Who does David Friedman want to win the election?
Gary Johnson, of course. But he isn’t going to.
The more interesting question is which of the two major party candidates I want to win. What I find interesting, looking at my own feelings, is that there are two different answers.
The rational answer is that the worst outcome might be Obama in control of both houses of Congress, but that that is very unlikely to happen. The second worst is probably Romney in control of both houses, a little more likely. Beyond those two, the order is unclear. On the one hand, my guess is that Obama would want to do more things I disapprove of than Romney. On the other, Romney, if elected, will almost certainly control the House and might control the Senate, or get control of it two years from now. What matters is not what people want to do but what they can do, and Romney might well be able to do more things I disapprove of than Obama.
A further argument is that when Romney talks a free market line but fails to act it, those of us who actually believe in free markets will get blamed for the resulting failures. That, after all, is what happened with the Bush administration. I do not expect either Obama’s policies or Romney’s to succeed, and if policies are going to visibly fail, I would prefer that they be blamed on someone else. That is an argument in favor of Obama.