This is one post in a series looking at the various third-party candidates. For a summary, please see here
Gary Johnson started out as a GOP candidate but when he failed to get any traction in the primaries he decided to strike out as a third-party candidate. Over the years I have turned away from the Libertarian concept of “the government which governs best, governs least”, so am not totally sure that I would want to support the Libertarian party on principle, but am evaluating the candidate independent of the party since it is clear the party lacks enough fire power to implement its platform. Johnson seems intent on balancing the budget (clearly he is not a fan of counter cyclic programming) and seems more intent on cutting outlays rather than increasing revenues. To me that is a substantial strike against him. He also appears to favor our current market-based approach to health care which, in my mind, has clearly failed our society (we spend more per capita than any other nation, yet do not have the best health, why is that?) and is against the idea of universal health care. He supports privatizing social security, something I think is a dangerous gimme to Wall Street (which is already rolling in the bucks that the 401K has provided, something that also should be criminal). He also has the rather quaint idea that, like the 401K, people should be able to manage their SS contributions. Clearly doesn’t understand psychology of investors and how massive the yawning ignorance is on the part of the average populous. Probably wants us all to pay a Wall Street guy to manage our money for us.
On the plus side (for me) is his stated desire to cut military funding by 43% (where does such a number come from?) and focus on defense rather than offense. He favors dialog with Iran and while he is opposed to the Citizens United ruling, he is OK with the amount of money in elections, just wants 100% transparency (which is surely an excellent start). While he supports a woman’s right to choose, he thinks it should be up to each state to decide rather than the federal government. In my view that is not support for abortion, but is a back-door way of eroding women’s rights. He supports the end of the war on drugs and wants to shift resources to focus on ‘crimes “committed online,” including “fraud and child pornography,” “should be investigated and treated identically as crimes committed offline.”‘.
He wants to ‘increase choice’ in schools, something I consider quite problematic since based on my reading the ‘problem’ with our education system is actually a problem with poverty. His views on immigration are reasonable to me, given the current social-political environment, he suggests giving current ‘illegals’ work visas and allowing the normal immigration process to provide them a path to citizenship. He favors civil unions to give same-sex couples the same legal rights as marriage does, but wants to leave ‘marriage’ to religions. I have no objections to that, what is in a name?
Overall, I am not unhappy with his stated positions. I am most concerned about his interest in austerity as a way of resolving our debt situation (which is a very big deal, I am sure, and one that needs addressing), I think that approach is likely to further stall our economic recovery. Still, given that he would have to work extensively with Congress which has demonstrated it isn’t pro austerity (all GOP blather to the contrary, though they seem to want austerity for the poor, handouts for the rich), he doesn’t seem like a poor choice overall.
