Libertarians and McCain

The outlook of the 2008 presidential race is hardly a dream come true for libertarians. Then again, we haven’t really had a viable candidate (other than maybe Reagan and Goldwater) in post-FDR Amerika. While the prospect of one of three great luminaries who’ve made their names and fortunes squabbling over how worst to spend your money infesting the White House might force all hope to the bottom of a bottle, the least of these three evils is at least slightly more palatable than, say, chugging a jar of mayonnaise. In other words, while it may not be morning in America, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) does not seem to be promising total war against the Sun.

I fell “in like” with McCain this fall when he told Michigan primary voters that they’d better get used to the idea that their auto-industry jobs were not coming back, and then took a thorough spanking in the vote from the more tactful (read “demagogical”) Mitt Romney, who made veiled promises of a glorious resurgence of the state’s “Golden Age” of assembly lines and union intimidation. This storied “straight talk” has made McCain the darling of the media and Middle America, and in an unctuously manicured political age, his cantankerous “shoot from the hip” and “fight-all-comers” approach is as inspiring as it is adorable. Furthermore, in the wake of a presidency that promised so much and delivered so little, McCain’s immaculate candor at least lets us know what we’re in for.

What’s more, it seems McCain’s “maverick” reputation has ironically forced him to genuflect publicly at the altar of limited government, which, conjoined with his near-pathological honesty, more or less guarantees a decent presidency. With mounting pressure from the Right, McCain has repeatedly and publicly pledged that he would appoint strict constructionist/originalist judges after the order of Scalia and Thomas, find a healthcare solution that doesn’t involve nanny-state socialism, and work toward the extension of the Bush tax cuts past 2010. Such promises from the mouth of a manifestly honest man make the prospect of a McCain presidency not only preferable to the abominable four-year plans of Comrades Clinton and Obama, but also positively Reaganesque.

Two other critical differentiae elevating McCain over Bush are his political realism and anti-spending fervor. No matter how I try to forget that our current President invaded a nation because a voice in his head acknowledged that it was a good idea, the neo-conservative and quasi-Christian cocktail of cow-eyed idealism splashing around Bush’s skull makes for an undeniably scary Commander-in-Chief. McCain’s sober political realism, chastened by his experience on the business end of the hell that is war, will serve him in good stead as our chief international liaison and allow for a tough foreign policy geared at preventing rather than pursuing armed conflict. And with no bizarre manifest destiny aspirations built up out of revivalist theology and neo-con dogma arousing an irresistible desire to “spread the seed(s) of democracy,” McCain’s military goals seem blessedly to be far more mundane than his predecessor’s.

While his support for tax cuts is encouraging, it is McCain’s pork-slashing, belt-tightening enthusiasm that should excite the economic libertarian. During the Bush funny-money years, continual and drastic expansions of spending and entitlement programs have not forced immediate tax hikes, but they have inflated the already bloated federal government – a more ominous event for taxpayers than a merely temporary tax increase. As we’ve witnessed since the FDR years, it’s almost impossible to cut government programs once they have become entrenched and parasitically attached to the viscera of an interest group or two. No matter how much or how often we cut taxes, a constantly ballooning budget brings with it a bigger, more intrusive federal government and eventually forces a commensurate strain on our wallets. If McCain can balance the budget while maintaining his pledge not to raise taxes, we will witness the single greatest economic libertarian reform since the achievement of Gingrich’s Contract with America.

Finally, while it might be attractive to throw a vote at Bob Barr or whomever turns out to be the Libertarian Party nominee in November (I’m still toying with the idea), McCain is really not a bad choice. In addition, with current polls showing that the Arizona Senator runs even with both Obama and Hillary in some unlikely places – e.g., hyper-liberal New York and Taxachusetts – the votes of those of us who live in perennially polarized states may end up counting after all. But if you decide to pull the lever for McCain this fall with the irritating pragmatism of a mature voter, it may not be that hard to convince the rabidly anti-statist libertarian within yourself that you’re winning one for the Gipper again.