Our story in Aug. 1 paper, Obama advisers see hope in 3rd parties, highlighted Gary Johnson, the nominee of the Libertarian Party. By coincidence, Johnson was in Seattle that day, and I spent 45 minutes with him.

The point of the story was that Johnson and another third-party candidate could draw away Romney votes in key states and hand the election to Obama. That is possible. It is what Ralph Nader did to Al Gore in Florida in 2000.

I asked Johnson if the prospect of being the Nader of 2012 bothers him.

It doesnt bother me a bit, he said.

Johnson, 59, was a Republican because he is for balancing budgets without tax increases and cutting back on the welfare state. As the Republican governor of New Mexico 1995-2002, he says, he vetoed hundreds of spending bills.

New Mexico is a blue state, 47% Hispanic. Johnson won the governorship the first time with 49.8 percent of the vote in a race against an incumbent Democrat and a third-party Green. He won the second time with 54.5 percent. In 2008 he supported libertarian Republican Ron Paul for president, and in 2012 Johnson announced a run himself. He would have had Pauls supporters this year, except that Paul ran again and kept them for himself.

Johnson was shut out of most of the Republican presidential debates. He told me several media organizations said they would include anyone with 2 percent, or 4 percent, in certain pollsand those polls didnt include him. He still fumes about that. In one case, he said, he had a 4 percent poll and was left out anyway. And without media attention, his campaign died.

Regrettably, you cant crawl out from under a culvert and run for president of the United States, Johnson says. (Maybe thats not so regrettable. I've had to listen to some culvert crawlers, and there is something to be said for shunning them.)

Late last year Johnson suspended his campaign as a Republican and went over to the Libertarians, who were glad to have him. In 2008 for president they ran another former Republican, Georgia ex-Rep. Bob Barr, but Barr had been a drug warrior not too long before and a lot of Libertarians had to hold their noses to accept him. Johnson is quite liberal on civil liberties. In an ACLU ranking on civil liberties, Johnson was rated good on 21 of 24 questions, which was higher than Ron Paul (18) or Barack Obama (16). On that survey, the ACLU rated Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney at zero.

Johnson famously came out for legalization of marijuana when he was governor. Thats a radical position for a Republican, but not for Libertarians, whose standard position is to legalize them all. So I asked him: What about methamphetamine? I can imagine marijuana being a commercial product; at a dispensary less than a mile from my house, it already is one. But how about meth? Could it ever be a product of a company that a business license, a street address, paid taxes, bought insurance, and was invited to membership in the Rotary Club? (My answer: no.)

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Gary Johnson, Libertarian