Libertarians have hated every president since Calvin Coolidge. (Well, the fundamentalists would go back to Grover Cleveland. Or Martin Van Buren.) So it’s hardly surprising that many of us aren’t fans of Donald Trump.
The cosmotarian wing of the movement — e.g., Reason — unloaded on The Donald from the start, and never let up. While there is some common ground, I’m not a member of the sex-and-drugs cohort, focusing instead on the meat and potatoes of taxes, regulation, economic development, energy, transportation, welfare, and the military-industrial complex. And prior to Trump’s June 2015 announcement, I did indeed write several columns attacking Trump’s wild, often baseless claims about China, OPEC, trade, and immigration. I stand by every word.
But on a very weird night in November 2016 (I was on the East Coast, and didn’t get to sleep until 3:15 a.m.), the guy got elected president. And he was sworn in. And he served an entire term. Thus, since I’m an intellectually honest researcher, his rhetoric didn’t mean much to me anymore — what the Trump administration did mattered.
As 2020 drew to a close, I weighed the policies of the incumbent (not his tweets, not his peccadillos), versus the course his opponent was likely to take. And I decided to mark my ballot in a way that would have been unthinkable four years earlier. I voted for Donald Trump, and penned a column explaining why.
On the two-year anniversary of my influential endorsement — hey, I helped carry Florida — I offer the column again. The economy stinks, nuclear “Armageddon” is not inconceivable, and political opponents are being targeted for federal prosecution. No to brag, but I’m looking pretty good. The Biden administration is, incontestably, a disastrous debacle. A cataclysmic catastrophe. A dumpster fire on a sinking ship. Had the election gone differently two years ago, America would still be plagued by multiple (and self-inflicted) crises. But it’s hard to imagine that under Trump 2.0, the situation would be this bad.
Enjoy the column I never imagined I’d write!
Fair warning: A man is about to be damned with faint praise.
But these are extraordinary times, and perhaps “all things considered, the other guy’s much worse” is a profound compliment. That’s why this libertarian is voting for Donald J. Trump, and recommending that my fellow opponents of the welfare-warfare state do the same.
Stay with me on this. We’re going to focus on three areas of vital importance to the limited-government movement where the president is unquestionably preferable to Joe Biden: foreign policy, regulation, and judges. Taken together, they make a convincing case for reelection.
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