The Problem With the Libertarian Party
The Libertarian Party has its strongest presidential candidates ever, but it's hard to sell small government in a country that loves its benefits.
Bill Weld was a big name in American politics in the 1990s. With his red hair, ruddy complexion and 6-foot-4 frame, he stood out from the crowd of mostly blow-dried politicians. A celebrated prosecutor in Boston and then a top official in the Justice Department under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, the Republican was elected governor of very Democratic Massachusetts in 1990, and re-elected in 1994 with 71 percent of the vote. Fun and approachable, he once took a fully clothed dive into the Charles River to show how clean it had become. He wanted to run for president, but his socially liberal positions on abortion But after analyzing which moderate states he might have won in the primaries, he realized, “I was still way short.”
