Top 5 Questions Mainstream Media Could Ask Gary Johnson Next
by Aya Katz
The mainstream media have been giving Gary Johnson a hard time. First they asked him what he thought the United States should do about Aleppo, and he was caught off-guard, because it had never occurred to him that he was being asked what our government should do about a foreign city entirely outside our jurisdiction. Libertarians just don’t think of things like that, so he assumed it must be an acronym describing some obscure part of the federal government.
More recently Johnson was asked which foreign leader or head of state he admired most, and when he was not able to think of one single statist in the entire world that he admired, whether it be a communist dictator, the scion of a ruling family in a Middle Eastern country, a fascist warmonger, a European socialist or just a king of some small African nation, this was seen as a very big flaw in the Libertarian candidate for president. Surely he must admire some statesman or public official wielding immense power against the people in another country! How could he expect to be President of the the United States if he didn’t?
Johnson is modest and humble, and he refers to those times when he can’t think of answers to such questions as his “Aleppo moments.” But given the complete mismatch between the Libertarian outlook and that of the media, we think that Gary Johnson could probably get much better with practice.
Here are five other questions we think Gary Johnson should prepared to answer, given the media’s track record.
1. Who is your favorite Nazi?
Now everybody uses the term “Nazi” as a pejorative to label people that they don’t like, whether they bear any resemblance to actual Nazis or not. But truly enlightened people never use the word “Nazi” in name calling, because they realize the Nazis were just a political party like any other, and they were merely national socialists. The true measure of a political candidate’s enlightenment would be his ability to see past the label and find at least one historical Nazi that he can identify with, whether it be Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, Eva Braun, a photographer like Leni Riefenstahl or some obscure architect like Albert Speer.
Who is your favorite Nazi and why, Mr. Johnson? What do you mean you cannot think of one off the top of your head? Are you having an Aleppo moment again? You have heard of the Nazis, right? Haven’t you ever read Mein Kampf? No. Well, shame on you. Have you read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich? No? How about watching a WWII movie? Or at least a Hogan’s Heroes episode? You can’t expect to become President of the United States and not have enough knowledge about Nazis to name your favorite one. Come on!
2. What is your favorite form of sadistic interrogation technique?
Many people look down on torture as an un-American method of getting information from prisoners. But you have to admit that waterboarding is an excellent technique for obtaining confessions out of people, whether they have done anything wrong or not. No? You don’t like waterboarding? Okay, then how do you think we should go about interrogating prisoners that have been deprived of due process, simply because somebody accused them of being terrorists? What technique would you use? None? You can’t think of any alternative to waterboarding? Then how would we get information about the next terrorist attack? You want to wait till somebody actually does something wrong, before we punish them? That’s not very presidential, is it? I bet you Hillary Clinton could answer that one in a heartbeat! After all, she’s worked for the State Department. And I’m sure Donald Trump has some great ideas about this. How do you expect to compete with them if you’re drawing a blank on torture?
3. What racial group should be deprived of equal rights?
There has been a lot of crime lately, and many people have died in mass shootings, bombing incidents and even knife attacks. We can’t wait until the next violent event. We should act in advance to keep these bad things from happening. Donald Trump thinks we should go into black neighborhoods and stop and frisk people so that they don’t end up hurting one another. Do you support that? No? Well, is there some other racial or ethnic group you would like to go up against? Hispanics, maybe? No. You don’t want to keep people from selling tacos? Well, then maybe you favor quotas limiting the number of Asians who can get into top colleges, because it’s not fair that they are so much smarter than everyone else? No? What sort of education system will we have, if smart people are actually allowed a natural advantage over stupid people in universities and schools? How about rich white people? Do you want to discriminate against them? Hillary Clinton wants to disadvantage whites economically, since obviously everything in this country is their fault. You don’t want to go and tax rich and middle class whites to pay for public services to poor minority communities? Well, there must be some group you would like to treat differently from all the others for the sake of the common good? Drawing a blank, again? How do you expect to govern this country, without discriminating against people based on race? That’s disgraceful!
4. Which Amendment in the Bill of Rights is superfluous?
The Constitution of the United States is a very old document that is due for an overhaul. Everybody agrees that there are troubling things in the Bill of Rights that go entirely against the current laws. It does not make sense that we should allow the Founding Fathers to dictate to Congress, the Federal bureaucracy, and whoever the current president happens to be as to what rights the people get to claim. So which part of the Bill of Rights do you want to jettison? You’re drawing a blank? Not another Aleppo moment?! If you ask Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, both the Second and the Fourth Amendments are superfluous. The First Amendment is also on pretty shaky grounds. Why can’t you think of anything in the Bill of Rights you would like to drop? Could it be that it’s because you are not a constitutional scholar? How can you run for president and still not be able to think of a single civil liberty that needs to be squashed for the sake of the public welfare or security? Are you some kind of monster or merely ignorant?
5. Which industry will you tax into oblivion in order to create jobs?
Every presidential candidate has his or her pet program for creating new jobs. What is yours? What new taxes and new tax incentives are you going to use to turn the economy around? What, you can’t think of any? You aren’t very well prepared, are you? Don’t you want to put tariffs on imports so that Wal-Mart will go out of business, and Americans will have nowhere to shop for cheap goods, thereby promoting more expensive goods made in America? No? Well, surely you want to tax successful businesses so you can use the money to give loans to unsuccessful businesses to keep them afloat? No? Then what is your economic plan? You’re not going to interfere with the market at all? That’s not a plan. That’s just doing nothing. Nobody can run for president on a platform like that.
If only Bill Weld could keep drilling Gary Johnson with these questions, then maybe Johnson could come up with a better strategy than simply answering truthfully that he can think of nothing to do along the lines the interviewer is suggesting. These “Aleppo moments” are an opportunity to educate the mainstream media in what a libertarian candidate stands for, and why Gary Johnson is head and shoulders above the competition.