Bob Barr's Ego Trip

Former Congressman Bob Barr is considering a run for president as the Libertarian candidate:

"As Dante Alighieri said many centuries ago, the hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." With that, former Congressman Bob Barr announced to a group of Midwestern Libertarian Party activists that he was taking the first step toward running for president.

If nominated, Barr could be the most successful Libertarian presidential candidate in the party's 37-year history -- and John McCain's worst nightmare. For unlike Ed Clark, the current Libertarian record-holder who won just under 1 million votes in the 1980 presidential race, Bob Barr is no "low-tax liberal."

Ever since Ronald Reagan appointed him U.S. attorney for the northern district of Georgia in 1986, Barr has been a leader on behalf of conservative causes (he has more recently, in the interest of full disclosure, been a contributing editor to The American Spectator). Representing Georgia's Seventh Congressional District as a Republican from 1995 to 2003, he is best known for his role in passing the Defense of Marriage Act -- which has kept the marriage laws of all 50 states from being at the tender mercies of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court -- and as a House manager in the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

In 2002, Barr lost his congressional seat after redistricting forced him into a primary with fellow Republican Congressman John Linder. After leaving the House, he has focused on civil liberties and privacy protections, opposing the Bush administration on the Patriot Act and its national surveillance program. These issues, along with the explosion in federal spending, drove Bar toward the Libertarian Party and away from the GOP.

If he runs it's purely an ego trip, or at best a right-wing temper tantrum against John McCain. Barr has no chance to win - at best all he can do is steal votes from McCain. Maybe he can offset the losses the Dems will have to Nader, but probably not. Barr won't get that many votes. He's not a particularly attractive candidate, and certainly won't have the emotional attraction that Nader seems to get from his ardent fans.