Below The Beltway

Bob Barr, who is expected to officially announce his candidacy for the Libertarian Party’s Presidential Nomination tomorrow, was recently interviewed by the Village Voice.

Here are some of the more interesting questions and responses:

Village Voice: The Libertarian Party is supportive of legalizing same-sex marriage, legalizing currently illegal drugs and keeping abortion legal. You were a sponsor of the “Defense of Marriage Act” and you had a 100 percent rating from the Christian Coalition when you served as a congressman. How do you square those positions with your current involvement in the Libertarian Party?

Bob Barr: Of course, many of the positions that I took in the Congress and that I take now are based on the principle of federalism, which is certainly a libertarian position. It used to be a position reflective of the Republican Party but obviously is not longer a part of the Republican platform. So, for example, regarding the “Defense of Marriage Act,” the fundamental, operative provisions of the “Defense of Marriage Act” say that each state makes up its own mind. I think that’s a fundamentally sound, libertarian-oriented position on federalism. With regard to drug usage similarly, these are issues in my view that ought to be left up to the states, based on the principles of federalism.

Constitutionally speaking, of course, Barr is entirely correct. If states like New York, New Jersey, and California want to legalize gay marriage, they should be allowed to do so. The problem with the DOMA, though, is that it would seem to be a direct violation of the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution. With very limited exceptions, states are required to recognize the validly passed laws of their sister states, including laws about issues like marriage, adoption, and inheritance.

If lesbian couple legally married in New Jersey moves to, say, South Carolina because of a job change, does this mean they wouldn’t be entitled to same benefits as any other married couple, or that they wouldn’t be treated as a married couple if one of them happened to die while living in South Carolina ?

More importantly, though, Federalism simply doesn’t mean the same thing that it meant before the Civil War. The passage of the 14th Amendment, and the Supreme Court case law that has grown from that Amendment, forever changed the relationship between the people, the states, and the Federal Government, and one of the things that changed is the idea that you don’t lose your rights as an American citizen simply because you move from one state to another.

Barr’s position isn’t per se wrong. It’s just incomplete.

Barr also talked about the war in Iraq:

VV: Let’s say you win. What’s your plan to deal with the situation in Iraq?

BB: My plan for Iraq is to signal immediately to the Iraqi government that they are going to have to start taking responsibility for their own security, their own economy, their own political development. That I, unlike President Bush but like candidate Bush, do not believe the responsibility of the United States government and military is to nation build and it is not to occupy foreign nations. And we will begin immediately a withdrawal. I would not set a timetable, I don’t believe in telling your adversaries when you’re going to do certain things, I think that’s foolhardy and irresponsible. But I do believe that the only way to very clearly let the Iraqi government know that no longer are the American taxpayers going to foot the bill for the management of their country is to start withdrawing. There’s no need, I believe, if our posture is truly defensive, to keep 160,000 troops on the ground in Iraq. I think that can be reduced beginning immediately if I were to be president. That would also signal to the American people that a Barr presidency takes seriously the responsibility of the American taxpayer. Their dollars should be valued much more wisely than they are now. That their tax dollars, to the greatest extent possible, should remain in their pockets so that they can improve the quality of their lives and not worry about the quality of lives of people in some far away land.

This proposal makes sense on several levels. First of all, the idea of setting a timetable for withdrawal is, for the reasons Barr mentioned, fundamentally absurd and it’s a mistake that Obama, Clinton, and even Ron Paul make. You can’t telegraph to your enemy that all they have to do is wait, say, 18 months and then you’ll be gone. What happened in the years after the United States left South Vietnam should be testament to why that’s a bad idea.

But he’s also right that it’s time to tell the Iraqis that they’ve got to take responsibility for their future. If they’re going to live together as one country, then they need to act like. If not, then the various ethnic groups need to go their separate ways instead of continuing to kill each other senselessly. Either way, it’s not our responsibility to help them create a nation.

And, finally, he talks about Ron Paul:

VV: Do you think you’re in the position to build on some of the momentum that Congressman Ron Paul created during his run in the Republican presidential primary, where he drew a different kind of voter to his campaign? Would a Ron Paul voter be more inclined to vote for you than McCain?

BB: I think so. What Ron Paul, during the time he was an active candidate in the Republican primary, tapped into indicates to me that in which the same way that Senator Obama has tapped into on the Democrats’ side, is a very real phenomenon. It indicates to me that there are a lot of people out there, and I think this is reflected in that preliminary poll that we did also, who are now willing to support new, nontraditional candidates, even to the extent of supporting and considering candidates from third parties. This is the result, at least in part I think, of the large number of young people that are now either by choice or age entering the political marketplace, so to speak. I think it’s the result of seven and a half years of an administration that has been filled with very inherent contradictions. Virtually everything that candidate Bush said is different from what President Bush has done. That, I think, has left a very clear impression on people. The tremendous cost of government, especially in Iraq, I think is finally hitting home to the American people as they face a situation where their standard of living is dropping the standard of living in the government is not,

I frankly think that Barr is being optimistic here. If anything has become clear since the Paul campaign came to an end, it’s that the movement that grew up around it wasn’t as ideologically united as some would think. I suspect that some of those people will indeed go to Barr, but I could just as easily see them voting for Ralph Nader or the Green Party.

H/T: Jason Pye