Former GOP Congressman Bob Barr had one thing standing between him and the Libertarian presidential nomination – his entire résumé--and still managed to grab the nod after a two-week campaign. (I was there when he won, covering the convention for TNR.) Barr’s next task is making good on his supposed main forte: selling the party to outsiders. He started out swimmingly, holding his own last week against an unusually sympathetic Stephen Colbert. However, Barr’s next overture to the hipper set, a blog post for Huffington, is a complete disaster. Entitled “I Was Wrong About The War On Drugs -- It's A Failure,” it is a sort of mea culpa for Barr’s former stance on medical marijuana, one of the key Libertarian topics. (He had once killed a medical-marijuana ballot initiative in D.C. with what is now inconveniently known as the Barr Amendment).
So why has Barr reversed his views? Because, somehow, of Chris Benoit, the pro wrestler who killed his family and himself last year. Besides taking place in Barr’s home state of Georgia, the Benoit anecdote has nothing to do with, literally, anything (“It was speculated that Chris had… steroid or "roid" rage,” writes the candidate before adding, “It is unclear how much of a role drugs played in Benoit's actions”). Barr’s thesis appears to be that, in the wake of that tragedy, the WWE did a better job of cleaning up its internal drug policy than the government would have done, and “that's the beauty of this libertarian solution.” He then closes with a wrestling joke.
If this is a preview of the candidate’s candor--and, indeed, coherence--regarding his staggering, near-total change of philosophy over the last few years, we’re in for at least a few more interesting blog posts. What will Barr say about his renunciation of the Defense of Marriage act, which he had co-authored? That he has caught a few reruns of Will & Grace since then?
--Michael Idov
Related: "Freedom Freaks: Scenes from the tragicomic demise of the Libertarian party"