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Michael Badnarik

Michael Badnarik was the Libertarian Party’s nominee for president in 2004. He received 397,265 votes in the general election.

Josh Israel interviewed Badnarik on April 12, 2007.

You were a presidential candidate in 2004 as the Libertarian nominee. Would you talk a little bit about what it’s like being a so-called third-party candidate in the current campaign-finance system?

That was actually very difficult to raise money, especially running my candidacy up to the Libertarian nomination. People have a limited amount of funds, and they are not interested in funding a candidate who has little or no chance of having an effect. And so even within the Libertarian Party, I was a dark-horse candidate.

However, I am very proud that once I did win the nomination we were able to raise just over $1 million. We were able to use that money to bring the Libertarian message to an estimated 70 million people during the five months leading up to the election. So, as far as an advertising program, my presidential campaign was very, very cost-efficient. The difficulty is mostly getting the word out. And although the major television networks ignored me, or would do short five-minute interviews with me in an effort to discredit me and make it appear less likely that I have a chance to win, the local media stations and newspaper outlets were very open to interviewing me. If you are a presidential candidate and you come into a small town, they are eager to interview you. The chances that George [W.] Bush or John Kerry is going to walk in and give a face-to-face interview are small and none.

I was very thrilled with the treatment that I got, very open and evenhanded. My mother was collecting newspaper articles written about me. And some of them sounded like they were written by my mother, just a glowing report. I was very flattered. So we were able to get the message out. We were able to get some legitimate press. But I had to work for it by visiting every little tiny city.

The biggest problem, of course, is that I was denied access to the presidential debates. And while I do understand that it just wouldn’t be practical to have 200 presidential candidates trying to debate on the same stage, my campaign had me on the ballot in 48 states. So I think that rather than setting arbitrary rules that you have to have 15 percent at the polls, I think that any candidate from any political party who is on the ballot in enough states to win an electoral victory should be included. David Cobb of the Green Party and I were actually arrested in St. Louis, Missouri, trying to attend the second presidential debate. We crossed the police line. We were arrested, handcuffed, [and] put into a police van. And 20 minutes later, a police officer opened the back door of the van and said, “Which one of you guys is a presidential candidate?” And I said: “Well, we are both presidential candidates. We are at a presidential debate. And you have us in handcuffs.” I said, “Can you explain that to me?” And the officer looked very perplexed and said, “Well, let me get back to you on that.” And he closed the door again.

So we don’t have freedom of speech in the United States for third-party candidates, simply because they haven’t raised the millions of dollars the Democratic and Republican machines can generate, [and they] are not allowed to express their political views. And furthermore, while I was traveling on the presidential campaign trail, I went to visit a university. And they asked me to speak. I was in a huge auditorium, a beautiful facility with over 300 seats. But there were only 12 students in the front row. Well, my reaction was that we should move to a smaller classroom. We’d sit face to face and be more informal. And they said: “No, you can’t do that. You are a presidential candidate. You have to talk in the auditorium, because the auditorium is a free-speech zone.” I nearly fell off the stage. I said: “What about the hallway? What about the rest of the campus?” And I was informed that that was probably a “speech-free zone.” And so I told the students then, and I’ll tell you now, that anywhere I happen to be standing is a free-speech zone because the government doesn’t have the authority to tell me what I can say or where I can say it.

Freedom of speech is primarily there to protect political speech. Whenever you are upset with the government, if you want to change it, you are going to have to change it by talking about it and communicating with other people who share your displeasure.

What do you think of the notion that money is speech, and as a result candidates are free to spend as much of it as they would like?

I believe that individuals should be able to contribute to political campaigns. I don’t believe that corporations should. One of the biggest problems we have in this country is that the 14th Amendment basically created corporations as the status of individuals and gave them the same rights. So, Ford Motor Company is a person, General Motors [Corporation] is a person. And these artificial persons or corporations are, presumably, protected by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. And that’s just the non sequitur. Corporations, artificial entities, do not and should not be granted the same status as flesh-and-blood human beings.

Well, in the current system, corporations are able to contribute in state campaigns, and to 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) organizations. But only individuals can contribute to federal candidates and political action committees. Do you think the current system, as far as the way our campaigns are financed, is working? Do you think it creates a fair playing field?

No, I don’t. I think that our political system is woefully corrupt. Most of what happens in Washington, D.C., is unconstitutional, in a literal sense. And I point out to people that the problems in Washington, D.C., are really the symptom, not the source, of the problem. The source of the problem is we, the people. We ordained and established the Constitution. We created Congress in 1789. And we, the people, are responsible for monitoring our representatives to make sure that they adhere to the Constitution. Well, when I have gatherings or teach my Constitution class, I will frequently ask people to raise their hand if they think they are a good, patriotic American. Naturally, I get almost unanimously people raising their hands. My second question is, “If you are such a good American, can you tell me how many articles are in the Constitution?” [It’s a] very simple, very superficial question about the Constitution, and no one knows. They don’t know how the Constitution is organized. They certainly have no clue what the Constitution actually says. They have never memorized the Bill of Rights. And they don’t understand the concept of rights and privileges.

I wrote a book called Good To Be King, and chapter two of that book is titled “Rights and Privileges” and the fact that they are opposites. I can walk across my land anytime I want, because I have a right to do so. I can’t walk across your land without getting permission. Walking across your land is a privilege. And people, basically, don’t understand the difference between rights and privileges, and therefore they don’t understand the proper role of government. When I say that we, the people, invented Congress and ask who works for whom, 90 percent of the people who respond give me an answer, “Well, they are supposed to work for us.” What do you mean they are supposed to work for us? “Well, they are supposed to, but we know they don’t.”

Most of the people in the United States know that the United States government is out of control. It’s just that people are not quite sure what to do about it. They don’t know that there is anything they can do about it. And as soon as enough people stand up and say, “We are not going to stand for this anymore — we are going to hold our legislative people accountable,” then things in the United States will change. But until we, the people, take part, and participate, and understand the Constitution, things are going to continue in Washington, D.C. And the people who have power are going to continue to vote themselves more power.

What would you do if you could wave a magic wand and change the system, as far as how presidential, and in general, how campaigns are financed to make the playing field more fair?

Well, one of the things that I would do would be to basically change the way the Electoral College works. I mean, I just saw on the news yesterday that they are planning to do something like that.

Yeah, I think [an Electoral College reform proposal] passed in Maryland.

In Texas we have 34 electors. So if 51 percent of the popular vote goes to the Republican, then 100 percent of the electoral votes go to the Republican. And this is what is so confusing, especially in the 2000 election. Al Gore got a larger number of popular votes. And people can’t understand why he didn’t win the presidency. And the problem is not how many votes he got, but where they were accumulated. If George Bush gets 51 percent in Texas, he gets 34 electoral votes. If Al Gore got anywhere between 51 percent and 100 percent of the popular vote, he still would have only gotten [25] electoral votes from Florida. I think that’s the number they have. And so it’s not how many votes you have, but how they are allocated to the different states. So a state like Texas is an obvious red state. George Bush never wasted a moment campaigning in Texas, because the chances of less than 51 percent of the people voting Republican was nonexistent. California is a clearly blue state. You can be a Republican in that state, but your chances of winning are slim to none, and so most of the 50 states have a strong bias toward one political party or the other. And therefore your presidential candidates are only required to campaign and spend their money in what are referred to as the battleground states. Ohio is a perfect example, in the 2004 election, because it was so close. It was too close to call. And during the three weeks before the election, George Bush and John Kerry each went to Ohio about 14 times to campaign. They were just crisscrossing the state trying to sway the balance to pick up those electoral votes.

So if I could change things, I would change it so that the president was elected by more of a popular vote. I mean, the Electoral College isn’t bad; it’s just not working as well as the Founding Fathers had intended. Ideally, I think people should be able to invest as much money as they want or they have into a political campaign. If I am really dedicated to a Libertarian candidate and I have $10,000 to my name, I should be able to contribute all of it to the cause of liberty.

Rather than $2,300, plus inflation?

Right. However, the system is currently skewed. I mean, there are a lot of people who have a lot more money. They have gotten it, in most cases, by using the government influence that exists. And if we went strictly based on money, I think there are people who could purchase enough media attention.

Ross Perot got himself into the debates by literally buying television commercials. When you have millions of dollars to campaign for yourself, you can get the word out there, be on national television, and have an incredible effect. And I would never change that type of opportunity. A person should not be penalized just because they have the good fortune to have wealth.

But I think that a transition period is necessary. I think that we have to find a way to get the average American interested in politics and dedicated to supporting a candidate that actually shares their ideals. As a third-party candidate, I frequently hear the wasted-vote argument: “I would like to vote for you. I think you have the best ideas. But I can’t vote for you, because you can’t win.” I think if we were to change the contribution laws a little bit, and most assuredly change the voting style so that you could vote for more than one person— one of the options suggested is IRV.

Instant runoff?

Instant-runoff voting, where you specify your order of preference: This is my first choice, this is my second choice, this is my third choice. And if the first choice doesn’t have a clear majority, whoever voted for the last-place person, they take your second choice of vote. And the computer can analyze that. We don’t have to bring people back to the polls for a runoff vote.

However, approval voting is actually better. If you allow people to rank the order of importance, then there is still a little bit of gaming that can be done. They think they want this candidate. And so if they vote for somebody else, they may be able to sway things in a certain way. It becomes a strategy involved. With approval voting, you just list all of the candidates that are available and the voter can vote for whomever they approve of. These are the candidates that I would not be heartbroken if they got elected. But there is no ranking system.

And the difficulty is that the percentage totals are going to be more than 100 percent. Fifty percent vote Democratic, 50 percent vote Republican. And you know that you have all of the totals. And it balances out, on a spreadsheet, very nicely. But it creates this wasted-vote syndrome. People like voting for Libertarian candidates, but they are terrified that if they vote for the Libertarian candidate, the party they dislike is going to get an additional advantage. And they can’t bring themselves to change. So they feel like they are under the gun. Approval voting eliminates all of that. And you can vote for the candidacy you like. And if it’s a third-party candidate, third-party candidates would then start showing much higher percentages because they are not in competition for one vote. Now they can get their own votes. And I think that what would happen very early on is that a lot of people would approve of the third-party candidates. And people would realize that the large parties did not walk away by a landslide, as it appears in most elections; that the third-party candidates are significantly more than half approved of. And once that information is available, it makes it OK for other people to vote.

I think that once approval voting is instituted third-party candidates are going to rapidly climb in the polls, so they are not obscure third parties anymore. They will be legitimately competing in the world of ideas, which is what an election is all supposed to be about. It’s not supposed to be about money. It’s not supposed to be about power and who has got it and who is going to get the patronage jobs if a particular candidate gets elected. It should be about ideology, the Declaration of Independence, the fact that all men are created equal regardless of the color of their skin, that women have a right to own property, women have a right to vote, and that individuals have rights. So if you are a woman, you are an individual, you have rights, it’s just a foregone conclusion.

Marriage licenses started in this country based on racial bigotry. The first marriage licenses were intended to prevent, or at least inhibit, interracial marriages. They were based on racial bigotry. Now we have a situation in the country where a lot of conservatives want to establish a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman because they are uncomfortable with same-sex relationships. Well, gay people are individuals. Individuals have rights. Therefore, gay people have rights. You may not like it, but too bad.

There were a lot of people who didn’t like the fact that blacks had rights. And there are still people, to this day, who don’t particularly like that. We ratified the 13th Amendment, putting an end to slavery and involuntary servitude, in 1865. But in 1965, literally 100 years later, I was traveling with my family in South and I spotted a water fountain with a “whites only” sign. And I had to ask my mother what that was all about. And even at 10 years old, I was horrified. I was horrified to think that a person was not allowed to take a drink of water because their skin was a different color than mine. People point at Thomas Jefferson. They declare that he was hypocritical, because he wrote the beautiful words “All men are created equal” and yet he still had slaves. And they feel that because the Founding Fathers didn’t eliminate slavery the first time up at bat, and get rid of it completely, that they were somehow at fault. But fully 100 years after the no-slavery amendment was passed, we still have racial bigotry. We still have ethnic prejudices that we are having difficulty overcoming.

So I think that we, the people, individually, need to look at ourselves and become more tolerant of other people. These are individual rights. You, as an individual, have a right to live your life any way you want. And the neighborhood doesn’t have the authority to vote on whether it’s okay for you to do something. The biggest problem for most people is that if they really want to exercise their own rights, the only way to do that is to grant the same equal rights to other people. You have to let other people live their lives the way they do, even though they are not going to be similar to yours.

And that’s what I am doing. I am traveling around the country. I am teaching my eight-hour class on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, inspiring people with the passion that our Founding Fathers had when they wrote the document, and opening people’s eyes to the fact that the government is supposed to work for us, not the other way around. And if I can continue enlightening people, and continue lighting the fires of liberty one heart at a time, eventually our problems will get better because people will respect the Constitution. They will hold their elected officials accountable for their actions. And everybody will be able to experience more individual freedom.

As far as your campaign in ’04, you said you raised about $1 million?

I believe it’s $1,008,000. Just barely over the $1 million mark.

And were you, as a third-party candidate, eligible for federal matching funds?

Libertarian presidential candidates have been eligible for matching funds many times in the past. But philosophically we don’t accept the matching funds because we consider it a government handout. And the Libertarian platform is all about not using other people’s money and resources to fund your own activities. And if we truly believe that, it would be hypocritical for us to accept matching funds. Matching funds come from taxes from Democrats or Republicans who would be loath to vote for a Libertarian, when, in fact, all we really stand for is the Constitution and individual rights. We are opposed to theft. If someone comes and takes money out of your wallet, that’s theft. If the government takes money out of your wallet and uses it for someone else, that’s government-sponsored theft. I understand that it takes money to operate government. I am not opposed to taxes, unilaterally.

But public funding of campaigns is not . . .

[I’m opposed to] public funding of anything that is for a specific subgroup. One of the most misunderstood clauses in the Constitution is the general-welfare clause. People focus on the word welfare and think the Constitution authorizes food stamps, and free health care, and free housing, and free education for other people’s children. Well, it’s not welfare. It is general welfare. General means for the whole population and things that benefit everybody. A good economy benefits everybody. The highway system we have, even if you don’t own a car, if you don’t travel on the highways, the California orange juice that you drink did come across the highways. The highways are crucial to our economy. So that would be something that falls into the category of general welfare.

Whereas individual candidates’ campaigns would not?

Yeah. That does not constitute general welfare. That’s an individual handout.

You don’t think we all benefit from all of the presidential candidates we have?

Well, certainly we do. But giving a Libertarian presidential candidate tax money does not necessarily help the process. Sure, it allows us to buy more bumper stickers. You want to do me a favor? Don’t give me any money. Let me into the debates.

Well, can you talk a little bit more about what your experience was, and your thoughts on the commission?

The debate commission?

Yes.

Well, the whole thing is fraudulent and corrupt. For many years the League of Women Voters was a nonbiased, nonpartisan group of people who would organize the debates. And the League of Women Voters set an arbitrary standard of 5 percent in the polls, and we can argue whether 5 percent was too high or too low, or whatever it was. But it was a percentage. We obviously can’t have 200 people on stage debating. And so you had to be serious. And if you had 5 percent of the general population interested in you, then now you have a legitimate grounds to express your ideas on national television.

And that allowed John Anderson to participate in ’80?

I don’t know the history. But I know that Ross Perot, with his television commercials, suddenly got over 5 percent. And based on those existing rules, Ross Perot participated in, what was that, the ’96 presidential debate?

’92. They excluded him in ’96.

That’s right. That was ’92. And so he continued gathering momentum. I know, because I was participating on his campaign. It was before I had discovered the Libertarian Party. I was going to be one of the computer gurus working on the database, to keep track of all of the volunteers and contributors. And he climbed 25 percent in the polls and then mysteriously dropped out. Well, I mean, you don’t know why he dropped out. But the point is that he had earned himself a spot in the presidential debate and upset the Republican and Democratic applecart. So the Democrats and Republicans said they had to prevent that from ever happening again. They established the Commission on Presidential Debates [in 1986], which is comprised, if I am properly informed, of six Democrats and six Republicans. And that group of people arbitrarily decides who will be allowed into the presidential debate. Well, it’s not rocket science that the Democrats and Republicans are only going to allow the Democrats and Republicans into the presidential debate.

And their threshold now is 15 percent?

And their threshold now is 15 percent. They just raised it to an arbitrarily high number. Ross Perot accidentally achieved the 5 percent. And they wanted to make sure that never happened again. So the Democrats and Republicans are not in power because they have such great ideas and a majority of the people supports them; the Democrats and Republicans are in power because they have power. And they use their power to keep other people out.

If I had been allowed to participate in the presidential debate against Bush and Kerry, I would have won the debate. That’s not to say I would have won the election. But I certainly would have won the debate. I know more about the Constitution than either of those men put together. We were busy discussing Swift Boat antics and various other things that the media had dreamed up. And we never talked about, Gosh, what would you actually do in office? Have you ever read the Constitution? How seriously do you take your oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution? When a president takes the oath to protect the Constitution, he doesn’t go to the National Archives and stand in front of the document to make sure nobody gets a smudge mark on it. He’s not protecting the physical Constitution. He’s supposed to be protecting the ideals embodied in the Constitution, and specifically protecting the lives, liberty, and private property of American citizens.

How can the American government protect private property when the Supreme Court, in 2005, issues the Kelo v. New London decision, saying that government is authorized to take your land away from you and give it to someone else who is going to develop it and pay a lot of taxes. I mean, that’s the antithesis of the American dream. It’s the antithesis of what this country is founded on. John Adams says that the moment the idea is admitted into society that the law of property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, then tyranny and anarchy commence. So I don’t know what people’s religious views are, but if the law of property is as sacred as the law of God, you know it’s got to be factored in the equation. Even a two-year-old understands the importance of property. Their favorite word is “mine.” They want everything to be “mine,” so that they can control it. And the federal government is using that same attitude. They like the farm that you have, and they go “Mine” and take it away, calling it eminent domain.

We, the people, have been asleep at the wheel. We have been allowing the federal government to violate the Constitution. One, because we feel that one person can’t do very much. And also because we don’t know what the Constitution says. We don’t realize that most of what the government does is unconstitutional. The Constitution is not just a good idea; it’s the law. If you and I break the law, we go to jail. If members of the government violate the supreme law of the land, they just get reelected. And the tragedy is that we, the people, are the ones reelecting them. So again, I think that the solution to the problem is some very serious education for the public, to remind them that they are the source of all political power in the United States. We, the people, have rights. We grant government privileges, and we can take those privileges away anytime we want.

The Declaration of Independence says that when any form of government becomes obstructive of our rights, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. Well, abolish means to get rid of it. When I tell people that we could, theoretically, get rid of the Constitution and write a new government to go in, [they say,] “No, we can’t, it’s the supreme law of the land.” And then I point out that it wouldn’t be the first time. We used to have the Articles of Confederation; they were supposed to be a perfect document that was expected to last in perpetuity. And nine years later, we threw the Articles in the garbage can and came up with the Constitution. We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union, more perfect than the Articles of Confederation that we just superseded. So it’s theoretically possible that we could scrap the Constitution and come up with a third “most perfect” document. But I wouldn’t be in favor of a constitutional convention right now, because all of the people who want to change it want to eliminate it completely. The people who claim that Constitution is a living document are exactly the people who would like to kill it. 

With the expectation of the 2008 Democratic and Republican nominees likely to raise more money than ever before — I think some estimates are that this election is going to be the first $1 billion presidential campaign — is it getting harder for candidates outside of those two parties to make a difference in the race?

Well, if it was impossible before, making it more impossible is really kind of a moot point. Neither you nor I could jump up and touch the moon. And, well, does it make it more impossible if we have to jump up and touch the sun? It’s really an academic evaluation at that point, to show just how impossible. But it’s really just a mental exercise. What we need to do is to activate the American public to convince them they are not wasting their vote: “Michael, we think you are the best candidate. We’d like to vote for you. But you can’t win.” Well yeah, I can’t win because you have the attitude that I can’t. If you think you can’t, you are absolutely right. So if everybody felt the way you did, and everybody suddenly decided they were going to vote for me, then I could win.

Probably the most ridiculous question that I had to answer as a presidential candidate was, “Who are you going to vote for?” What do you mean, Who am I going to vote for? I have dedicated my life, my fortune, my sacred honor. I am living on four hours of sleep a night. I am doing 12 interviews a day. I have traveled 25,000 miles just to get to my own nominating convention. And you think that after all of that effort I am going to vote for George Bush or John Kerry? This is the reason that I am running for president, because I can’t vote for the Democrats or the Republicans and respect myself in the morning. I couldn’t believe that adults with actual journalism jobs could actually ask that question. It was ridiculous. And somewhat insulting, too, I think.

So at this point, you would say that for there to be a real serious hope for the kind of change you are talking about, it is not so much a question of the money system as much as changing the perspective of the country?

Yes, absolutely. Benjamin Franklin made a very important distinction between rebellion and revolution. According to Benjamin Franklin, revolution is an astronomical word. When the earth revolves around the sun, it comes back to its original starting point. From Benjamin Franklin’s perspective, we had started out as hunter-gatherers with private property. We have gotten away from that concept with the divine right of kings, where royalty owned everything. And during 1760 to 1775, people in the colonies changed their attitude and returned to the original starting point of , “We should be able to own our own property.”

So the American Revolution was a change in the way that people were thinking, in the 15 years prior to the shot heard around the world. And then, once we established that idea, then we found it necessary to defend it using force, to assert our right to own property. And what I am trying to do is to establish another American revolution. I want to change the way that people think. And until we change the way that people think, the system is just going to be lame. We may get different people elected, but the power and control that they have is going to be the same. I just read reports where at least one presidential candidate has already raised $25 million. And I am embarrassed to be an American, to think that the most important position in the United States, which is president of the United States, is being bandied about and almost purchased like we are at a circus or at a county fair.