alt prez / By Richard Wall

The Other Candidates For President

Fourth in a six-part series

(Sept. 11, 2008)  It’s the rare alternative candidate for President who can lose horribly and still attain third-party glory and national fame. And that’s the Spoiler.

It doesn’t get any better than that for an independent or third-party candidate. Knowing he or she can’t win, he sneaks up in a tiny paper boat, rams a hole in the dreadnought [FISA note: metaphorically speaking] and, incredibly, it goes down. That is cool, no matter what your voting preferences are.

GALLERY >

Of course, this ticks off all the voters of the big loser, McCain or Obama, and they rain abuse on the Spoiler candidate and his undisciplined voters. And that’s good, because that’s attention. However, their logic is annoying because the winner and the big loser candidate are more to blame for the outcome than the paper sailor who nets a whopping .32 percent of the vote.

Libertarian Bob Barr could be a Spoiler for McCain in some states this election, and Ralph Nader could be a Spoiler for Obama in others. Actually, they’re all spoilers, because that’s what candidates do in an election — try to get votes from their opponents. It’s not unfair and it’s not unusual.

Race for Third Place

Bob Barr, the former House Republican from Georgia best known as the tireless impeacher of Bill Clinton, became a Libertarian two years ago and is the Party’s candidate for president, though it took six ballots at the big Lib Convention.

The Libertarians are a consistent third-party choice, sneaking up to Nader’s third-place vote totals in 2004. But they’ve got extra baggage this time around — their candidate. Barr was not a libertarian while in Congress, and has since changed his position on supporting the Iraq War, authoring the Defense of Marriage Act, voting for the Patriot Act and trying to prevent U.S. soldiers from being Wiccans. These things bother liberty-loving Libertarians, and other candidates might be catching their eye, like the Constitution Party’s Chuck Baldwin or the new Rambo Woman McCain’s got now.

Barr will be on the ballot in at least 41 states — and he may be the only Presidential candidate on the ballot in Texas, where the Republican and Democratic parties recently missed a Presidential filing deadline. But the Texas parties will surely get some kind of free do-over.

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