A Libertarian's Dream

Atlas Hugged has written a post about President Bartlett of The West Wing, which I have never watched...but I was intrigued by the name of the blog so I read it. I am working on my article this morning, arguing that libertarianism, as the utopian ideological opposite of communism, has caused a lot of bad economic policy by people who don't understand economics. But Atlas and I did see eye to eye on Clinton:

"President Bartlett was really the opposite of what I would love to see in a President. He was a socially conservative free spending liberal democrat. But, he isn’t real. Clinton (D- Arkansas, New York) was a social liberal who, with the benefit of history and with the help of Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia), ran the most fiscally responsible executive branch since the revolution. A libertarian’s dream."

A friend of mine, a French libertarian economist who works for a right-wing thinktank, really does not mesh with her conservative colleagues -- and has lately said to me that she would be happy at this point with a party that would commit not to increase the size of the federal government above 20% of GDP.

As a former libertarian, who much prefers good governance over shrinking the government, I must say that I like their thinking.