Is there any hope for this man? Assessments of Barack Obama from planet reason.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine

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IN JULY a Rasmussen poll found that libertarians make up 4 percent of the nation's likely voters--and that they favor Barack Obama over John McCain, 53 percent to 38 percent. There's a Libertarians for Obama blog (two, actually), a Libertarians for Obama Facebook group (54 members and counting), even Libertarians for Obama bumper stickers and T-shirts.

Though perhaps surprising, given libertarians' historical Republican leanings, this development shouldn't be shocking, given what the last eight years of GOP rule have brought: an exploding federal budget, a hefty new entitlement, and an expansionist foreign policy. It doesn't help that McCain has been campaigning for more than a decade as a "national greatness" conservative, not as a small-government Republican in the tradition of his Senate predecessor, Barry Goldwater.

At the same time, there are plenty of reasons to worry about the prospect of an Obama presidency. The candidate who drew cheers from antiwar activists and civil libertarians by opposing the Iraq war and the PATRIOT Act from the beginning also supports an array of new economic regulations and some blurry but potentially significant tax increases. His not-exactly-pacific rhetoric about Iran and Darfur, combined with his vote for a bill granting telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for illegally assisting government surveillance, has some worried that his positions on foreign policy and civil liberties might be closer to his predecessor than they'd like. And then there's the fact that an Obama presidency will almost certainly mean the same party controls both the White House and Congress, with eight years' worth of pent-up ambitions and long overdue favors to pay back.

reason gathered together a clutch of libertarians and fellow travelers in August and asked them to share their hopes and fears regarding an Obama presidency.

Virginia Postrel

Barack Obama has not run as the typical candidate, selling specific policies, a worldview, experience, or executive competence. He has instead sold himself, a glamorous icon onto whom supporters project their hopes and dreams and, in many cases, their own identities. If elected, he will have not a policy mandate but an emotional one: to make Americans feel proud of their country, optimistic about the future, and warmly included, regardless of background, in the American story.

A President Obama could deliver just the opposite. He might stumble badly abroad, projecting weakness that invites aggression (think Jimmy carter) or involving America in a humanitarian-driven war at least as long and bloody as Iraq (think Sudan). As for inclusiveness, you can get it two ways: by respecting individual differences--however eccentric, offensive, or hard to control--or by jamming everyone into a conformist collective. Obama's New Frontier-style rhetoric has a decidedly collectivist cast. NASA is great, prizes for private space flight are stupid, and what can we make you do for your country? A guy who thinks like that will not worry about what his health care plan might do to pharmaceutical research or physicians' incentives.

Obama's campaign draws enormous power from his rhetoric of optimism--"hope" "change," and "Yes...