued many times about it with my fellow libertarians. I would point out that since almost all of the terrorists were Saudis it is hard to understand targeting Afghanistan, but I made little impact. When in 2002, the invasion of Iraq was on the table, Harry Browne had faded from the national stage. I had been given digital copies of forged documents by early 2003 that Colin Powell delivered at the UN.
Again the Libertarian Party was no different than the other parties on this matter. They supported it rather strongly in direct opposition to planks within the Libertarian Platform. The hypocrisy of the duopoly now infected my own party and the Reform Party evaporated from everyone’s memory. I was now an independent. I was now taking my own money and opposing the US invasion of Iraq in particular and the Global War on Terror in general.
I started spending money in opposition. It was a stealth opposition to a great extent because opposition to the wars was not easy in those days. One could actually lose ones job and/or be told that one was unAmerican. That was how the Libertarian Party lost its chance at the national stage and lost me in the process. I started down the path of libertarian-socialism and even wrote a book about it.
