Wally Olson’s speeches in the Yale Political Union 30 years ago did more to make me comfortable with Libertarianism than any other single factor, so I’m disappointed to see him describe the Libertarian presidential candidate (Badnarik) as a "barking moonbat". I’m not entirely clear what that phrase means, but it seems to imply that the Libertarian Party ought to be rebuked for selecting him.

Badnarik does have some weird ideas and a general lack of brilliance that, in an ideal world, would mean that we should have expected better of the LP. But given the LP’s recent history, it deserves some modest rewards for selecting a candidate who does such basic things as buying advertising to spread Libertarian ideas. According to R.W. Bradford in Liberty Magazine (who may have been the first to publicize Badnarik’s strange ideas), Badnarik had spent 20 percent of the money he raised to buy ads as of mid-September. By comparison, Browne spent much less than 1 percent of his 1996 budget on buying ads. And as far as I can tell, Badnarik has enough sense to downplay his stranger ideas when campaigning.

Badnarik may be goofy and mediocre, but we’re stuck in a situation where that looks clearly better than what we should expect if we reject him.

I saw a great bumper sticker recently which (perhaps unintentionally) suggests the appropriate way to think about this election: Frodo failed – Bush got the ring. Tolkien wouldn’t want us to think that giving the ring to a Gollum or a Gandalf would be sufficient to solve the problem. Giving the ring to the least power-hungry person available is better than giving it to the smartest.

The likely winner is incumbent Barbara Boxer, who is a co-sponsor of the Induce Act, which is designed to stifle innovation by outlawing anything that “intentionally aids, abets, induces”, etc. copyright violations. This is broad enough that it is hard to know whether it would outlaw the iPod (as the EFF suggests) or Silly Putty, and would probably have scared companies away from trying to introduce Tivo or the VCR if it had been law then. Anyone who would support this is fairly reckless about how she goes about promoting special interests.

I looked over her web site for any signs that she wants the government to be fiscally responsible. Instead I found things like “Senator Boxer is a leading voice opposing military base closures in California. … Senator Boxer and her allies successfully pressured the Bush Administration to postpone a new round of base closures from 2003 to 2005” and “Senator Boxer has voted for the three largest defense budgets in history and the largest increase in defense spending in two decades”. It’s hard to decide whether to be more upset that she supports blatantly wasteful spending or that she doesn’t question whether a defense budget that is about equal to the military spending of the rest of the world combined is a bit more than what defensive purposes would require.

Her Republican opponent recently sent me a letter containing three complaints that she voted against spending increases, versus only one complaint about her voting in favor of a spending bill (to raise her own pay; hardly a big fraction of the budget). He’s also a proud author of the poorly written Three-Strikes Law.

Why are people planning to vote for one of these advocates of special interest groups and/or demagoguery rather than a respectable candidate such as Libertarian Jim Gray? Maybe Boxer’s environmentalism convinces people she sometimes supports the public good. I feel I ought to examine that assumption closely one of these days. But I just remembered my investments in oil companies are likely to be helped by Boxer’s opposition to drilling new oil wells, since it will reduce the risk of an oil glut. Maybe I don’t have time to examine her record any more carefully than that.