300 million people and we have to chose our president from the bottom of the barrel.

It's not a new phenomenon. Going on 100 years ago H. L. Mencken characterized our form of government as “boobocracy”; a system under which a bunch of boobs got together and picked the biggest boob as president.

Barr is lacking two things that Perot had going for him: billions and billions of dollars, and a memorable personality. Without those he's going nowhere.

Ross Perot and Jesse Ventura have both shown that outsider candidates can accomplish serious percentage climbs in a relatively short period of time, once awareness of them becomes widespread, and the media starts to talk about them as a potential real threat.

So, theoretically, it could go like this:

Barr, currently at ~5%, gets some major attention-getting endorsements, or has some sort of fortuitous publicity coup (like when Giuliani and Ron Paul quibbled at a debate, propelling Paul into the news mainstream). He tops 10% in national polls, 15% in select states.

The media shifts the story from "spoiler" (and Ralph Nader comparisons) to "will he get in the debates?" (and Ross Perot comparisons). Barr starts topping 15% in polls. The CPD miraculously doesn't find/make up some other reason to exclude him, so he gets in the debates.

If Barr got in the debates, he would come out looking like the winner, or at least the upset/surprise. He would be polling at ~25%, and certain targeted polls would give indicators that folks are willing to consider him as a real potential president.

From there, Barr would be in the place where Perot was in '92, meaning, in a position to win it if he can play his cards right. Perot in '92 played his cards about as poorly as one could imagine, and still made an incredible showing. Barr would be unlikely to stumble anywhere near as badly as Perot did.

Folks assume that voters aren't interested in considering another candidate beyond the two "major" ones, but history has shown that's not true. It's largely up to the media, and how they decide to paint the story. Find a mainstream news website that has Barr alongside Obama and McCain, on an equal footing visibility-wise. I don't think such a site exists.

If Barr can top 10% and stay above it, the story will have to shift, and at that point, anything is possible. People forget that there was a time when a lot of people seriously (and reasonably) believed that Perot could potentially win the presidency. That phenomena is going to happen again. Maybe not this time, but it will happen. And it will start at around 3-6% in the polls.

What a lousy choice. On purpose. Feeling manipulated yet?

For y'all inside the Beltway it may come as news but there is a tremendous degree of discontent out here in the hinterlands about the quality of both the two major candidates. Many Democrats are swearing to either vote for McCain or sit this one out and there are many Republican equivalents out here.

Wouldn't it indeed be interesting if there are enough of us to actually get Barr elected.

Was there any mention of climate change in the interview?

Nope. The summary above was the entirety of the Q&A, although I'm sure I didn't capture every thought. But there was only about 20 minutes of discussion with Barr.

Tellingly, there is no issue page on climate change at lp.org, but there was a poll a month back titled "What is the cause of 'global warming'?" in which 66% of 526 lp.org visitors indicated either that global warming is not real, or it is not anthropogenic.