Gary Johnson wants to be president.
Though not exactly a household name, the 63-year-old businessman and former Governor of New Mexico has achieved a kind of cult status among American conservatives. This is his second run for president as the nominee for the Libertarian Party, and this time it isn’t just the Freedom Movement taking an interest. As Donald Trump’s autocratic egomania has become increasingly statist – from proposing a 40 percent tariff on Chinese imports to threatening to ban all Muslims from entering the US – Johnson’s free-market advocacy of smaller, smarter government has seemed ever-more appealing.
Third party candidates don’t really get much attention during presidential races, but given the unpopularity of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Johnson seems to think this could be his year. He is pushing to get above the 15 percent support he needs to be included in the presidential debates that begin at the end of this month. His aim is to deprive both Clinton and Trump of the 270 electoral college votes a candidate needs to win the presidency – any less and the House picks the next president. If Johnson were to win Utah – and given the support he’s received from Mitt Romney, that’s not impossible – he could turn the contest into a three-way race.
Or at least, that was plan. It was going relatively well, until Johnson admitted on Thursday in a live interview that he didn’t know where – or even what – Aleppo was.
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Here’s the transcript with MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle.
BARNICLE: What would you do, if you were elected, about Aleppo?
JOHNSON: About?
BARNICLE: Aleppo.
JOHNSON: And what is Aleppo?
BARNICLE: You’re kidding.
JOHNSON: No.
BARNICLE: Aleppo is in Syria. It’s the — it’s the epicenter of the refugee crisis.
JOHNSON: OK, got it, got it.
Everyone has had moments when their mind suddenly goes blank, but Johnson’s apparent casualness when asked the question, and the way the word “Aleppo” appeared to mean nothing to him, has made him the subject of outrage and ridicule. It’s not just that he doesn’t know exactly where Aleppo is (he’s not being asked to point it out on a map), he doesn’t even realise it’s a place at all. This is a much bigger gaffe than Donald Trump confusing Iran’s Quds Force with the Turkish population of Kurds, especially as Johnson is presenting himself as the smarter, more competent alternative to Trump’s erratic volatility.
Johnson’s tactic following his Aleppo blunder has been to give the media something else to fixate on. Just hours after his MSNBC interview, he appeared on ABC’s The View. When asked who he would vote for, Trump or Clinton, if he had a gun pointed at his head, Johnson replied: “I’d let it go off”.
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This response was met with cheers and applause, but given Johnson is targeting concerned Republican voters who worry about Trump’s experience and temperament, his ignorance may have dealt his candidacy a near-fatal blow. At any rate, voters on the moderate-right in search of a candidate are running out of options.
In other minority party news, left-wingers who dislike Hillary Clinton are not faring much better. After Bernie Sanders finally acknowledged he had lost the Democratic primary and would not be running for president, a substantial faction of his cultish following switched allegiances to the Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Stein is a qualified medical doctor, who nonetheless has a tendency to ignore science in favour of conspiracy theories about the fictional dangers of vaccinations and the imaginary perils of genetically modified food. So far, aside from enraging progressives with her penchant for pseudoscience, her campaign has been virtually ignored.
But on Wednesday, Stein found herself subject to an arrest warrant in North Dakota, for spray-painting a bulldozer during a protest against a pipeline. Stein, who allegedly painted “I approve this message” on the equipment in red, now faces charges of criminal trespassing and criminal mischief.
Hillary Clinton continues to be scrutinised over her e-mails, even after evidence that her predecessor Colin Powell used the same system. Donald Trump is still embroiled in a lawsuit over the fraudulent practices of his Trump University, while allegations have been made about him donating to the Florida Attorney General to prevent her pressing charges. With all the scandals and controversies flying about, it is ironic that, so far, the only candidate actually facing criminal prosecution is the whiter-than-white Jill Stein.
The cries that America’s two-party system is unworkable have intensified during this election, with antipathy towards both of the main candidates. But the embarrassing antics of Johnson and Stein hardly inspire confidence. US voters have their alternative candidates. Let us hope that Gary Johnson is never placed in charge of military operations in Syria, and that the only thing Jill Stein is able to vandalise is a bulldozer.
