Messed-up Databases and Terrible Commercials

by Liberty and Power

Let me chime in, along with Aeon, about last night's disappointing showing in Super Tuesday. There will many postmortems citing it as proof that Americans are “not ready for libertarianism.” Others already are blaming the media black-out of Paul coverage since New Hampshire.

Both explanations are unpersuasive or, at least, incomplete. While the claim that “Americans are not ready for libertarianism" is true as far as it goes, few of us ever believed (except in our less rational moments) that Paul was going to win. At the same time, we thought with good reason that he had a fighting chance to win a respectable block of Republican votes (10-20 percent or higher).

Unfortunately, several major blunders and miscalculations by the campaign itself always seemed to get in the way. A case in point was the Iowa database fiasco. The campaign had produced a get-out-the-vote database showing the names of thousands of people to be called on caucus day and/or transported to the caucus sites. Either becaue of petulance or simple human error however, a volunteer completely messed up the list.

But it was the campaign itself that made the fatal mistake by not making a back-up list, leaving the volunteers unable to carry out the operation on the crucial day. This was no small matter. Only a few thousand votes separated Paul from John McCain and Fred Thompson.

Had Paul come out of Iowa with the momentum of a third place win, the media blackout may well have never happened, at least to the same degree.

The terrible television and radio ads, however, were even more fatal to any hope of a better showing. I suspect that they may have actually lost Paul votes. It is revealing that exit polls showed that antiwar Republican voters last night (as they did in Iowa and New Hampshire) voted for McCain, the most pro-war candidate in the race.

Instead, of appealing to these voters, the campaign's commercials made Paul look like just another Republican candidate and/or stressed immigration, which had essentially become Romney’s issue. Had Paul's commercials stressed his antiwar views and hammered McCain's enthusiasm for the war, he might have reached more of these voters.

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Sudha Shenoy - 2/7/2008

What proportion of voters are state employees (at _all_ levels)& their families? What percent depend on _supplying_ the state? _Their_ families? Direct beneficiaries of state programmes of all kinds? Etc.

Jon Boguth - 2/7/2008

Regarding the idea of "vot[ing] ourselves into liberty." Voting changes policy marginally, but that's a good thing. People who think that one flawed presidential candidate is enough to bring about a major change in every policy area are deluding themselves. That holds even if said candidate wins.

It doesn't mean it's not worth it to work and vote for candidates who will actually work and vote for liberty, even if there are very few of them.

Robert Paul - 2/7/2008

I agree with you. I do have to admit, I was hoping we could sneak Ron Paul through past the conservatives.

One of the best things we can hope for now is for the people who are a part of this to remember the cause of liberty and not just go back to whatever they were doing before in despair.

J N - 2/7/2008

I know this is wishful thinking, but maybe if more states were like Montana, Paul would possibly be polling much better. But maybe we Montanans are a strange lot.

Anthony Gregory - 2/6/2008

Thanks, Bob. I do think libertarian campaigns can have educational value. But the idea that we're going to vote ourselves into liberty -- that it's going to be that simple -- strikes me as nearly as naive as the Marxist idea that if the proletariat only becomes the ruling class, they will eventually abolish the state and inequality and oppression along with it.

Bill Woolsey - 2/6/2008

I believe that "newsletter" scandal is relevant to shortcoming of the campaign. The newsletters were apparently part of an "outreach to the redneck" strategy. Paul was supposed to front the effort in 1992, but they backed Buchanan instead.

I see plenty of evidence that the campaign is still trying to appeal to Buchananites. Why the focus on immigration and NAFTA?

Anyway, I think there are more than 3% or 4% of the voters who would support an anti-war, small government message.

Robert Higgs - 2/6/2008

Anthony hits the bull's eye dead center when he says that "the overwhelming majority of Americans still want empire and welfarism and cops all over the place to keep others in line."

As I see the state of this country, libertarianism, in any more than isolated, marginal applications, has no political potential whatsoever. I am continually struck by what seems to me to be pure wishful thinking on the part of libertarians who are ordinarily informed and astute about most other things.

To reach a time when Americans were "ready for" libertarianism, one would have to go back at least the the latter part of the nineteenth century, and even then many, many people favored many, many sorts of rights-overriding government policies. Since that time, the trends of socio-economic development and ideology have been relentlessly away from support for libertarian measures, of course with minior ebbs and flows from time to time.

Given U.S. society, ideology, and government as they now exist, libertarianism does not have even the proverbial snow ball's chance in hell.

I am not urging any libertarian to surrender to the tyrant, because respecting other people's natural rights is, in my judgment, simply the decent thing to do. Yet I see no prospect whatever that political action will move this society or this polity in a libertarian direction. We shall simply have to go down with the ship--which in almost completely submerged already.

Anthony Gregory - 2/6/2008

To tell you the truth, I don't think many people would do much better than Ron Paul. His campaign has had many problems, but the messenger himself wasn't the problem here.

And keep in mind, the overwhelming majority of Americans still want empire and welfarism and cops all over the place to keep others in line.

David T. Beito - 2/6/2008

My favorite is Gary Johnson. He could do extremely well. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem interested.

Anthony Gregory - 2/6/2008

I love Penn and Teller, but their militant atheism, and especially the way they present it, would turn most Americans off. They have an episode on gun rights that is excellent, something I would show to every American -- but then they unnecessarily have a scene where they throw the Bible up in the air and skeet shoot it. This is not going to fly in America. I don't think Drew Carey or Clint Eastwood is a consistent enough libertarian.

Steven Horwitz - 2/6/2008

I've long thought that if Penn Jillette could be convinced to run as the LP presidential candidate, it would be the best thing ever libertarian politics. (Drew Carey as VP would help.) The press coverage would be enormous. He's a hard core libertarian. He's got money of his own to spend. He's an engaging speaker (if he can avoid the f-bombs) and he would attract young people.

And if we get really desperate, he and Teller can just put DC under a giant tarp and then make it disappear!

Aeon J. Skoble - 2/6/2008

David, reading your post I was struck by the thought that Americans "aren't ready for" libertarianism in the sense that they aren't ready for any theoretical coherence at all! The anti-war crowd is voting for the most pro-war candidate? WTF? Of course, I do think America is "ready for" libertarianism, and has been since 1776, but (and I hate to say this) the trick is to get better marketing. If the message is true but the messenger is ineffective, we lose. So who's next? John Stossel? Drew Carey? Teller? Clint Eastwood?