DEL.ICIO.USPublished on: 04/26/08
There's not a bit of bunting in sight. No rope line to hold back the rabid throngs.
Secret Service protection? More like one endlessly patient young woman who answers the phone and greets strangers walking through the door with cheery aplomb.
 Chuck France/STR |
| Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr is running for the White House on the Libertarian ticket. |
At first glance, this conservatively appointed office suite — muted carpeting, framed Ronald Reagan photo on the wall — in a high-rise building near the Cobb Galleria Centre could be home to any of the countless well-connected doctors, lawyers or investment professionals who keep Atlanta ticking.
Instead, it's the epicenter of a political earthquake.
Maybe.
"There are several things we want to get in place before we would make an announcement," Bob Barr says during a recent interview at his consulting firm, Liberty Strategies LLC. "We anticipate having them nailed down in very short order."
As rhetorical stemwinders go, that's not quite up there with "Ask not what your country can do for you ... ." Still, it's tantalizingly, if incrementally, more detailed than what Barr, 59, had to say at the Heartland Libertarian Conference in Kansas City two weeks earlier.
There, the former Republican congressman from Georgia's 7th District declared he was forming an "exploratory committee" and would run for president as a Libertarian — if "sufficient numbers" of people were for it.
The tremors were felt immediately and everywhere. While bloggers debated Barr's electability and Libertarian cred — he's been a party member since just 2006 — his "exploratory" Web site (www.bobbarr2008.com) showed about $25,000 in contributions within two days. (By Friday morning, it was nearing $41,000).
James Peniston of Duluth was among the first donors. "It's the beginning of my personal Boston Tea Party," Peniston, 62, said of his $100 donation. "I'm fed up with the two-party system."
'Bless their hearts'
He's apparently not alone. The exploratory committee polled likely voters and found that 7 percent said they would vote for unannounced candidate Barr. Next up was a George Will column about Barr's potentially "ruinous" impact on presumed Republican nominee John McCain's chances.
So, has Barr heard anything — veiled threats, promises of plum ambassadorships — from the McCain forces lately?
"No, not directly," replies Barr, who had to give up his weekly op-ed column in the AJC when he launched the exploratory committee. Of the few "more traditional" Republicans he has heard discouraging words from: "They have this sort of idea in their minds, bless their hearts, that nobody should do anything to upset the Republican nominee. This notion that the political world swirls around two galaxies only, Republican and Democrat only, and anybody else who enters that fray is going to affect the other two and that's bad — that's a very myopic notion."
That's classic Barr, from the slightly withering "bless their hearts" to the almost reflexively Republican use of "Democrat" as an adjective. (Also on the wall of the onetime House manager: A framed display — including photos and gallery tickets — commemorating President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial.)
Barr also sounds — and behaves — like a man with more than just a notion about running for president.
There's the impressive Web site that went live seemingly while Barr was still having his Heartland parking stub validated. The growing public appearance schedule that this week has taken him into Yankee territory and out of strictly Libertarian settings, like Thursday's speech at The College of New Jersey. And the soundbite-ready argument — "Inside every American beats the heart of a Libertarian" — that he's the real change agent in a year of pretenders to the title.
Well, mostly pretenders. Whether Barr's decision to go exploring now had anything to do with Ron Paul's presidential campaign all but officially ending last month, he credits the Texas congressman's upstart campaign with helping prepare the way.
"In my lifetime, we've not had an administration that has presented such a clear picture of why the current system is broken as the Bush administration, and that has changed the dynamics of the political system this year," Barr says. "The 'Ron Paul phenomenon,' so to speak, also illustrates that there is a significant group of folks out there who recognize that the Libertarian Party does present to them very relevant issues of freedom."
Ducks in a row?
What's not here — yet — are some of the more obvious outward trappings of a presidential run.
No "Straight Drawl Express" parked outside an Atlanta-based national campaign office, no paid full-time staff working inside. Some experienced political hands have come on board recently as volunteers, but the staff and offices at Liberty Strategies LLC carry out much of the exploratory committee's work. A lot of it is done by Derek Barr, 26, whose duties include quietly fact-checking his father's recall of his six grandchildren's ages during the interview.
On his reason for (possibly) running, however, no prompting is needed: "The size and scope and power of government," Barr says even before being asked, "I suspect will be the key to a Bob Barr campaign."
Meanwhile, much of his time recently has been spent, well, exploring.
With a dozen other candidates already announced (and six more considering running), can he actually secure the nomination at the Libertarian National Convention come Memorial Day weekend? Who would work on his campaign? What would happen to his consulting and legal clients (he's also "of counsel" to the law firm of Edwin Marger in Jasper) for seven months? How much could his previous hidebound conservative positions — he drafted the Defense of Marriage Act passed by Congress in 1996 and was an outspoken supporter of the war on drugs — come back to haunt him with some Libertarians?
And what price a presidential run in the YouTube Age?
"Certainly what little sphere of privacy we've been able to recapture over the last couple of years will dissipate immediately," said Barr, whose wife, Jeri, is chief executive officer of the nonprofit Center for Family Resources in Cobb County. "Running for president is not something you do lightly or precipitously." Or without having all your ducks in a row first. Even if those ducks might never, er, hatch.
Preparing for battle
Russell Verney, a volunteer adviser who'd be Barr's campaign manager, recalled the night in 1992 when maverick Texas billionaire Ross Perot went on "Larry King Live" and blurted out his intention to run as an independent presidential candidate. Within two hours, 10,000 phone calls overwhelmed the switchboard of Perot's computer firm.
"From then on, it was playing catch-up," said Verney, who worked on that campaign and managed Perot's 1996 run. "It was always a campaign that was overwhelmed."
While Barr continues to mull his options privately and publicly — Wednesday's "Barr Blog" entry hinted ominously at "tactics and strategies" that might be used against him, then invoked Bob Marley as a model courageous figure — others prepare for battle. Verney is already pondering how many staff, volunteer coordinators and offices the campaign would need on Day One. Audrey Mullen of political PR firm Advocacy Ink helps set up Barr's media appearances and collects footage for a commercial that would be ready to run after a formal announcement.
For early donor Peniston, that announcement can't come soon enough. Or, apparently, without an endless supply of bunting.
"I hope he does run, if only to really shake things up," said Peniston, a self-described independent who leans Republican. "Unfortunately, third parties don't get involved in this till it's nearly too late. So if he's running, he's got to keep running for the next four years."
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