David Boaz

That Hillary Clinton ad about the need for an experienced president — “It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing…. Who do you want answering the phone?” — reminds some commentators of a very similar ad that helped former vice president Walter Mondale hold on to his lead over the dashing young senator Gary Hart in 1984. It reminded me of John McCain’s jibe at George W. Bush’s inexperience in 2000, recorded by Dana Milbank in his book Smashmouth (page 313):

But when the scouting reports come in, there is only one lonely man in a dark office.

Barack Obama’s soaring campaign continues to roll, this time with the release of a bilingual music video by musician will.i.am. In it, celebrities such as Jessica Alba, George Lopez, Ryan Phillippe, Malcolm Jamal Warner, and Macy Gray sing the praises of Obama and repeate his line “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

Certainly I know that I have been waiting for Jessica Alba and Ryan Phillippe to lead our nation at last.

At Freedom Communications, the media company founded by the tenacious libertarian publisher R. C. Hoiles, which is still largely family-owned and freedom-oriented, they had an internal lunch debate on presidential politics the other day. According to Orange County Register columnist Frank Mickadeit, their corporate philosopher Tibor Machan advocated voting for the Libertarian Party. But the company’s CEO, Scott Flanders, had a different view:

But there was a hush as Flanders reasoned that Obama is the best candidate to work on four top libertarian reforms: 1) Iraq withdrawal, 2) restoring the separation of church and state; 3) easing off victimless crimes such as drug use; 4) curtailing the Patriot Act.

As it happens, a few days earlier I had talked to a leading libertarian writer, who told me that he supposed he’d vote for Obama on the basis of the Iraq issue.

Libertarian voters should be up for grabs this year, the Republicans having done such an effective job of pushing them away. But the Democrats don’t seem to be making much of a pitch for them. At the last Democratic debate, Clinton and Obama spent the first 30 minutes proclaiming their devotion to socialized medicine and protectionism. But maybe issues of peace and civil liberties — combined with the Republicans’ loss of credibility on fiscal and economic issues — really will push some libertarians into the arms of the Democrats, especially if the Democratic nominee is not self-proclaimed “government junkie” Hillary Clinton.

Brian Doherty, the author of the magisterial Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, has some generous things to say about my new book The Politics of Freedom in Sunday’s New York Post. I especially like the subtitle in the reason.com version: “sells the libertarian message with sizzle.”

Brian discusses my claims about the extent of libertarianism among American voters and writes:

Whatever the near-term prospects for libertarian political victories, The Politics of Freedom reminds you of the service libertarians provide to public discourse: They can point out the hypocrisy, power grabs, hubris and counterproductive folly issuing from Washington under either political brand name since they are beholden to neither. …

No major political party has fully embraced the implications of the proper role of government that follow from Boaz’s simple limited-government vision. But when expressed that plainly, it’s a moral vision many Americans can cheer.

The Politics of Freedom is available at all fine bookstores, at Amazon, and from the Cato Institute.

Cato founder/president/CEO Ed Crane and Board member/senior fellow Bob Levy take on “the president’s bogus claims of limitless executive power” in his battle with Congress over the Terrorist Surveillance Program:

Abiding by the Constitution will not always shield us from bad laws. Nonetheless, even if the Constitution is not a sufficient guidepost, it is certainly a necessary guidepost.

For many years, we were at risk of losing important civil liberties through unchecked transgressions by the executive branch. Maybe we are still at risk. But thanks to the media, the courts and — belatedly — an energized opposition in Congress, the administration has finally resigned itself to a semblance of congressional oversight, even if judicial scrutiny remains inadequate.

The president’s bogus claims of limitless executive power are, for now, on hold. That’s the right constitutional precedent even if it ultimately produces the wrong policy outcomes. Longer term, the precedent is more important than temporal policy judgments. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s plurality opinion in the Hamdi case nicely captured the key principle: “Whatever power the U.S. Constitution envisions for the Executive … in time of conflict, it most assuredly envisions a role for all three branches of government when individual civil liberties are at stake.”

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s continuing crusade to manage every aspect of his constituents’ lives has generated another perverse consequence: Customers of Wendy’s in New York will now get less information on nutrition than they did before the newest regulations. Wendy’s has posted this notice “For NYC Customers” on its Nutrition website:

Special notice to inquiries originating from New York City:

We regret that Wendy’s cannot provide product calorie information to residents or customers in New York City. The New York City Department of Health passed a regulation requiring restaurants that already provide calorie information to post product calories on their menu boards — using the same type size as the product listing.

We fully support the intent of this regulation; however, since most of our food is made-to-order, there isn’t enough room on our existing menu boards to comply with the regulation. We have for years provided complete nutritional information on posters inside the restaurant and on our website. To continue to provide caloric information to residents and customers of our New York City restaurants on our website and on our nutritional posters would subject us to this regulation. As a result, we will no longer provide caloric information to residents and customers of our New York City restaurants.

We regret this inconvenience. If you have questions about this regulation, please contact the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and refer to Health Code Section 81.50.

The Democratic candidates remind me of the Nixon-era TV series “The Mod Squad”: One white, one black, one blonde.

And really, that’s all I know about the show and about all I know about the candidates. What are the differences among them? Obama is eloquent and elegant. Hillary is earnest. Edwards is TV-actor cute and shouts more than the others–not that that ended up counting for much.

And like the TV show, the Democrats’ Mod Squad is based on a lot of ideas that seemed cool in the early ’70s —  energy independence, groovy kinds of alternative energy, national health insurance, fine-tuning the economy, higher taxes, cheap money, interest rate freezes, corporation-bashing, and ending the war but not any time soon.

So instead of a bridge to the 21^st century, the Democrats this year are offering us a bridge to the post-Woodstock era.

But the good news is that while the early ’70s were marked by plenty of policy disasters—Nixon’s wage and price controls, Ford’s “Whip Inflation Now” buttons, Carter’s “turn down your thermostats”—those things did make more people aware that the old regulatory policies had dramatically slowed down economic growth. As the ’70s went on and turned into the early ’80s, good things actually started to happen. Transportation, energy, finance, and telecommunications were deregulated. Capital gains and then income tax rates were reduced. Both large corporations and large unions were on the decline. CNN, Microsoft, and Apple were founded. Blacks, women, and gay people moved into the mainstream of society. After Watergate and Vietnam, Congress curbed some of the powers of the presidency.

Maybe the Mod Squad will once again be a precursor of better times to come.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch issues a stirring editorial call today for free-enterprise insurance reform. It’s worth quoting in full:

In a state that ostensibly is a bastion of capitalism, government intervention in the marketplace turns up surprisingly often. Two parties who are negotiating a contract for a good or service often find a third party — the commonwealth — sticking its nose in where it doesn’t belong.

For decades, Virginia law prevented insurance companies and policyholders from deciding who could receive health coverage. Not until three years ago did the General Assembly pass legislation allowing group accident and sickness policies to cover any class of persons mutually agreed upon by the insurance company and the policyholder.

Before then, health-insurance coverage was limited to spouses and dependent children. If a worker wanted to include someone else in his or her coverage, the law said he couldn’t — even if the worker’s employer and the insurance company both were happy to fulfill the request.

This year Del. Adam Ebbin is sponsoring legislation (HB 865) that would open up life-insurance coverage in much the same way: It would allow insurance companies to offer group coverage to anyone policyholders wished to cover — brother or sister, elderly parent, life partner, or third cousin twice removed — not just spouses and children.

Note well what this bill is not: a mandate. Insurance companies would not be required to cover anybody they did not wish to. They would remain free to reject coverage they did not care to offer. They simply would not be prohibited from covering persons they are willing to cover.

In a free market, that is precisely how insurance ought to work: The buyer and the seller of the policy work out the terms between themselves. The state’s job is merely to enforce the contract — not to write it. Ebbin’s bill deserves a resounding and unanimous aye.

The Times-Dispatch is well known as a conservative editorial page, so it’s gratifying to see them endorsing this pro-free enterprise, pro-business bill — even though some conservatives might object to it on the grounds that it will allow, though not compel, businesses to offer group life insurance to employees with same-sex partners. The Times-Dispatch commendably wants such issues worked out within companies, not by a state legislative ban.

When a politician has a vulnerability, there are different ways to deal with it. You can ignore it, stonewall questions, pretend it isn’t there. You can joke about it, as Ronald Reagan did with his age. Or you can embrace it, make it a virtue. In his early campaigns the rumpled and overweight Barney Frank (who has long since slimmed down and bought better suits) campaigned on the slogan “Neatness isn’t everything. Re-elect Barney.”

Hillary Clinton seems to have adopted the Barney Frank approach on the issue of corruption. Since 1991 or thereabouts, ethical questions have swirled around the Clintons–Whitewater, commodity trading, billing records, small-time grifters in the Cabinet, Travel Office firings, campaign fundraising, right on up to the midnight pardons as they left the White House. So she might have tried to run a squeaky-clean campaign to make people forget all that ancient history.

Tuesday night in Florida, however, it became pretty clear that that wouldn’t be her strategy. At her Florida victory speech, she was introduced by one of her national campaign co-chairs, Rep. Alcee Hastings. Back in 1988, Hastings was a federal judge. He was impeached by the House of Representatives on charges related to bribery and was removed by the Senate. Rep. John Conyers, now chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was one of the House impeachment managers. The House vote was 413 to 3.

On January 20, 2001, Bill Clinton pardoned William Borders, who was convicted and jailed in connection with the bribery of Hastings.

It looks like the Clintons are not embarrassed to be associated with other politicians who have been accused–and impeached–and indeed actually removed from office for unethical behavior. “Ethics isn’t everything. Bring back the Clintons.”

Over at the Guardian, I argue that no one who values duty, honor, and country would put Mike Huckabee a heartbeat from the presidency.