The Election in a Nutshell

David Bernstein of the Volokh Conspiracy sums up perfectly what this election is like for the libertarian-minded:

This year, the Libertarian candidate is embarassing. And Ralph Nader has become a parody of the man who once supported some forms of deregulation because it benefitted consumers. I find virtually nothing to admire about John Kerry. W. deserves credit for a certain steadfastness in the War on Terror, but his administration is suffused with the sort of hubris, sense of entitlement to power, and belief in the ameliorative powers of government action (in both the foreign and domestic realms) that one normally associates with the worst types of statists. And let's not forget the Administration's blatant lies about the cost of the Medicare law, and Karl Rove's apparent plan to drive all well-educated, secular folks out of the party in exchange for the votes of the most ignorant elements of the fundamentalist community, a traditional Democratic stronghold. I am concerned about the future of the Supreme Court, but I expect that Bush would most likely appoint a "moderate" and easily confirmable Latino who could help woo voters to the GOP side than appoint a principled believer in the American constitution.

The Republican Congress, meanwhile, has proven worse than a disappointment; it's a disaster of monumental proportions. Congressional Republicans, as a group, have but one goal, and that's to wield power. The current Congress makes the corrupt Democrats of the O'Neil-Wright era look like great statesmen. Unfortunately, I don't see any evidence that the Democrats would be better (whatever happened to the "reform" wing of the Democratic Party? Did it die its final death when Robert Reich was expelled from the Clinton Administration for talking too much about corporate tax breaks and other special interest giveaways? Can you believe that every single House Democrat voted for the obscene farm bill, which redistributes income upwards?), and can easily imagine them being worse, by, for example, turning the entire health care industry into a nationalized playground for Democratic interest groups. Congress has become a wholly owned subsidiary of special interests, and that suits its Members just fine.

I saw a perfect bumper sticker on an evidence case at the debate tournament I judged this weekend. It said:

Boy, ain't that the truth. Knowing that either Bush or Kerry will be in charge for the next four years is like having to choose between ointment or suppository - if you need either one of them, you've already got big problems. And I'm finding myself less and less able to brush it aside. Mencken famously said that democracy is the only truly amusing form of government ever invented. I just can't bring myself to laugh much about it anymore. That's why I'm not issuing any sort of candidate endorsement or presuming to tell anyone else how they should vote. I'm voting for Badnarik, holding my nose the entire time. That doesn't mean you should too, it just means that's what I've determined is the least bad of a bunch of even worse choices, and your mileage certainly may vary. I cannot imagine any possible reasoning by which a sane, thinking human being could muster up any genuine enthusiasm for any of these candidates, though I can think of lots of reasons to passionately oppose all of them. Regardless of the name on top after tomorrow night, I can only predict that we will all be on the losing end of this game.