Algernon D'Ammassa

What is Aleppo? Is it a brand of dog food? An obscure species of marsupial? A Mediterranean spice?

Last week, two-term New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, now running for president as the Libertarian candidate, was widely mocked after visibly drawing a blank when asked about Aleppo. Shaking my head, I walked into my bedroom and asked my wife, "What is Aleppo?" My wife, like a great many Americans, does not follow world news or politics very closely. Yet when I asked her about Aleppo, she recognized it immediately as the ancient city, one of the Levant's major cities, the location of a four-year continuing siege between numerous parties in the Syrian civil war, and the locus of one of the worst humanitarian crises currently underway as civilian areas come under constant aerial bombardment by the Syrian and Russian governments.

Johnson's stumble looked awful. "What is Aleppo?" he asked incredulously, to which journalist Mike Barnicle responded, "You're kidding." After his startle, Johnson presented a position about the Syrian conflict (albeit a peculiar one). Still, the damage to his candidacy had been done.

The spotlight of a presidential campaign is unsparing and not a little unfair. In 1999, candidate George W. Bush famously flunked an easy quiz on major world leaders, yet he ended up serving two terms. One has to wonder how Donald Trump would have done on the Aleppo question. Could he locate Syria on a map? Some days I wonder if Trump could locate Earth on a map. He is, however, the Republican nominee, and thus considered a "real" candidate, but Johnson is not.

Any president is a human being, no president succeeds or fails alone, and no one is prepared for the job except a former president; but the glare of campaign scrutiny makes no allowance for human error. The smallest of lapses or simple mistakes can become a metaphor for a candidate's fitness for office. Gov. Howard Dean's promising run for president in 2004 was undone by a single shout in a microphone during a rally.

For Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, a stubborn cough during an appearance last week fueled ludicrous rumors about her health, aired by serious news organizations. The arena is even more unsparing for challengers to the two-party system. The Greens and the Libertarians are running against establishment bias regardless of their substance.

In a year when the two traditional parties have offered us a repulsive choice between a cynical imperialist Clinton presidency and the carnival on a minefield that is Trump, third parties are getting a closer look. They can scarcely afford any opportunity for the press to portray them as fumbling or ill-prepared. Turning up in the wrong Ohio city for a rally, which happened to the Green Party's Jill Stein last week, is not actually proof a person is incapable of holding office - but it is the kind of ready-made trope that will sink a campaign, which is why campaigns spend so much money for the best staff.

This column still believes candidates who appear on enough state ballots for a numerical path to 270 electoral votes deserve to be included in official debates. The major parties should not be protected from competition. If they had to compete, major candidates could improve, and failing that they could make way for parties that better represent the needs and aspirations of voters. To make that case, however, we need alternative candidates who stay on the ball, knowing the field is against them from the beginning.

Algernon D'Ammassa is Desert Sage. Write to him at DesertSageMail@gmail.com.