Bob Barr: An Anti-Endorsement

I would like to thank the editors of the American Conservative for conducting and printing an interview with Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate Bob Barr in this weeks issue. Barr has inspired some enthusiasm among Ron Paul supporters and to a degree it is understandable. A former Congressman, Barr jetted from the Republican Party to the Libertarians a few years back primarily over civil liberties concerns, but also as a result of GOP betrayal of conservative principles regarded the size and scope of government. He introduced Congressman Paul at this years CPAC convention and has been actively building a left-right alliance to combat things like the Patriot Act and other anti-Bill of Rights measures enacted by the Bush administration.

All of that is wonderful and Barr has done a good job for the most part, but the real reason the TAC interview is so important is because it shows precisely why Barr is NOT the man to lead the anti-establishment Ron Paul Revolution, and in fact why Barr should not be supported by third party activist looking for a principled opposition to Washington status quo politicking.

Third party candidacies are traditionally about promoting causes and ideas that are outside of the mainstream of the major parties and will not otherwise get a hearing. Third party candidates are generally candid about their views on the issues, and apply their principles (there is that word again) strictly. The credibility Barr brings to the table as a supposed convert to the puritanical trenches of "alternative" party warfare is in theory a major plus for him. In reality however it is his Washington tone, inability to apologize for mistakes and compromising attitude that makes him unworthy of a vote for those looking for something outside of the norm.

To make a comparison, perennial third party candidate Ralph Nader, was interviewed by TAC back in 2004. Nader is generally considered a leftist and often labeled a socialist (wrongly I believe). In theory Ralph's comments on immigration for example should boil down to open borders rhetoric and a lot of bobbing and weaving around the tough questions of his restrictionist interviewer Pat Buchanan. Instead we got this exchange, which I will reprint in its entirety

PB: Let’s move to immigration. We stop 1.5 million illegal aliens on our borders each year. One million still get through. There are currently 8-14 million illegal aliens in the United States. The president is mandated under the Constitution to defend the States against foreign invasion, and this certainly seems to constitute that.

RN: As long as our foreign policy supports dictators and oligarchs, you are going to have desperate people moving north over the border.

Part of the problem involves NAFTA. The flood of cheap corn into Mexico has dispossessed over a million Mexican farmers, and, with their families, they either go to the slums or, in their desperation, head north.

In addition, I don’t think the United States should be in the business of brain-draining skilled talent, especially in the Third World, because we are importing in the best engineers, scientists, software people, doctors, entrepreneurs who should be in their countries, building their own countries. We are driving the talent to these shores—

PB: How do we defend these shores?

RN: I don’t believe in giving visas to software people from the Third World when we have got all kinds of unemployed software people here.

Let’s get down to the manual labor. This is the reason the Wall Street Journal is for an open-borders policy: they want a cheap-wage policy. There are two ways to deal with that. One is to raise the minimum wage to the purchasing-power level of 1968—$8 an hour—and then, in another year, raise it to $10 an hour because the economy since 1968 has doubled in production per capita.

PB: Say we went to $10 an hour minimum wage. It is 50 cents an hour in Mexico. Why wouldn’t that cause not 1.5 million, but 3 million to head straight north where they could be making 20 times what they can make minimum wage in Mexico?

RN: Because 14 million Americans are unemployed or part-time employed who want full employment or have given up looking for jobs. The more the minimum wage goes up, the more they will do so-called work that Americans won’t do. They are not going to do it at $5.15 an hour and have another used car, another insurance policy, another repair bill to get to work, but they are much more likely to do it at $10 an hour.

The second is to enforce the law against employers. It is hard to blame desperately poor people who want to feed their families and are willing to work their heads off. You have to start with Washington and Wall Street.

PB: Should illegal aliens be entitled to social-welfare benefits, even though they are not citizens and broke into the country?

RN: I think they should be given all the fair-labor standards and all the rights and benefits of American workers, and if this country doesn’t like that, maybe they will do something about the immigration laws.

PB: Should they be entitled to get driver’s licenses?

RN: Yes, in order to reduce hazards on the highway. If you have people who are driving illegally, there are going to be more crashes, and more people are going to be killed.

PB: The Democrats have picked up on Bush’s amnesty idea and have proposed an amnesty for illegals who have been in the country for five years and who have shown that they have jobs and can support themselves. Would you support the Democratic proposal?

RN: This is very difficult because you are giving a green light to cross the border illegally. I don’t like the idea of legalization because then the question is how do you prevent the next wave and the next? I like the idea of giving workers and children—they are working, they are having their taxes withheld, they are performing a valuable service, even though they are illegally here—of giving them the same benefits of any other workers. If that produces enough outrage to raise the immigration issue to a high level of visibility for public debate, that would be a good thing.

PB: The U.S. population now—primarily due to immigrants and their children coming in—is estimated to grow to over 400 million by mid-century. Would that have an adverse impact on the environment?

RN: We don’t have the absorptive capacity for that many people. Over 32 million came in, in the ’90s, which is the highest in American history.

PB: What would you do about it?

RN: We have to control our immigration. We have to limit the number of people who come into this country illegally.

PB: What level of legal immigration do you think we should have per year?

RN: First of all, we have to say what is the impact on African-Americans and Hispanic Americans in this country in terms of wages of our present stance on immigration? It is a wage-depressing policy, which is why the Chambers of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, Tyson Foods, and the Wall Street Journal like it. The AFL-CIO has no objection to it because they think they can organize the illegal workers—

PB: They switched.

RN: –because they have been so inept at organizing other workers. There is hardly a more complex issue, except on the outside of the issue, the foreign policy, the NAFTA—

Not only does this suggest that Nader is a lot more conservative on immigration than is widely believed, but it also provides a stark contrast from the words of Barr. I will hold off on printing Barr's full response until the interview appears on the web, but Barr briefly mentions securing the border, but opposing a fence. Then he says that we ought to have a market based guest worker program, with some minor regulations in place for reasons of public health. Barr's answer is not much different from what one would expect out of John McCain, and Nader's answer is almost Tancredoesque, particularly when it comes to the issue of white collar jobs and importing labor to displace American workers. Who is principled? Who is candid? Who is conservative???

The Barr interview is filled with this sort of stuff. On Iraq he is asked straight out if he regrets his vote. Instead of the unqualified "yes" that one would expect from the man tapped to lead the Ron Paulites, he gives the talking point answer used by the Hillary Clintons of the world and claims he was duped by fabricated evidence about WMD's and besides the people on the Hill didn't really think the vote to authorize force would lead to the actual use of force. Those sort of comments were pathetic coming out of the mouth of liberal Democratic John Kerry in 2004. Coming from a supposed maverick, third party candidate, running on an allegedly anti-war waive they are disgraceful.

This is not about Barr's voting record. Walter Jones had a terrible record on Iraq initially, but he has strongly denounced that vote as a grave error and has been a consistent opponent of the empire ever sense. Jones represents the district that contains Fort Bragg and is on the Republican plantation. If he can tell the truth, Barr damn sure should be able to.

Barr says the primary issues are "the proper role of government in the economy and the scope of government spending", which in the abstract is true, but in the here and now is not. His answer is an evasion of sorts, inadvertent or not The primary issue is the empire and the post-paleo kids Paul Gottfried has been writing about lately know this. They are the ones likely to vote for Barr and if you can't throw them a bone on this, you aren't going to get their support. The empire issue fits nicely into Barr's sentiment, but forgive me if I don't take the rhetoric all that seriously coming from a man who favors a national retail sales tax, a fix that does nothing about government spending or its role in the economy.

At the end of interview Barr invokes the name of Ronald Reagan. That is fine and dandy if Barr is looking to be a one hit wonder like Perot, that siphons off a few votes from the Republicans, along the way to being a footnote in history. But if Barr is looking to be the latest step in the decentralist movement started by the Paul campaign, he is heaping praise on the wrong Ron.

As a candidate in a GOP primary, Barr would be useful. I could almost see supporting him as a major party nominee, since I expect a certain degree of B.S. and needless compromise out of those jerks. That said, as a Libertarian, and a third party candidate Barr fails all the tests. He is dishonest about his previous votes, middle of the road on issues that he claims to be principled on, and just generally speaks in a business as usual tone that is unbecoming of anti-establishment politics.

Chuck Baldwin may think gays are clandestine operatives trying to take over the two major parties on the way to world domination, but he is a much better heir to the Paul legacy. Nader may not be running on a party line and have way too much faith in regulatory agencies, but at least he is consistent and he's more conservative than people realize. Hell, even Cynthia McKinney seems a better fit than Barr at this point.

Barr is good at building coaltions and seems like a nice enough guy, but if this movement is to mean anything, he isn't our guy. It's time to stop pretending otherwise.