I refuse to waste my vote By Warren Bluhm News-Chronicle As the Wisconsin primary approaches next week, look for newspapers around the state to issue endorsements. I've always wondered why everyone puts so much stock in the pronouncement of faceless editors who tell you how to vote but don't sign their work. This paper doesn't do endorsements, but we do let columnists tell you what we're thinking of doing when we close the curtains. We don't even call my columns "editorials," even though my title is "editor." The word "editorial" traditionally suggests the official position of this newspaper, and this ain't that. You can do what you wish with the information. That's America. Last month I mentioned that my disillusionment with the two major parties has become complete - I never had much use for the Democrats, and now a Republican president and Congress have taken Big Government to a new level. The only hope, I wrote, seems to be in the Libertarian Party, last refuge of people who think big spending, big tax bills and nanny government were not what the founders had in mind when they invented this republic. That column landed me an invitation to serve on the media panel of a presidential debate featuring Michael Badnarik and Gary Nolan, who will be on the Libertarian primary ballot next week. It was a blessed relief from the politicians who promise to take your money and take care of you. "Most of what the federal government does is unconstitutional," Badnarik said - a radical thought in these times, but absolutely true and someone had to say it. My main disappointment was that presented with practical questions about what they'd do in office - how would you deal with the mainstream-party Congress, what kind of Supreme Court justices would you appoint - both men admitted their main goal is to spread the libertarian message in hopes someday voters understand and embrace the limited-government philosophy most recently made popular by the words, if not the presidency, of Ronald Reagan. I'd rather vote for someone who's in it to win, but I can live with a little realism if I have to. If you pushed me up against a wall and forced me to vote for one of the two major parties - and after McCain-Feingold I'm beginning to think we're headed that way - I would probably stay home, but if you took away that choice, too, I would have to lean toward giving President Bush a second term, simply because he sometimes talks the limited-government talk even though in practice he hasn't done anything but expand the size and intrusiveness of the federal government. Democrats don't even talk the talk anymore. So if the 2004 election is as close as 2000 was, my Libertarian vote could put someone like John Kerry or Howard Dean into the White House. Yeah, so? Nolan pointed out government spending is growing twice as fast as it was when Democrat Bill Clinton was wrestling with the Republican Congress. "Gridlock is a good thing," he said, because when Washington is doing nothing at least it's not coming up with new ways to hurt us. Badnarik added the old saw, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result." Maybe if we give Republicans or Democrats another shot at the White House, this time they'll start cutting the federal government down to size? To vote that way is insanity. "The only way to ensure change is to vore for a third party," Badnarik said. "The only wasted vote is when you do not vote your conscience." Feel free to vote to continue the insanity. I'm filling in my ballot for Badnarik. People who know my background will find this amusing: Nolan's main claim to fame is that he's a radio talk-show host, and it seems to me you need a little more than that, so I'm going for the other guy. About that scream How do you think you would sound if your screaming at the refs at a Packers game was isolated from the other thousands of voices and presented in a manner that made it sound like you were addressing a hushed crowd? I can tell you: You'd sound like a lunatic. That's essentially what happened to Howard Dean: His shouts above the wild crowd on the night of the Iowa caucuses were clipped from the media feed from the podium microphone. Those mikes are notoriously directional, and you can barely hear anything that is going on except for the speaker. In real life, Dean's "primal scream" was drowned out among his supporters' hundreds of screams. He didn't sound nutty at all, in context. You can come up with dozens of legitimate reasons why President Dean would be a disaster. The political operatives who twisted the meaning of that recording must have some doubts about their own candidates, if that's the best they can muster. And the media types who got sucked into the "listen to the nutcase" groundswell should be ashamed, especially those in the electronic media who should have known and could have explained why it sounded so bizarre.