Governor Gary
Speaking as a New Mexican, I think there were two things to say in support of Gary Johnson: he criticised the drug war, and he annoyed Manny Aragon to no end. That’s not entirely fair. He also was absolutely resolute when it came to trying to contain spending. His willingness to veto bills coming from the Roundhouse became a standing joke in the state. He was also absolutely doctrinaire about his project of promoting privatised prisons, which mostly worked to the advantage of the aforementioned Aragon in providing him nice kickbacks from the contractors hired to manage the prisons. Who will forget Wackenhut?
Johnson also presided over the the introduction of the lottery, legal gambling and the rise of the Indian casinos all over the state, which generally appalled the people who voted for him and mainly satisfied the legislature and the pueblos. If bringing tawdriness and exploitation of the poor to your home state are your idea of a good time, Gary Johnson’s governorship was a rollicking success. My impression is that the (very) small Draft Johnson boomlet made about as much sense as the attempt to recruit Chuck Hagel last year. It wasn’t his fault that the largest tax cuts came under his successor, but it is a reminder that there was actually very little that Governor Johnson changed in New Mexico, and most of the things he did change appear to conservatives in the state to be blights on our state.
Your points are well taken, Daniel — but the politician who can satisfy Daniel Larison is a rare bird indeed. The question is, how does Johnson rank against Ron Paul? For paleocons, I think it’s clear that Paul wins thanks to his understanding of constitutional government.
But for many of the libertarians who’ve flocked to Paul, an anti-drug war, pro-gambling, anti-spending former governor seems pretty appealing.
As for changing New Mexico, I’ll bet Johnson believes that the responsibility for changing the state falls on citizens of the state. If all governors were Gary Johnsons for, say, two or three decades, my guess is that Americans would find ways around a government that didn’t claim to solve, or even try to solve, everyone’s perceived problems.
Of course, I favor a pretty substantial role for government, and I can see many arguments against a Johnsonian United States. But it’s not clear that these are knockdown arguments — if he were seriously running to win a major-party nomination, maybe, but not if he were running as a Libertarian protest candidate. With the right message and the right team, I’ll bet he could have done decently.
— Reihan · Jan 12, 11:10 AM · #
I see now that I did skip past the main question. Sorry about that. Clearly, Johnson brought business executive experience, had a firm handle on budgets and was effective enough to win a second term, which is not always a certainty for our governors. On my terms, Paul wins, but as you say that is a very difficult standard to meet. Johnson was probably the most successful statewide elected official to challenge failed federal policy on drugs, and he was one of the better managers of state finances during the ’90s. When other states suffered the hangover from excessive spending and the subsequent tax hikes needed to pay off this excess (see Ohio), New Mexico was able to cut taxes early this decade and reap the benefits. In fairness to Johnson, Richardson’s tax cuts would probably not have been possible had Johnson not kept the legislature in line with his awesome number of vetoes. As a matter of pragmatism, Johnson was better in that he was able to reach a higher post from which he could make policy and draw attention to misguided federal policies. His prison privatisation scheme, however, was just the kind of free-market enthusiasm that made people think he was rather odd.
It wasn’t that Johnson displeased me all that much, but the things that would make him attractive to your anti-drug war libertarian sorts are what made him seem like a quixotic, out-of-touch governor during his second term. I think the casinos and the lottery are bad for New Mexicans, but they are good for state revenues and that is why the compacts were ratified and the lottery instituted—not what people interested in limited government and less spending should want, I think. I should have given him less grief for not being able to change New Mexico. The legislature has been run by the same party for seventy years and more, making us the closest thing to the longest-lasting one-party state in the Western Hemisphere still in existence, so Republican governors have a very difficult time doing much of anything. Goodness knows we wouldn’t mind having him back for a third term, if it would spare us the idiocy of the “Railrunner” and the Virgin Galactic boondoggle down south.
— Daniel Larison · Jan 12, 02:22 PM · #
I don’t think I’ve ever really agreed with Larison on anything before, but as a New Mexican conservative I can endorse this. Of course having a freak show in Santa Fe was better than the normal banality of petty corruption.
— Adam Greenwood · Jan 14, 06:42 PM · #