From the Archives: LP presidential hopeful Gary Johnson calls two-party debates a 'waste of time'

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on October 21, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

LP presidential hopeful Gary Johnson calls two-party debates a 'waste of time'

With the third and final Democrat-Republican presidential debate approaching, Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party's presidential nominee, said in an interview that such debates are “a waste of time,” also offering his thoughts about U.S. policy in the Middle East and North Africa. He also indicated that he may win a large percentage of votes in his native New Mexico.

Johnson, author of the new book, Seven Principles of Good Government, spoke to the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner during a recent campaign stop in Washington, D.C.

Although a social gathering at The Board Room on Connecticut Avenue was meant for Johnson to engage with his supporters and campaign volunteers, he spent the greater part of the evening answering journalists' questions on a wide range of policy issues.

Asked about the value to voters of the debates between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Johnson said they are “just a big waste of time” and that the two participants are like the Lewis Carroll characters “Tweedledee, Tweedledum.”

'State of war'

The former New Mexico governor offered this prediction: If “either one of them get elected, we're going to have a heightened police state. We're going to find ourselves in a continued state of war. Military interventions are not going to stop, and spending and debt [are] going to continue to be unsustainable. At some point,” he concluded, if Obama or Romney is elected, the economy “will collapse.”

In response to a question about radio and television advertising for his campaign, Johnson said he will soon be airing TV commercials “in areas we might actually win, or potentially taking second place” although “probably not” in Washington, D.C., despite that city's small number of Republican voters.

Johnson also predicted his vote totals will be relatively high in some Western states and one Midwestern swing state.

“I think there's opportunity in Nevada,” he said, noting that “something that really has gone unpublicized is in Ohio last week, I was polling at 11 percent.”

That is “probably an aberration,” Johnson conceded, “but nonetheless, all these polling numbers are going up. They're not going down.”

The first-time presidential candidate said he believes it is possible he could win more than 10 percent of the vote in New Mexico, where he served two terms as a Republican governor in a majority-Democrat state.

“I really believe that, I really do,” he said, “and we're not focusing anything on New Mexico. The notion is that we're trying to treat everything equally and see how that pans out but I would have to think that, [given] my experience in New Mexico, I'm really looked at favorably. I really am.”

Libya question

In the foreign policy debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, on October 22, the question of U.S. policy in Libya and reactions to the September 11 murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans will be in the forefront of the discussion, just as it was in the town hall debate at Hofstra University on October 16. Johnson has some strong views on what U.S. policy in that region should be.

“I would pull all of our diplomats out of our embassies” there, he said. “I would not set us up as being targets.”

In the “long term,” the United States and other countries should “take part in what I would hope would be mutual benefit but when I hear that” American diplomats in the region are supposed to be “protecting vital American interests, I just ask rhetorically, out loud, What are vital American interests? Are they propping up the new dictatorship that we deem better than the old dictatorship?”

In response to a question about whether American influence is better projected using soft power than military power, Johnson explained, “that's right. It's walk softly and carry a big stick. That's what [George W.] Bush said but none of that none of that was reality. None of it.”

Suggested Links

Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson assesses Romney, Stein, and Goode
Presidential hopeful Gary Johnson on health care, marriage, and Colbert
Libertarian author Brian Doherty compares Ron Paul and Gary Johnson
Constitution Party presidential nominee Virgil Goode talks politics on Labor Day
Libertarian VP nominee Jim Gray reflects on electing judges, Gary Johnson

GOP Congresswoman Calls Out UN Homophobe

At a news conference in New York on September 18, the new president of the United Nations General Assembly, former Libyan foreign minister Ali Abdussalam Treki, said that he was opposed to the decriminalization of homosexuality and that, in fact, he favored those countries and traditions that continue to penalize their gay citizens.

According to a report by Matthew Russell Lee of the Inner City Press -- and apparently the only report on Treki's remarks in the news media so far:

In a surreal press conference on September 18, the new Libyan president of the UN General Assembly Ali Abdussalam Treki veered from refusing to answer a question about his country's recent proposal to cut Switzerland into three parts because it is not on the Assembly's agenda to favoring the criminalization of homosexuality despite a General Assembly vote to the contrary only last year. Video here, from Minute 29:53.

(I noted the bizarre proposal to dismember Switzerland, derived from a personal vendetta of Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, a few days ago.)

Lee goes on to say:

...when Treki was asked about the vote in the General Assembly last year urging the decriminalization of homosexuality, he was not as restrained or diplomatic. He said "that matter is very sensitive, very touchy. As a Muslim, I am not in favor of that... it is not accepted by the majority of countries." This last would seem to contradict the vote in the General Assembly last year.

Treki continued that some countries allow homosexuality, "thinking it a kind of democracy... I think it is not." While basing his statement on Islam -- he said there are "two billion" Muslim in the world -- he also said that "probably Jewish and Buddhist and Hindu" communities are against it. Video here, from Minute 29:53. Of course if it is raised in the 64th session, he conceded, the Assembly members will have to decide.

Be sure to click on the links to the video; it backs up Lee's report in Treki's own words.

In what may be the only political response to Treki's remarks from the United States (so far, at least), Florida Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking minority member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a statement of rebuke.

This is the text of a news release from the Congresswoman's office that landed in my email box a couple of hours ago (it is not yet posted to Ros-Lehtinen's official web site press release page):

Ros-Lehtinen Criticizes Anti-Gay Remarks by Libyan President of the UN General Assembly

Calls on Congress to cut funding to UN Agencies, pass Reform bill

(WASHINGTON) – U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, commented today on recent remarks by Ali Abdessalam Treki, the new president of the United Nations General Assembly and former foreign minister of Libya, in favor of the criminalization of homosexual behavior. Statement by Ros-Lehtinen:

“The anti-gay bigotry spewed by this Qaddafi shill demonstrates once again that the UN has been hijacked by advocates of hate and intolerance.

“Likewise, the leadership of the UN Development Program is held by the Iranian regime, which denies the presence of gays in Iran even as it murders them and other innocent citizens.

“We must ensure that billions annually in U.S. taxpayer dollars no longer foot the bill for the UN’s anti-freedom agenda without significant reform.

“Congress must demand better by enacting pending legislation that would leverage our contributions to the UN to produce sweeping, meaningful reform of that body.”

Note: Ros-Lehtinen is the author of the United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act (H.R. 557), which seeks to combat anti-freedom bias within the UN. This bill enjoys the support of almost 100 cosponsors.

H.R. 557 so far has 97 cosponsors, including House Minority Leader John Boehner, Minority Whip Eric Cantor, and Cantor's fellow Virginia Congressmen Bob Goodlatte, Rob Wittmann, and Frank Wolf, as well as South Carolina's newly famous Second District Representative Joe Wilson. Among other things, the bill would:

[Withhold] U.S. contributions to the United Nations Human Rights Council until the Secretary certifies to Congress that the Council does not include a member state: (1) subject to Security Council sanctions; (2) under a Security Council-mandated investigation for human rights abuses; (3) subject, within the prior five years, to a country-specific resolution passed by the former U.N. Human Rights Commission; (4) which the Secretary has determined is a government that has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism; or (5) which the President has designated as a country of particular concern for religious freedom.

Ros-Lehtinen deserves congratulations for her willingness to speak out against homophobic language by the leader of the United Nations General Assembly. The idea that, in the 21st century, people should be imprisoned, tortured, or executed for being gay is beyond the realm of civil discourse.

Let's hope that more of Ros-Lehtinen's colleagues, both Republican and Democrat, line up to offer their own condemnations of Ali Abdussalam Treki's Neanderthalism.



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Swiss Shards

What would legendary Swiss patriot Wilhelm Tell think about this?

Colonel Moammar Gadhafi (also spelled Qadafi, Kadafi, Khaddafi, Gaddafi, but never Cavafy), who has ruled Libya as a dictator for the past four decades (but never managed to get promoted to general - what's up with that?), wants the United Nations to dismember Switzerland, an independent country for more than six centuries, and redistribute its constituent parts to Germany, Italy, and France.

I learned about this through an article in O'Dwyer's PR, a professional newsletter (subscription only), and I had to do a double-take because I thought I was reading something from The Onion or another satirical publication. The O'Dwyer's article reports that Libya's Mission to the United Nations has hired a public relations firm, Hopps & Associates, to represent Gadhafi during the coming year. (Libya was elected president of the General Assembly in June and takes the gavel this month.) The article then continues:

The abolishment of Switzerland is among Gaddafi's U.N. priorities. He will call for carving up of Switzerland and handing its parts to France, Italy and Germany. The Colonel has waged war against the Swiss after authorities arrested his son, Hannibal, for beating two workers at a Geneva hotel. More than $5B of Libyan funds have been yanked from Swiss banks, and the Tripoli office of Nestle has been shuttered.

Skeptical, I did some research to confirm this bizarre story, and found it to be true.

World Radio Switzerland, for instance, reports:

Mummar Gaddafi plans to officially ask the United Nations to eliminate Switzerland from the map. The Libyan leader first made the comments at the G8 meeting in Italy in July, but it was largely ignored by the world leaders.

He also said at the G8 meeting that Switzerland is ‘a mafia world, and not a country’. Gaddafi has apparently notified others that he will make his request during his first-ever visit to, and speech at, the UN General Assembly.

The Daily Mail, a British newspaper, added some details to the story:

He first mentioned his idea at the G8 summit in Italy in July. 'Switzerland is a world mafia and not a state,' he said.

'It is formed of an Italian community that should return to Italy, another German community that should return to Germany, and a third French community that should return to France.'

The Swiss Foreign Ministry described it as a single-minded campaign against Swiss interests.

Swiss MP Christa Markwalder, told the Swiss TV news programme 10 vor 10 this week: 'We are concerned that Libya will attempt to use its year-long presidency of the U.N. General Assembly to damage Switzerland's reputation.'

The good news -- for Switzerland, not for Gadhafi -- that the United Nations lacks the authority to carve up countries and feed the remains to their neighbors. (Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, for instance, broke apart from centrifugal forces of their own making, not because of intervention by a multilateral organization.)

Foreign Policy magazine notes on its blog:

A UN spokesman tells the Swiss News Agency that Libya submitted a proposal to the General Assembly calling for the dissolution of Switzerland last month. The proposal was never accepted or circulated because the U.N. Charter prohibits countries from threatening the existence of other member states....

The source of the Libya-Switzerland beef is an incident last year involving Qaddafi's ne'er-do-well son Hannibal. (See more about him in our list of the World's Worst Sons.)The young Qaddafi was arrested at a hotel in Geneva for aggravated assault on two of his servants. His father responded by lodging a formal diplomatic complaint, expelling Swiss diplomats, and shutting down Swiss-owned businesses in Libya.

If Gadhafi takes this proposal further, perhaps someone should challenge him to shoot an apple off the top of his son Hannibal's head.

Chances are, however, that nothing will come of this. Hannibal should have learned a long time ago that he'll lose more than he'll gain by crossing the Alps.

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