Last week I watched parts of the Libertarian Party Convention on CSPAN. I was reminded of a Simpson’s Episode back in 1996 where aliens impersonated Bill Clinton and Bob Dole with the intention of enslaving humanity. Homer revealed the plot on the eve of the election and said Americans didn’t have to vote for either of them. The aliens laughed and said something to the effect of, “If you vote for a third party, you’ll throw your vote away.” Ross Perot was in the crowd and punched a hole in his hat.

I don’t think the Libertarians would be worse than alien enslavement. Still, the few hours of their convention I saw were a mess. I’m going to be brutal as I evaluate them, much more than typical. These guys are trying to elect one of their own to be the most powerful man on Earth.

Even if you’re not planning on hosting the 2012 Libertarian Party Convention, I saw some things they messed up that any of us can mess up.

Libertarian Mistake #1 - Aesthetics!

I flipped onto the Convention by chance. The first thing I saw was an Excel spreadsheet with all the states in columns and numbers listed beneath them. It was so bad I started laughing before I knew what it was. It turns out were doing balloting for their presidential nominee and they were listing how each state had voted for verification purposes.

The Excel sheet they used to list out which state voted for who looked horrible. You could see the minimize/maximize/close bar, all the Excel shortcut keys, etc. There was no need for this.

It’s not hard in Excel to make it display something that looks really snazzy. In fact they could have disguised the fact they were using Excel completely. Given the number of techno-geeks who are Libertarians AND the fact this was on national TV, they should’ve had one person take a few hours to make the Excel look “major party quality.”

Technology is a great equalizer, but only if you use it right.

Libertarian Mistake #2 - Know the Rules

After they elected Bob Barr to be the Presidential Nominee, it came time to elect the Vice President. There became a debate as to whether one of the other candidates for President who lost could get onto the VP ticket at the very last moment, or something to that effect. The MC of the event didn’t know. They didn’t have a parliamentarian either. So there was a very, very long delay as they tried to sort this out. My VCR tape ran out before they got it settled. Even the CSPAN producers found this dull (which is saying a lot), so they cut to their studio and to previous clips of the day.

However much I make fun of parliamentary Toastmasters (or is it paramilitary Toastmasters?) who are up on the Robert’s Rule of Order stuff, you can’t have rules debates on the floor like this. Since they only do this once every four years I understand some rough patches. But since it’s once only four years, it’s also not much of a burden to make one person become the Rules God who would know the book backwards and forward.

Whenever you have adversarial relationships like people running for President or Toastmasters pushing through contested policy changes, people on both sides are going to try to take advantage of rules to get what they want. You need an impartial rules master to settle things quickly.

Perhaps Libertarians distrust government and regulation so much since they themselves are so bad at it?

Libertarian Mistake #3 - No Commentary, Forgetting TV Audience

The Republican and Democratic conventions will have long stretches of dull procedural stuff, of course. When this happens, the news networks cut out to their commentators who talk about other things.

No such luck in CSPAN. During the initial balloting at the Libertarian Convention, they had a few cameras on the floor following the candidates around - looking at how they interacted with the partisans, and so on during the time allotted for voting. That was really, really cool. There was literally a buzz in the room and we got to see the candidates up close and raw in a way we won’t with McCain and Obama.

What wasn’t so cool was during the long stretch of rules debate and also during the recess after Barr delivered his acceptance speech, there wasn’t the chance to send the cameras around. So they went back to the CSPAN studios, but all they could do there was show highlights from during the day. I kept wishing we had Chris Matthews to make all the smartass remarks that needed to be made.

Or it would’ve been nice to have had a personable Libertarian who was back in the CSPAN studios who could talk with the host and provide analysis. They would have to be able to bury whatever bias they had for any candidate and help the viewers understand what was happening. I don’t know if CSPAN would’ve allowed it, but the Libertarians seem disorganized enough that they never would’ve thought of it or else never would have agreed on someone to play the role.

It felt throughout that they forgot that this wasn’t just a closed door party conference, but an event brought to the homes of hundreds of millions and that they needed to keep the TV audience’s needs in mind, too.

Maybe I should become a Libertarian or at least a Libertarian analyst so I can be that guy back in the studio in 2012. CSPAN, here I come!