Gary Johnson Has Just Lost at Jeopardy. So What?

My heart goes out to Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor and Libertarian candidate for the U.S. presidency. He's made more headlines by sincerely asking a TV host, "And what is Aleppo?" than by anything else he's said or done during the campaign. This is wrong on a number of levels.

The most basic of these levels is the treatment of presidential candidates as quiz show contestants. An ambitious player of a quiz show like Jeopardy or 500 Questions must know what Aleppo is and will pinpoint it on a map immediately after being woken from a deep sleep in the middle of the night. The same is demanded from a politician, who has to answer hundreds of questions, most of them on domestic issues, but is not allowed to fail when hit with the occasional foreign affairs inquiry. If an area of ignorance emerges, the candidate gets hammered; he or she can lose the game, and that's what appears to be happening to Johnson. Some Republican voters considered him a viable alternative to less-than-wonky Donald Trump, but now "there is no hope" is a frequent message under the merciless #WhatIsAleppo hashtag.