Libertarian Barr makes pitch

Hopeful takes shots at McCain, Obama

DURHAM -- Bob Barr doesn't see much difference between John McCain and Barack Obama.

Barr, the Libertarian presidential candidate, sees in the chief contenders for the presidency two power-hungry politicians whose main difference is the way they would dole out public money. And it drives him crazy.

"Nothing will change," Barr told about 100 Duke students in a campus lecture hall Tuesday night. "Both want to spend our money, increasingly huge amounts of our money."

Barr was a Republican when he represented a Georgia district in the House of Representatives but has since soured on that party. As a Libertarian, he is polling at 1 percent or 2 percent in many states, enough to perhaps draw critical votes away from one major candidate or the other in closely contested states such as North Carolina. He's on the ballot in 45 states.

For 45 minutes at Duke on Tuesday, he blistered Democrats and Republicans alike. He hammered the recent $700 billion federal bailout of financial institutions.

"The federal government is sweeping aside any pretense that we have a free market here by just jumping into the marketplace," he said. "The list of companies getting in line for this federal bailout is getting bigger by the day."

Barr said government will be broken until it figures out what the presidency really means.

"The lack of understanding that the job of the president of the United States is to protect, defend and expand our liberty, and not to protect, defend and expand their power, is dangerous," he said.

And he excoriated the U.S. Congress, of which he was for eight years a member, calling it ineffectual and most interested in staying in power.

"Congress does a good job of holding hearings every once in a while, but nothing ever happens," Barr said. "One Congress after another shows itself as disinterested or inept in standing up for the rights of the people."

Barr then added that such congressional disinterest will continue until the citizenry demonstrates its distaste in the voting booth.

Barr took a whack at Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain's vice-presidential running mate, citing her declaration during a debate that she would rather talk about issues of her choice than answer questions posed to her.

"Governor Palin, and I gotta give her credit, removed any pretense that the candidates were there to answer questions," he said. "The other candidates do it too; they just don't come out and say it."

Barr was also scheduled to speak Tuesday night at UNC-Chapel Hill. At Duke, Barr was hosted by the political science department, whose chair, Michael Munger, is the state's Libertarian gubernatorial candidate.

"I think people should get used to the idea that there are other candidates," said Munger, running for governor in a state with just 3,225 registered Libertarians. "We're always going to have a two-party system. But it doesn't have to be the same two parties."

Christian Richman, a Duke senior from Maryland who has already cast his vote for McCain, liked what Barr had to say and would welcome a viable third party.

"More competition allows for better candidates," Richman said.