Squeezing his thumb and forefinger together in the back of a Manchester bar last night, Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr told a crowd of 80 that when it counts, there's that much difference between the Republicans and Democrats.

Americans, he argued, are looking for something new.

"The definition of throwing your vote away is to go into that voting booth and vote for one of two parties that will not change the direction this country's going in," Barr told a crowd of about 80 at Murphy's Taproom. "And that's the Republicans or Democrats."

Some Republicans fear that Barr - a former GOP congressman from Georgia who joined the Libertarian Party in 2006 - could tip the election to Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.

Barr batted that concern aside, saying that his run isn't about Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

"Why would you think I'd be here to spoil it?" Barr told reporters, saying that he prefers to think of each candidate controlling his own destiny. "If I lose it, it's not going to be because of John McCain or Sen. Obama."

Republicans and Democrats have spent too much time fretting about the difference between a $3.1 trillion budget and a $3.12 trillion budget, he said. On Jan. 20, 2009, he said, a President Barr would skip the niceties of inaugural balls and call Congress in to tell them that he'll cap spending at the size of the prior year's budget and form a commission to look at the constitutionality and worth of various federal departments.

One target for Barr: the Department of Education, which he said is unconstitutional and wasteful. "My goal would be to get away from public schools in the first place," he told one questioner.

Barr's career and person are a study in contrasts: He's come to fame as fiery congressman who led the charge to impeach former president Bill Clinton. Now, he inveighs against the war in Iraq and the war on drugs. He wears thick-rimmed hipster glasses but often addressed the crowd as "y'all."

To his favor, he's assembled a well-known team.

His campaign manager is Russ Verney, the one-time executive director of New Hampshire's Democratic Party who advised Ross Perot's campaigns in 1992 and 1996. And, Barr said, he'd snagged the internet team that worked for former presidential candidate Ron Paul, whose online fundraising smashed records.

Barr also faces huge challenges.

The first: Getting on the ballot. As a candidate from a non-major-party, Barr is not granted an automatic slot on New Hampshire's ballot. His campaign has until Aug. 6 to gather the signatures of 3,000 state residents and to submit them to checklist supervisors for verification.

Members of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire spent more than a year gathering signatures for the candidate they nominated at their state convention - George Phillies, the chairman of the Massachusetts Libertarian Party, who is now only about a hundred signatures short of qualifying. Those signatures count only for Phillies - not Barr, who won the national Libertarian Party nod in May - and cannot be transferred, said Secretary of State Bill Gardner.

Ken Blevens of Bow, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate, says he's supporting Phillies because that's whom New Hampshire Libertarians nominated at their convention last year. He started 16 months ago, he said, going to town dumps to gather signatures for himself, Phillies and the rest of the Libertarian ticket.

Single page