of the United States. Johnson reentered the fray from so far outside the Republican establishment that even many elected officials didn’t know who he was. If people recognized him at all, it was likely because Johnson had made national headlines in 1999 for publicly supporting marijuana legalization, one of the highest-ranking officials ever to do so. At the time, many insiders, including Johnson himself, believed this marked the end of his future in politics. Big J jokes ensued. His top law-enforcement officer quit. Within days Johnson’s approval rating plummeted from the high fifties to less than 30 percent. Barry McCaffrey, President Clinton’s drug czar, jumped on a plane, flew to New Mexico, and called a press conference to denounce the governor’s position, referring to him as “Puff Daddyand free-market businessmen. “I felt like everything Obama and his administration did was wrong,” Johnson told me. “And no one on the Republican side was doing anything different. I’m not running against Obama; I’m running against the status quo.”

On April 21, mindful to avoid the druggy overtones of 4/20, Johnson stood in front of the New Hampshire State House in Concord on a breezy morning and announced his candidacy. His first priority, he told the crowd of 50 or so folks, many of them bored-looking camera techs, was fixing the economy. He promised to balance the budget his first year in office, committing to drastic cuts in defense spending and reforming Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. His second priority was to stop elected officials from mucking with our