Liberty in America
columnist: rtbohan

Topic: Presidential Campaign 2008
Bob Barr and the Ghost of William Wirt

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Bob Barr's nomination for President brings a haunting memory of the first candidate nominated by a third party convention.

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by rtbohan
(Libertarian)
Tuesday, July 1, 2008

The first convention to nominate a candidate for President of the United States was held in 1831 to choose candidates for President and Vice President for the election of 1832.

Prior to the this first convention, candidates had been selected by one of three methods.  The first election was held with electors, as the framers of the constitution probably intended, voting as individuals for the two men they considered best qualified.  More than a dozen men received at least one vote.  By the time of the second election, well organized  factions had developed not only in the Congress but throughout the country.  Anti-Federalists and Republicans conducted a campaign to encourage the selection of electors who would vote for George Clinton in an effort to remove John Adams, and possibly George Washington, from office.  Adams supporters responded with a similar campaign, and he retained the Vice Presidency.  The third election, with both factions again active, elected the leader of the Federalist faction as president as the leader of the Republican faction as Vice President.  The efforts of the Vice President to block the efforts of the President showed a major shortcoming of the electoral system with well organized parties pursuing incompatible goals.

In the fourth election, in 1800, the power of party feeling and the extent of party organization was more clearly demonstrated when the two Republican candidates received the same number of votes and the election was decided by the House of Representatives.  Since the electoral system had been designed specifically to maintain the separation of powers by not allowing the Congress to select the President, or even serve as electors, the twelfth amendment was passed, providing for separate votes by the electors for the offices of President and Vice President.

After the election 1816, however, the Federalist Party disappeared as a  political force. This meant that the Congress and the Republican caucus became the sole nominating mechanism.  This also meant that the entire government was effectively being controlled by a group of Washington insiders.  This was particularly felt in the western part of the United States.  In 1824, with the office of President now open and a number of the Washington insiders (Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State William H. Crawford,Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, and former Speaker of the House (and current Sentator) Henry Clay there was real opposition to the electors being instructed by the caucus to vote for only a single candidate.  The issue was decided after the selecction of Crawford by the caucus when the Massachusetts legislature nominated Adams and the Kentucky legislature nominated Clay.  The Tennessee legislature nominated the popular General Andrew Jackson, in a rebuke to Washington politics.  Seeing how crowded the field had become, the South Carolina legislature, at his request, nominated Calhoun for Vice President.

So competition returned to the presidential campaign, local control returned for the electors, and the choice of President returned to the House of Representatives, as none of the four candidates for President received the votes of a majority of the electors.  Under the terms of the twelfth amendment, the Representatives were asked to choose between the top three vote getters, Jackson, Adams and Crawford.  Clay. who had finished fourth was not qualified for selection under the Twelfth Amendment.  As the former Speaker of the House,  he had a great many supporters among the Representatives.  He advised them to vote for Adams, who had finished second in the electoral vote.  Adams was elected President and immediately appointed Clay Secretary of State.  Jackson  claimed the election had been stolen from him by a "corrupt bargain"between Adams and Clay and the two party system returned to American politics.  In 1828 Jackson and Adams were each nominated through a series of regional mass meetings, and this time Jackson achieved a majority of the electors and replaced Adams as President. 

Once Adams was defeated, it was obvious that his party, whichhad taken the name of National Republican, would nominate Henry Clay in 1832.  The National Republicans, who differed from the Jacksonians, now called Democrats, in favoring national power over state power and advocating federal funding of internal improvement projects mainly which were intended to promote interstate commerce, had very little support in the east  outside of New England or in the southern states.  At this point, the Anti=Masonic Party was called into existence, largely through the efforts of Thurlow Weed

The anti-Mason movement had sprung into existence during the late 1820s as an anti-elitit populist movement.  The idea that the pepole were being deprived of their rights by a Masonic conspiracy had been around in the United States for years.  In 1827 a former Mason named William Morgan asserted that the conspiracy theory was correct and that he intended to publish a book detailing all the secrets of the Order.  Shortly after that, he disappeared.  Despite a national search, he was never found and the belief took root that he had been murdered by the Masons. The movement spread across the country, and state and local laws were passed preventing masons from holding political office, and in some cases allowing all secret organizations.  It did not drive the masons out, but it did scare the elite, and some of their organizations--Phi Beta Kappa for example--abolished their rules of secrecy to appear more democratic.

Thurlow Weed was a newspaper editor and Adams supporter who wanted to see Jackson defeated.  He believed that Clay could not defeat Jackson in part because he could not command enough support in the west and in part obecause of the perception of the National Republicans as an aristocratic party.  But he felt that if the Anti-Masons could be politicized to enter a candidate against Jackson (who was a Mason) the votes for the third candidate combined with Clay's votes could either allow Clay to win an electoral majority or send the decision back to the House of Representatives.  He therefore sent out a call to Anti-mason groups across the country to send delegates to Baltimore for a convention to nominate a candidate for President.

The rag-tag convention did meet, the first nominating convention in history .  It was successful in the sense that the convention system was adopted by the Democrats and has been the system of nomination ever since.  But it set a bad example.  The Anti-Masonic Party chose as their candidate one of the few members of James Monroe's cabinet who had not been nominated for President before.  This was William Wirt.  He was the former Attorney General of the United States--and a Mason.  What was worse, he insisted on addressing the convention in  person--an experiment not repeated by any candidate for President until FDR did the same one hundred years later--and told the delegates that he was Mason.  And that he was proud of the fact.  And that their idea of the Masons was entirely wrong.  In the election the following year, he carried the state of Maryland but did not win enough votes in any other state to harm Jackson's bid for re-election.  Four years later, the Anti-Masonic Party was gone.

This year, there is a feeling among some that, in Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party has nominated its own version of William Wirt.  It has chosen a candidate whose political career as an office holder has been as a conservative, with a preference for smaller, cheaper government but little else of a libertarian about him.  His  most notable actions, and those on which he spent the most effort, attacking medical marijuana, supporting the Patriot Act, the Defense of Marriage Act, were not only not libertarian, they were anti-libertarian.

It is true that he has, since leaving Congress, does very good work for libertarian causes, and for the Libertarian Party.  Unlike Mr. Wirt, he has not made a vigorous defense of his prior actions. He says that he regrets some of them, and of others that he will try to get them undone.  But the fact remains that when he had political power, he used it to attack liberty.  His work since leaving office to give professional support for libertarian causes is no guarantee that he will continue to support these causes if he is given political power again.

It is true that he did apologize for the Defense of marriage Act to the Libertarian convention.  He said that he did not realize until just recently the pain he had caused some people.  But he should have, he could have, and he didn't.  He told the convention that he regretted the act.  But he was talking to a convention of libertarians (or at least Libertarian Party delegates) from whom he wanted the nomination for President.  It is true that the convention was televised, but it was on C-Span and it seems unlikely that many people other than libertarians and McCain staffers doing opposition research were watching.

When he was interviewed on Fox News([link edited for length]), he said nothing about the pain and sorrow this act had caused, nor did he say that he regreted it, nor that he would work to get it repealed.  He defended the act as a sound conservative measure meant to support state's rights. What the act did, by defining marriage, was to turn it into a federal matter rather than a state matter.  The cases where same sex marriage has won support in the courts have been based on the state constitution.  DOMA makes it a matter for the federal government.  Mr. Barr said that no state should be forced to recognize same sex marriages.  It is certainly true that no state should be forced to license same sex marriage and it should not be decided by the courts but by the legislature.  But what does he mean by recognize?  As I have pointed out before, the state's interest in marriage aside from collecting a fee for the license seems to be in income tax filings (filing a joint return) and inheritance and inheritance taxes.  Libertarians are not, for the most part, in favor of income taxes or inheritance taxes.  Beyond that, some of those agitating against same sex marriage construe "not recognizing" same scx marriage as meaning the state can pass a law prohibiting businesses from giving family insurance couples in the case of same sex marriage.  Interfering with the right of contract is not something libertarians are big on either.

So Bob Barr is haunted by the ghost of William Wirt.  Like Wirt, he does not appear to understand the idea he is supposed to represent.  Like Wirt, the purpose in nominating him is not to win an election but to defeat someone else.  We can only hope that the Libertarian Party has better survival skills than the Anti-Masonic Party.

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2008 rtbohan, all rights reserved.
Published: Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Last modified: Tuesday, July 1, 2008

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