Bring Back the Draft

by Tim Mahar

Posted August 10, 2006

Bring Back the Draft

Now that I have your attention, relax, I am not talking about a military draft. However, what I am talking about may be almost as controversial and that is drafting Libertarian candidates to run for key offices.

We need effective candidates to advance several objectives. Of course we would like to see Libertarians elected, but we must also use campaigns to promulgate the libertarian philosophy as well as force non-Libertarian candidates to recognize and address libertarian issues.

Working from the top down is where we can make some big advances near term, but we need immediate concerted action! We have had some truly gifted and committed candidates over the years, but they have not been able to break into the national consciousness. We need a slate of top national candidates with all or most of the following attributes:

• High name recognition
• Record of success—preferably outside politics and preferably in a turn-around situation
• Well funded or capable of generating significant contributions
• Great presentation skills

I propose that the Libertarian Party actively identify and solicit people that meet these criteria to run for national offices, particularly high visibility ones such as President and Congress. The idea would not be to select the candidates per se, but rather to identify and approach potential ones to encourage them to run. This in no way means excluding those that choose to run on their own and the delegates will make the final selection as always. But, we need candidates NOW; we can’t wait until 2007 to start running.

We should begin by focusing on the Presidential candidate making up a list of personalities with the above attributes. It’s better to have a large list to start from so we should not initially be too concerned about:

• their political views,
• whether or not we think that they would want to run nor be dissuaded if they are currently aligned with some other party. That last point may be very important since there are clearly those in the major parties that are fed up with the policies of those parties today.

Once we have a list, we can begin evaluating political views; many will probably lean our way already, but others might be brought into the fold if they were visited by an effective representative of the party, such as Harry Browne, Michael Cloud, Mary Ruwart, etc. Clearly the final choices have to be truly committed to liberty, free markets and non-aggression, but as an ex-Republican, I can attest to the fact that true conversion is possible. Just to get the ball rolling, consider as potential candidates:

• Fred Thompson
• Judge Andrew Napolitano
• Phillip Anschutz
• John Stossel
• Jack Kemp
• Carly Fiorina
• Martha Stewart
• Michael Powell
• Steven Jobs
• CEOs of Cisco, Sun, Dell, GE, etc.
• J.C. Watts
• Elizabeth Dole

How do we do get started with a big list of those that meet the criteria? Let’s set up a poll on the LRC web page where members can nominate candidates and we can vote for ones we like. The list can be updated to show the leaders. Then, we should appoint a screening committee to select several and then appoint a contact committee to approach them. If we start the web poll immediately, we can begin screening the leaders in parallel and can begin approaching some in early 2006.

Once the major candidates are on board, announced and begin campaigning, we will both attract more candidates and support for them by having the top candidates emphasize that they can’t do it by themselves, so voters should elect Libertarian candidates whenever they can.

There may never again be as good an opportunity as the 2008 elections. We need to support our candidates with top advisors and grass roots workers. Candidates with the characteristics I listed earlier will attract this support in ways that none of our past candidates have. I believe we can find candidates that will step up to the challenge and I know most Libertarians stand ready to provide support. Let’s do it!

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