Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Bob Barr in the LA Times

Bob Barr is running for president. Running hard. As hard as he can. As hard as he can with absolutely no shot and very little money. But he's running!

Bob Barr, for those 290 million or so of you who are not aware of him, was a Republican Congressman from Georgia for four terms. He was one of those people who hated Clinton so much, he tried to impeach him.

Now Bob Barr is a Libertarian, which is sort of like a Republican, except a little purist on the whole "freedom of the individual" thing, so they tend to be opposed to Republican attempts to regulate personal behavior. The Cato Institute is probably the most famous libertarian think tank.

Being a Libertarian, as opposed to a Republican, has certain advantages for Mr. Barr, such as the fact that he can run for president on the Libertarian ticket. Which he is doing. The LA Times profiles our friend Bob today. It's a nice, long piece, so you can find out all you ever wanted to know about Bob Barr, courtesy of an LA Times reporter who tagged along with him for a day or two.

I think this is great. I'm glad that the LA Times wrote a Page One story about an obscure presidential candidate, because I think it strengthens our democracy when we pay attention to, and listen to, the views of people outside the mainstream.

And now that the LA Times has fulfilled their civic duty and has written a story about Bob Barr, Libertarian candidate for president, well before the election itself, during a somewhat slow news period, they can spend the rest of the election almost completely ignoring him.

2 comments:

ITF said...

Except that Bob Barr isn't really a libertarian. Ron Paul is. And a significant portion of liberatarians come from the Democratic party as well.

Unknown said...

Right, ideologically, he's not really a Lib, but for the purpose of this post, he's a Libertarian.