Are You Ready for the First Nationally Televised Libertarian Party Presidential Debate?
When should the United States go to war? “When attacked,” says Gary Johnson. Should we cut foreign aid? “Every penny,” says Austin Petersen. Why are you running for president? “Because our bodies and our minds belong to ourselves,” says John McAfee. If you aren’t hearing these sentiments in this year’s political debates, that’s because you’re not watching candidates from the Libertarian Party.
You can correct that oversight tomorrow night at 9 p.m. ET on Fox Business Network, where libertarian hero John Stossel will dedicate the first of two episodes to airing a fully-fledged debate between three of the top LPers running for the brass ring. Here’s a tease:
I take part, along with America’s libertarian bestie Kennedy, in a post-debate critique. Both shows have been taped already, so I can exclusively pre-report that Gary Johnson is decidedly Gary Johnson (squishy from a libertarian-purist point of view on stuff like forcing anti-gay-marriage bakers to do business with homosexualists, sharpest in the field on the whats and whys of specifically cutting government), Austin Petersen looks like a cheeky 35-year-old playing at running for president (“Don’t hate me because I’m pretty!”), and John McAfee has taken the whole “Most interesting man in the world” ad campaign as some kind of personal dare. Crudely speaking, Johnson’s the pragmatist, McAfee’s the philosopher, and Petersen’s the hustler.
Areas of disagreement flare up with the aforementioned Nazi cakes, abortion, Social Security, and gender-pay equality. Each candidate has moments that feel less than ready for prime time, and oh man if John McAfee was on a national debate stage talking about whatever the hell happened there down in Central America. But the biggest sensation for those of us who have become numb watching eight months of decidedly statist discourse might the sheer relief at seeing policy discussed from an unabashedly libertarian point of view.
Make sure to follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #StosselForum, and see you Friday at 9!