With the announcement that he'll seek the Libertarian Party’s 2008 presidential nomination, former Georgia Republican congressman Bob Barr has added another twist to an already crazy election year.

Barr, who hopes to win the LP’s top spot at the party’s convention that starts Thursday, May 22, in Denver, has an impressive resume that backs up his claim that he's the most qualified presumptive candidate of any party.

A lawyer, former U.S. Attorney and ex-CIA official, Barr, 59, was born in Iowa, but thanks to his military parents he lived in such exotic locales as Lima and Teheran, where he graduated from high school. He served in the House from 1995 to 2003, where he was known as a hard-line conservative who hated the IRS and fought tirelessly for privacy rights and other civil liberties.

Barr is far from the perfect libertarian. Many libertarians have serious issues with him over things like his vote in favor of the Patriot Act (which he now regrets) and his zealous support of the war on drugs, which he has backed away from.

Meanwhile, Republicans are mad at Barr because they fear as a third party candidate he could do to John McCain what Ralph Nader did to Al Gore in 2000 -- steal just enough votes to keep McCain out of the White House. When I talked to Barr by telephone on Thursday, he was on the grounds of the United Nations, where he said nothing is very good -- even the food.

Q: Why did you decide to run?

A: I decided to run for several reasons. One, because I want to restore the Constitution to our federal government. It seems to have been completely forgotten and disregarded by Congress and by this administration. I believe in the Constitution. I believe in separation of powers. I believe in the rule of law. I believe in limited government. And these are principles and policies that apparently neither the national Republican nor the national Democrat Party believes in. I believe great damage is being done to our Constitution and I see no remedy at all, no likelihood of that changing if we rely on the two parties to field our candidates for national office.

The Libertarian Party alone among America’s political parties truly stands for smaller government and maximized individual liberty. I believe if we don’t take a stand now and try to reverse course, we may never have the opportunity again. I think there are a number of factors coming together for this cycle that give us a much greater likelihood for success than any previous election.

Q: What major issues will you emphasize in your campaign that the other candidates will not go anywhere near?

A: They all come back to smaller government, whether we are talking about the power of government or the cost of government. So ultimately every single issue comes down to shrinking the size, the power, the scope and the cost of the federal government. I would -- unlike either of the two major party candidates -- immediately, upon taking office in January, shrink the size of the federal government, beginning with the executive office of the president to the greatest extent possible, even before going to the Congress. I would institute a freeze in the executive branch and begin cutting back. I would send a message to the Congress that any bill that would be sent to me that would increase the size of the federal government would be vetoed -- and that means as well any piece of legislation that would purport to raise the national debt ceiling. I would immediately instruct the Department of Justice to once again respect the writ of habeas corpus and respect the rule of law.

Q: Is there any one issue or event or trend that made you abandon the Republican Party -- besides the usual ones: its failure to shrink the federal government, the spending and the failure to follow a prudent foreign policy?

A: Well, the Republican Party abandoned me and other libertarian-leaning Republicans. Perhaps more than anything else, aside from those things that you enumerated, , which are very important -- and that is the unashamed growth in government spending under the Republican Congress and a Republican president and the anomaly that that presents. More than anything else, it is the utter disregard by this administration for fundamental constitutional principles of governance; to act according to the notions that the president doesn’t have to obey the law, that a president is not bound by court decision or act of Congress in what he does, is extremely destructive to the very foundation of our country. To witness, as we saw a year and a half ago the Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales at the time, annunciate the proposition that the writ of habeas corpus is no longer important -- to me these are defining issues.

Q: If I had asked you to define your politics in 1998, how would you have characterized them?

A: Conservative, but Republican.

Q: How would you define them today?

A: Conservative; the way I define conservative, which is fundamental respect for the Constitution, the rule of law and the smallest government necessary.

Q: What’s left of your conservative social views, if anything, that would give loyal libertarians pause today?

A: Well, we agree on the fundamental principle of shrinking the power of the government and maximizing individual liberty. I do not wholeheartedly embrace the notion, for example, though, that the government cannot define any social relationship. Some libertarians believe rather strongly that the government should not even define marriage -- even the state government. I have no problem with the people of a state defining a relationship known as marriage. I believe that ought to be up to the states, not the federal government. That would be an example of where there would be a difference in degree to which we would apply the fundamental libertarian philosophy of maximized individual liberty and minimized government power.

Q: What is your position on the war on drugs, which has always been the elephant in the room that nobody running for president has dared to talk about for the last 30 or 40 years? It’s been a continuing war against the rights and liberties of Americans, yet no one touches it.

A: We do need to start addressing it. I do not think that the American people are ready to embrace the notion that there ought to be across-the board legalization of drugs. But I do think we need to begin rolling back the massive government power structure that has been built up pursuant to the war on drugs, which has not proved to be a success, certainly. Therefore, I think we need to certainly respect states rights and decisions by the people in an area such as medicinal marijuana. If the people of California, for example, decide that there is an appropriate place for the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes and they pass a law to that affect, that ought to be respected by the federal government. In other words, I think we can start this process of vesting the power to decide what people want to do with their own lives as long as they don’t endanger anyone else by at least beginning to devolve power from the federal government to the states. That would be an important first step.

Q: Libertarians are generally against our interventionist foreign policy in Iraq. Are you? Continued...