I woke up this Independence Day morning, surprised to find out that Bill Greene, the great 2016 faithless elector who cast his vote for Ron Paul, passed away. Among other things, Bill was a fierce advocate of making gold and silver legal tender, and was an assistant professor at South Texas College. He was an early supporter of Ron Paul, his support going as far back as Paul’s 1988 campaign.
[Editor's note: see Greene's Mises Institite author profile.]
Last summer, I had the privilege of interviewing Bill while working on a paper on the history of the Mises Institute and the Austrian Revival. Here, we discussed various different subjects, including Ron Paul’s 1988 campaign, and the growth of the Mises Institute. This has not yet been published, and I would like to do so as a tribute to Bill. Below is our interview, conducted on 6/19/18:
Atilla Sulker: Describe the state of the libertarian movement in 1988, and the extent to which the Mises Institute influenced the overall movement in America at this time?
Bill Greene: In 1988, the Mises Institute was only six years old, having split off from the Cato Institute in 1982 (a Mises co-founder, Murray Rothbard, had co-founded Cato). Up until that split, the Cato Institute was the leading influence on the libertarian movement in the United States since its founding in the mid-1970s (not long after the founding of the Libertarian Party itself in 1971 – Cato’s co-founder, Ed Crane, was the LP’s National Chair from 1974-1977). Even at such a young age, the Mises Institute had already begun to have a strong impact on the libertarian movement – specifically, on its economic policy foundations. Cato’s focus was on government policy recommendations from a libertarian-leaning position. Since that time, the Mises Institute’s influence on libertarianism in the U.S. has equaled, if not surpassed, Cato’s influence. [The Mises Institute was in fact never part of Cato.]
AS: Describe the relationship Ron Paul had with the Mises Institute in 1988, and the extent to which the organization influenced his campaign platform?
BG: Ron Paul’s relationship with the Mises Institute in 1988 was initially through one of its co-founders, Llewellyn (Lew) Rockwell, who had been Paul’s chief of staff, (from 1978-1982) when Paul was a Republican U.S. Congressman. When Rockwell left for Mises in 1982, Paul – who had been heavily influenced by the works of Rothbard beginning in the 1970s – continued his relationship with the co-founders of Mises, drawing much (or most) of his policy positions from the writings of Austrian school economists. When Paul ran for President as the LP nominee in 1988, most of his campaign platform was pulled from these same policy positions. He has continued to be a Senior Fellow of the Institute since that time, often working, writing, and speaking with others connected to it.
AS: Is there a point in Dr. Paul’s career in which it appeared that the Mises Institute’s influence on him was climactic?
BG: I don’t think so, because the relationship has always been symbiotic, and Ron Paul was already firmly in the Austrian school’s camp even before the Mises Institute was founded. Since its beginnings, it’s been difficult to separate the two from each other.
AS: Describe the influence the Mises Institute had on Dr. Paul’s VP candidate Andre Marrou.
BG: I don’t have any personal knowledge of the Mises Institute’s influence on Andre Marrou.
AS: Describe the overall size and sentiment of Ron Paul’s 1988 presidential campaign based on your experience.
BG: Ron Paul’s 1988 presidential campaign appeared to me to be more extensive than the LP’s past campaigns, as this was the first time they had two former elected legislators on the ballot (Paul was a former GOP U.S. Representative, and Marrou was a former LP Alaska Representative). As usual, the campaign’s biggest challenge was getting on the ballot in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. Due to highly restrictive ballot-access laws in a number of states, Paul’s campaign was only on the printed ballot in 46 states & DC (although he did achieve write-in status in Missouri –and in North Carolina, where I headed the N.C. Students for Ron Paul and participated in ballot-access petitioning). Despite Paul’s (and Marrou’s) extensive travels across the country, the campaign was excluded from any debates and only achieved 432,179 votes (0.5%) – still twice as much of Lenora Fulani’s (New Alliance Party) campaign, which actually did achieve 50-state ballot access.
AS: Describe the nature of Andre Marrou’s 1992 Libertarian presidential campaign.
BG: I was not active in his 1992 presidential campaign, although I remember reading news stories on it here and there, such as when he received the highest vote total in the primary results of the first town in the nation to report its votes (Dixville Notch, NH).
AS: Briefly describe, based on your experience, the development of the libertarian movement in America up from Dr. Paul’s 1988 presidential campaign to his 2008 presidential campaign, and outline the role of the Mises Institute in this development.
BG: Based on my own experience, the Mises Institute played a vital role in the development of the libertarian movement in America during the 20 years after Dr. Paul’s first campaign for U.S. president. During the first decade, they published and disseminated massive amounts of literature, newsletters, books, audio, video, and more; once the internet became more and more ubiquitous, they were able to have an ever-growing impact, rivalling the much better-financed Cato Institute in scholarly publications and economic education activities. The Mises Institute’s website soon became the highest-trafficked economics website in the world, and when Dr. Paul decided to run for president again in 2008, he was able to draw upon, and direct his new followers to, that large body of works in support of his policy positions. As a result, his following grew and became ever more educated in libertarian thinking.
AS: Describe the instances in which you attempted to run for office.
BG: When I ran for various political offices over the years, most of my own policy positions were influenced by publications I got from the Mises Institute. This was especially true of my unsuccessful campaign for the Florida House of Representatives in 1994, when I became the first state house candidate to be officially endorsed by the Political Action Committee of the nascent Republican Liberty Caucus (the “libertarian wing of the GOP” co-founded in 1991 by Paul). I had followed Dr. Paul out of the LP and back into the GOP, and I have been a member of, and active in, the RLC since that time.
AS: Is there anything else we should know about Dr. Paul’s 1988 campaign, or anything pertaining to the subject matter?
BG: My favorite story from Ron Paul’s 1988 campaign for President is from the time our N.C. Students for Ron Paul group brought him to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for a speech to around 150 students and local residents. Following his speech (which professed many of the same policy prescriptions as his speeches today), he opened the floor for questions. A local group of Socialist Workers’ Party members were in attendance, and began challenging his free-market stances in a number of different areas. I remember Dr. Paul’s eyes lighting up at that, as he almost gleefully shot down every challenge with logical rebuttals, point by point. Twenty years later, when I chanced to run into Dr. Paul at a local restaurant while he was campaigning in Florida, I mentioned that event – and he remembered it, clearly and (quite obviously) fondly, remarking on how much fun he had that day. I was, to say the least, impressed.
