Amazing. Johnson has 6 major newspaper endorsements, Trump has ONE.. This is unbelievably good. And the endorsement is extremely well thought out and written. Now Chicago KNOWS there's a better choice on the ballot this Fall..
A principled option for U.S. president: Endorsing Gary Johnson, Libertarian
We reject the cliche that a citizen who chooses a principled third-party candidate is squandering his or her vote.
This is the moment to look at the candidates on this year's ballot. This is the moment to see this election as not so much about them as about the American people and where their country is heading. And this is the moment to rebuke the Republican and Democratic parties.
With that demand for a principled president paramount, we turn to the candidate we can recommend. One party has two moderate Republicans — veteran governors who successfully led Democratic states — atop its ticket. Libertarians Gary Johnson of New Mexico and running mate William Weld of Massachusetts are agile, practical and, unlike the major-party candidates, experienced at managing governments. They offer an agenda that appeals not only to the Tribune's principles but to those of the many Americans who say they are socially tolerant but fiscally responsible. "Most people are Libertarian," Johnson told the Tribune Editorial Board when he and Weld met with us in July. "It's just that they don't know it."
Theirs is small-L libertarianism, built on individual freedom and convinced that, at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, official Washington is clumsy, expensive and demonstrably unable to solve this nation's problems. They speak of reunifying an America now balkanized into identity and economic groups — and of avoiding their opponents' bullying behavior and sanctimonious lectures. Johnson and Weld are even-keeled — provided they aren't discussing the injustice of trapping young black children in this
nation's worst-performing schools. On that and other galling injustices, they're animated.
But unless the United States tames a national debt that's rapidly approaching $20 trillion-with-a-T, Americans face ever tighter constrictions on what this country can afford, at home or overseas. Clinton and Trump are too cowardly even to whisper about entitlement reforms that each of them knows are imperative. Johnson? He wants to raise the retirement age and apply a means test on benefits to the wealthiest.
What's more, principled third-party candidates can make big contributions even when they lose. In 1992 businessman H. Ross Perot won 19 percent of the popular vote on a thin but sensible platform, much of it constructed around reducing federal deficits. That strong showing by Perot the relative centrist influenced how President Bill Clinton would govern.
We wish the two major parties had not run away from today's centrist Americans. Just as we wish either of their candidates evoked the principles that a Chicago Tribune now in its 170th year espouses, among them high integrity, free markets, personal responsibility and a limited role for government in the lives of the governed. We hope Johnson does well enough that Republicans and Democrats get the message — and that his ideas make progress over time.
A principled option for U.S. president: Endorsing Gary Johnson, Libertarian
We reject the cliche that a citizen who chooses a principled third-party candidate is squandering his or her vote.
This is the moment to look at the candidates on this year's ballot. This is the moment to see this election as not so much about them as about the American people and where their country is heading. And this is the moment to rebuke the Republican and Democratic parties.
With that demand for a principled president paramount, we turn to the candidate we can recommend. One party has two moderate Republicans — veteran governors who successfully led Democratic states — atop its ticket. Libertarians Gary Johnson of New Mexico and running mate William Weld of Massachusetts are agile, practical and, unlike the major-party candidates, experienced at managing governments. They offer an agenda that appeals not only to the Tribune's principles but to those of the many Americans who say they are socially tolerant but fiscally responsible. "Most people are Libertarian," Johnson told the Tribune Editorial Board when he and Weld met with us in July. "It's just that they don't know it."
Theirs is small-L libertarianism, built on individual freedom and convinced that, at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, official Washington is clumsy, expensive and demonstrably unable to solve this nation's problems. They speak of reunifying an America now balkanized into identity and economic groups — and of avoiding their opponents' bullying behavior and sanctimonious lectures. Johnson and Weld are even-keeled — provided they aren't discussing the injustice of trapping young black children in this
nation's worst-performing schools. On that and other galling injustices, they're animated.
But unless the United States tames a national debt that's rapidly approaching $20 trillion-with-a-T, Americans face ever tighter constrictions on what this country can afford, at home or overseas. Clinton and Trump are too cowardly even to whisper about entitlement reforms that each of them knows are imperative. Johnson? He wants to raise the retirement age and apply a means test on benefits to the wealthiest.
What's more, principled third-party candidates can make big contributions even when they lose. In 1992 businessman H. Ross Perot won 19 percent of the popular vote on a thin but sensible platform, much of it constructed around reducing federal deficits. That strong showing by Perot the relative centrist influenced how President Bill Clinton would govern.
We wish the two major parties had not run away from today's centrist Americans. Just as we wish either of their candidates evoked the principles that a Chicago Tribune now in its 170th year espouses, among them high integrity, free markets, personal responsibility and a limited role for government in the lives of the governed. We hope Johnson does well enough that Republicans and Democrats get the message — and that his ideas make progress over time.
