Justin Amash for POTUS?
Halifax2TheMax
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Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan is not the Libertarian Party's candidate for president. Not yet. The 40-year-old congressman, who left the Republican Party last year, entered third-party politics just weeks before the LP is set to nominate its presidential ticket at a convention in Austin, and the candidates who were already in the race have blasted him as an “interloper.”
Amash was making Libertarians a familiar offer: Welcome him in, give him the party’s nomination, and he can blow up the two-party system. In interviews this week, Amash has rejected the idea that he'd siphon anti-Trump votes away from Joe Biden, arguing instead that he could stitch together 270 electoral votes.
“I’m in a position, given my age, where I think I have a little more capability, frankly, with social media and with this kind of stuff than these other two candidates,” Amash told Politico’s Tim Alberta. “I think this presents an advantage for me over the next few months.”
Step one on that path: a charm offensive with Libertarian activists, urging a party that struggles to crack 3 percent of the vote that the country is finally ready for them. “Nobody should get the nomination just because they have higher name ID than other people,” Amash said in an interview with The Trailer this week. He would earn the nomination with conversations and reason, and then he’d apply these tactics to 130 million or so Americans.
Reached at home in western Michigan, Amash talked about that plan and his approach to government, which was idiosyncratic in the GOP and viewed skeptically by Libertarians. He addressed the sexual assault allegation against Biden by saying his campaign was focused on the issues. “Everyone deserves due process,” Amash said, “whether it's Joe Biden or Donald Trump.”
In a week when the Republican president was panicking about bad internal poll numbers and Democrats were wrestling with headlines focused on the allegation, Amash argued what Libertarian candidates have been pitching since 1976: that this was the year for voters to ditch the Democrats and Republicans. This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
THE TRAILER: You said a few weeks ago that you were considering a presidential run, and then you did it. Can you describe the process that led you here?
JUSTIN AMASH: I've spent a lot of time thinking about it over the past couple of months, starting in mid-February. I had to assess whether this was a winnable race. That's important to me. I'm not running for messaging, or to score some points, or anything like that. I believe you run to win. And I had to adjust to this environment. We're at home with a pandemic situation, so are we able to campaign in a way that would allow me to win? And I came to the conclusion that, yes, it was possible to do that.
TT: You've talked about frustration with the two main parties and the “partisan death spiral.” But somebody could point to the 2016 election and say: Hey, that was the opening for a third party. Hillary Clinton was far more disliked than Joe Biden, and Donald Trump was more disliked than he is now. And Libertarians couldn't crack 5 percent. What's the case now?
JA: I'm not sure that I disagree with the idea that 2016 was a good environment for a Libertarian Party candidate. It's hard to know whether this environment is better or worse. I do know that we have two candidates who won't address the systemic problems we have, the partisan nature of politics that is destroying our constitutional system. And I'm not saying that partisanship will go away if any particular person is elected. Of course not. But right now, we let the partisanship drive everything, and it manifests itself in the way the legislative process works so that now you only have a few leaders who control everything and they negotiate directly with the White House. And that is not going to change whether you have Donald Trump or Joe Biden as president.
TT: Speaking of 2016, you said at the time that you could not vote for Trump or Clinton. Who did you vote for?
JA: I wrote in [Kentucky Sen.] Rand Paul. Those were different times. [Paul, who attacked Trump in the 2016 presidential primary, has become a loyal presidential ally.]
TT: You opposed the Paycheck Protection Program, but you've also said that there should be some sort of universal cash distribution during the pandemic. Can you unpack your thinking on this?
JA: The PPP, if constructed properly, could be beneficial to a lot of businesses and maybe a lot of employees, but it's not constructed properly at all. For example, enhanced unemployment benefits work against the PPP's effort to have employers rehire employees. [Some business owners have complained that benefits are more generous than the workers’ pre-pandemic wages.] So you have things working against each other in the bill, and you also have hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare that is accessible through the Federal Reserve under the direction of [Treasury] Secretary [Steve] Mnuchin. That legislation is convoluted and complex. What would have been much better for the American people, and should have at least been the starting point, would have been to get money to the people directly as fast as possible. And I was sounding the alarm on that pretty early in the process. The checks would have gone out faster, and those checks should have been universal. Would there be some checks that go to the wrong people? Of course, but the level of waste there is small compared to the level of waste under the current system.
TT: I ask about that because I could find a Libertarian delegate, or maybe one of your opponents, who says: Look, the government shouldn't be redistributing wealth in the first place. So, why is this in harmony with your belief system?
JA: I do think it's a form of redistribution. The government is going to be involved in a crisis. There was a lot of desire by hundreds of millions of Americans to have the government involved in this. There is no way the government was going to stay out. And the crisis was furthered by government action. You had big government instructing people to not go to work and instructing people in certain businesses to close their doors. Is it utopian to have this system? No, but in a crisis, there is no perfect way to address it. So the best thing you can do is try to reduce the shock.
TT: Every time someone first elected as a Republican has sought the Libertarian nomination, he's won it. But there's always some resistance to him inside the party. The Libertarian platform, for example says that the government shouldn't be involved in abortion and that it's a personal choice. You disagree with that, right?
JA: I'm pro-life, and people in the party understand that. They know where I'm coming from. And within the party, there's a lot of division on that issue. It's not clear-cut. My suspicion is that the party's actually become more pro-life over the years. But there is common ground, I think, on this particular issue. Libertarians do agree that there shouldn't be federal funding of abortion or abortion providers. And as far as legislation coming through Congress is concerned, that's probably as far as anything we'll ever get.
TT: It's more likely to come through the courts. Say you're president, and you're sitting down with judicial nominees. What is the conversation you guys have about Roe and the right to privacy?
JA: I think we can agree, and even progressive law professors can agree, that Roe v. Wade has problems as a Supreme Court opinion. So, that's not really a big debate in the legal community. For me, when it comes to judicial nominations and appointments, the question's about whether they uphold the text of the Constitution. I was supportive of Justice [Neil] Gorsuch. I was supportive of his nomination and appointment. And I would be supportive of justices like that.
TT: The Libertarian platform also says that we should — I'm going to read the text, so I'm not gotcha-ing you — “phase out the current government-sponsored Social Security system and transition to a private voluntary system.” Do you agree with that?
JA: If the question is, do I agree with reforming Social Security, the answer is yes. I don't know whether it has to be replaced or reformed or in some other way. I've long advocated for the idea that Social Security and Medicare, as they are currently operating, will not function into the distant future, and that you have to begin to change the system. You change the system by addressing the people who are youngest right now, and having them transition to a different system, whereas people who are older — just so that we're totally clear on this, people at or near retirement — you wouldn't change the system for them. I want to be careful about the word “phasing” or the phrase “phasing out.” I don't want some abrupt change for people who are currently retired or near retirement. The phase-in would affect our youngest people, in their 20s and 30s.
TT: What do you think when you see people protesting stay-at-home orders, in close quarters, in state capitols? Do you agree with the protests?
JA: I don't disagree with the right to protest. Everyone has the right to protest. And no governor can shut down protests. It's a First Amendment protected right. I think that just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean you should do it in a particular way. So to the extent that anyone is out and about ignoring social distancing guidelines and taking big risks, I think that's a mistake. If you do it in a way that pushes people away from your cause, that can be problematic. I think there are millions of people in the state of Michigan who agree with the protesters, at least in spirit. I also agree that the governor has overreached in her approach, and I'm glad that she's taken some steps back.
TT: Was the president right or wrong to halt the legal immigration process during the pandemic? Keeping in mind here that guest workers are still allowed in the country.
JA: That's not a particularly fruitful approach. Most of the spread is already happening in communities here in America, so I don't know what's gained from it. If you were going to have lockdowns, it made the most sense to lock down very early. I understand it's hard for anyone, any president, to know what is the right time to do that and how things might spiral out of control. But I'm not sure that this particular population presents a significant increase in risk to the United States in terms of spreading the virus.
TT: How should the 2020 elections be conducted? Do you agree with the states that are restricting absentee ballots?
JA: It's important that states, for security reasons, be able to determine how they hold elections and that we not have one government dictating to all 50 states how they're going to hold the elections. But I do think it is important for every state to make voting as accessible as possible. And if that means mail-in ballots during this kind of situation, then so be it. I just don't like the idea of having the federal government start to manage elections across the country, because then you make the system actually more vulnerable to outside attacks.
TT: You've been asked a few times about whether you may be a “spoiler,” and why you didn't send a message by running against the president in the Republican primary. Bill Weld, who was the Libertarian nominee for vice president four years ago, did just that and dropped out. What lesson did you take from Weld's experience?
JA: It was futile, and I recognized that a long time ago. The partisanship is so extraordinary right now that people aren't willing to break away from their leaders in their parties in the way that they might have decades ago. I never expected the Republican Party to peel away from Trump during this election, at least not over the past two years. There was a possibility early on if Republicans had spoken out, right when he was elected. He could have been rejected outright by this point. But once he basically coalesced with the establishment, once he essentially merged with Mitch McConnell, there was no chance of returning. And that's where we are.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/paloma/the-trailer/2020/05/03/the-trailer-justin-amash-on-why-he-s-not-a-spoiler-protests-and-who-he-voted-for-in-2016/5eadde7f602ff15fb002338a/?itid=hp_politics1-8-12_trailer-940pm:homepage/story-ansLibtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
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If so, probably only because too many people will think he is Amish.
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My father was full blooded Amish. I guess that means I'm half-fucked?
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2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin