(I have to confess I fell asleep in front of a TV from a day of overwork, planning on attending a debate watch party, and awoke with only 15 minutes of it left. What I saw did not make me prioritize watching the rest.)
Two trends in libertarian commentaries, like those by readers at reason, where editor at large Matt Welch summed up Gary’s performance as “nice guys finish third,” are that Gary was a bit of a choke artist – perhaps Romney is thinking of endorsing Gov. Johnson because they share the same debate coach – and that the ticket should be reversed, with Weld for President and Johnson for Vice president.
Of course, libertarians would not be happy with that either. Johnson is probably more libertarian on issues than is Weld. And they have been running very much as a team anyway, as one might expect given that they are both two term Governors, but Weld from a larger state.
Dr. Ross Levatter, a long time libertarian activist who worked on the 1980 Clark campaign summed up Johnson’s refusal to go negative thus: “I get that Gary Johnson wants to be positive, but if he felt compelled to say Hillary Clinton was good at something, I wish instead of ‘public servant’ he had gone with ‘commodity trader’.”
Another Clark campaign activist sent her former colleagues a long rant on Johnson:
The reason readers have a third commentary trend: many mentions that even though they found Gary’s performance cringe worthy, their non-libertarian spouses all thought he sounded like a reasonable person for whom they could vote.