Gary Johnson: Inside City Hall with Errol Louis

Libertarian candidate for President Gary Johnson appeared Friday on Errol Louis's excellent political show "Inside City Hall", on NY1.  I'm finding Johnson refreshing, as Trump and Clinton, one demagogic and the other aloof, are less and less appealing.  Johnson differs from both major candidates in his support for free trade and his skepticism about the effectiveness and cost of foreign adventures, as we demonstrate over and over how little we have learned from Vietnam.  Unfortunately we have a Committee on Presidential Debates that is staffed by Republicans and Democrats and that insists, quite arbitrarily, that a candidate has to have 15% support in polls to be included in the debates, essentially ensuring that few dissident voices will be heard. (If you are wondering whatever happened to the "equal time" FCC rule:  it was abandoned in 1960 and abolished in 1983).

When Louis asked about Johnson's position on regime change -- Johnson said regime changes supported by us have never been effective -- Louis suggested maybe this was not true in Latin America.  They did not have time for an in-depth discussion of  this subject, unfortunately,  but the dynamics in Latin America have been different, as our support for right-wing dictators such as Batista in Cuba have led to revolutions such as Castro's.  Our support for Somoza in Nicaragua, Pinochet in Chile and many others has been good, perhaps, for United Fruit but seldom, if ever, for the indigenous populations (you can look it up).

Johnson supports legalization of marijuana and when Morris pointed out that people do indeed have problems with the drug Johnson correctly pointed out that making those people criminals and throwing them in jail does not help matters, especially when people of color receive a disproportionate amount of jail time. Some of us have problems with alcohol, too, but Prohibition did not work either.

There were other things that Louis and Johnson did not have time to discuss, especially healthcare., but, in any case, Johnson has a point of view intelligently different from the two major parties and, with his emphasis on choice and inclusion, certainly deserves a hearing.