The 2016 presidential election has been one of the most depressing and embarrassing political tragedies to unfold in America. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are both two of the most unpopular general election candidates in history.
Many people in America are looking for a solid third choice, and as a result, many are looking at Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party.
Unfortunately, Johnson is not a viable candidate, and the Libertarian platform isn’t going to win a national election.
There’s no question that Johnson is an experienced politician. He was a two-term governor of New Mexico back when he was wearing Republican colors, and has been involved in politics for over 20 years. Unfortunately, these past couple of months have shown Johnson to be someone incapable of holding the presidential office, someone lacking the policy knowledge required to hold the highest office in the land.
However, let’s start with the Libertarian platform itself.
A big sticking point for me on the platform is their education policy. Libertarians more-or-less believe in the magic of the free market, and while it’s true that I believe capitalism has served this country well for over 200 years, I think there’s a limit to what the market can do. Libertarians don’t see that limit, and they’re education platform makes that clear. According to the Libertarian Party website, their platform on education is:
“Education is best provided by the free market, achieving greater quality, accountability and efficiency with more diversity of choice. Recognizing that the education of children is a parental responsibility, we would restore authority to parents to determine the education of their children, without interference from government. Parents should have control of and responsibility for all funds expended for their children’s education.”
Honestly, I disagree with almost that whole paragraph. First, there are plenty of parents out there who lack parental responsibility, and I don’t want those kids to be subjected to an amount of schooling a bad parent thinks is necessary. A well-educated nation is a state interest, and rightly so. Education for everyone should be affordable, dare I say “free,” in the sense that it should be provided to us with taxpayer dollars.
If Libertarians got their way, public education would probably be pay-to-play. Essentially, in Libertarian America, your kid can go to a great school for first grade if you can afford it. But you have to be able to afford it, and if you can't, your child will have to face the repercussions of a sub-par education. I fail to see how a free-market approach to education could better bad public schools.
Unfortunately, Johnson isn’t a great candidate that can make me overlook the problems I have with the libertarian platform. Sure, he’s miles ahead of Donald Trump in terms of likeability, but that’s not exactly hard to do when one of them has a moral compass with no magnet.
Gary Johnson is woefully unprepared to be president.
Last month in an interview with Mike Barnicle on MSNBC, Johnson was asked about Aleppo, the Syrian city that has been all over the news since the Syrian Civil War started. Aleppo has sort of become the epicenter of the Syrian refugee crisis, with photos of injured children and street fighting going viral and drawing unparalleled attention on social media.
Specifically, Johnson was asked what he would do as president about the situation in Aleppo.
Johnson did not even know what Aleppo was. That’s a Trump-level policy lapse for someone trying desperately to make their party feel like a viable third-option.
That’s how Brandon Gipson, a 40-year-old independent voter, banker and Phoenix resident, felt after the Aleppo gaffe.
“As much as his ideas on, you know, that core limited government and fiscal responsibility blended with classic liberalism and social progressiveness (are good ideas), that demonstrated an extreme weakness, an extreme weakness on foreign policy.”
Gipson’s concerns are valid and shared by plenty of voters. Johnson’s support was shaken after the Aleppo incident, and he’s more-or-less limped onward ever since.
There’s a reason that the Libertarians, and to a similar extent, the Green Party, aren’t viable third-options: Not enough people like them. That's why Evan McMullin, a Utah man who entered the election race in August, already has a higher shot of winning the election than Johnson.
There’s no media conspiracy, there’s no unfair representation. If they had better prepared candidates or maybe more rational platforms, they would probably have more support. That’s it.
You may not love Trump and Clinton, but Gary Johnson and the 2016 Libertarian Party platform are not the answer you're looking for.
