Our Q&A with Bob Barr, former Republican member of Congress and current Libertarian Party candidate for president

Why did you switch from Republican to Libertarian?

The best way to put that is what Ronald Reagan said years ago, when he was asked a similar question. He said the Democrat Party left him, he didn't leave it. And that's really what happened with me. The Republican Party went off in the direction of big government. The Libertarian Party stands for all the things I believe are important: states' rights, less government, individual liberty and so forth.

It was a combination of the administration's view of executive power being absolutely unreviewable by Congress and the courts, as long as the president says, "I'm doing this as commander in chief," and its spying on American citizens.

You helped lead the House's impeachment of President Bill Clinton, yet you now say that George W. Bush is worse than Mr. Clinton was. Explain.

What President Bush has done is tremendous damage to the fabric of the country, to the whole notion of rule of law and the foundation of our system of government. Bill Clinton's problems were more personal-oriented. The problem is compounded by the Democrats' failure to pick up the issue and get to the bottom of it. Congress doesn't seem to be willing to carry out its basic oversight function.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans, at the end of the day, will really address the problem of too much government power, because each one knows that sooner or later, they're going to get back in power.

Many on the right today are asking where the conservative movement went wrong. Your view?

The problem with the conservative movement is it allowed itself to become captive to the Republican Party. People look to the Republican Party as the means to reflect conservative ends. When you hitch your wagon to a political party, you're never going to do that, because a political party exists to get and hold onto power. The conservative movement needs to reassert itself as the conservative movement and detach itself from any political party. [an error occurred while processing this directive]