The unpopularity of Clinton and Trump has created a rare opportunity. Illustration by Barry Blitt

Not long ago, Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party’s 2016 Presidential candidate, put a halt to his considerable consumption of marijuana. “The last time I indulged is about two months ago, with some edibles,” Johnson told me in late June, in the lobby of a midtown hotel. Johnson, who was the Republican governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, also ran for President in 2012, as a Libertarian, and received just under one per cent of the vote, but he believes this year could be different. At the end of May, William F. Weld, the former moderate Republican governor of Massachusetts, became the Libertarian Party’s Vice-Presidential nominee, giving the Party its most mainstream ticket since its founding, in 1971. “It is beyond my wildest dreams that Bill Weld is my running mate,” Johnson said.

Johnson and Weld were set to appear that evening in a CNN town-hall special, which, it was later estimated, was seen by almost a million people. The stakes for Johnson were high. When pollsters include Johnson with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in their surveys, he has been the choice of roughly ten per cent of respondents, and in a Times/CBS News poll released last week he hit twelve per cent. If his standing in the polls rises to fifteen per cent, he will likely qualify to participate in the Presidential debates. “If you’re not in the debates, there’s no way to win,” Johnson said. “It’s the Super Bowl of politics.” Johnson has many flaws as a candidate, but being unlikable is not one of them. If he is allowed to debate Trump and Clinton, the two most unpopular presumed nominees in decades, then the most unpredictable election in modern times could get even weirder.

Johnson told me that the last time he got high was when he ate some Cheeba Chews, a Colorado brand that High Times has called “America’s favorite edible.” The occasion was an evening out with his fiancée, Kate Prusack, in Santa Fe, where they live. Johnson said he understood that the American people would expect him to be a substance-free Commander-in-Chief. “As President, I will not indulge in anything,” Johnson vowed, as if he were J.F.K. promising not to take directions from the Pope. “I don’t think you want somebody answering the phone at two o’clock in the morning—that red phone—drunk, either. Better on the stoned side, but I don’t want to make that judgment.”

Johnson, who is sixty-three, tan, and fit, with spiky gray hair, has long been unrepentant about his use of marijuana. During his first campaign for governor, in 1994, he was asked to quantify his earlier use. “I came up with two and a half times a week,” he told me. Still, as governor, he earned plaudits from the right for being one of the more conservative governors. National Review praised him as the “New Mexico maverick” and as a “Reaganite antitax crusader,” who cut income-tax rates, slowed the growth of government, and eliminated the jobs of hundreds of state employees. During his two terms as governor, Johnson vetoed more than seven hundred bills passed by a Democratic legislature.

In 1999, after winning a second term, Johnson became the highest-ranking elected official in America to call for the full legalization of marijuana. His approval rating dropped into the twenties, and he returned to his agenda of lower taxes and less spending. He left office with an approval rating in the high fifties. Today, he is willing to make other concessions to the political mainstream. When we met, Johnson wore Nikes with a suit, his signature style since 2012. But, after a lively debate with his campaign advisers, he showed up for his CNN appearance wearing dress shoes.

There hasn’t been a serious challenge from a third-party Presidential candidate since 1992, when Ross Perot, the eccentric Texas billionaire, ran as an independent and bought hours of TV time to educate voters about the large federal budget deficit. Perot won entry into the Presidential debates and received nineteen per cent of the vote against Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush. Bush blamed Perot for his loss, though the best analyses of the race concluded that Perot had drawn equal numbers of voters from Bush and Clinton.

This year, the unpopularity of Clinton and Trump has created an opportunity for Johnson to at least match Perot’s impressive showing. Last week, Republican delegates in the Never Trump movement attempted to change the rules for the Republican National Convention, in a failed effort to deny Trump the nomination. For anti-Trump conservatives still searching for an alternative, Johnson may be the only option. On the left, anti-Clinton Democrats, including some determined supporters of Bernie Sanders, would prefer a candidate who is more socially liberal and noninterventionist than Clinton.

“We have arguably the two most polarizing candidates,” Johnson told me. “Hillary has to go out and she has to appeal to this ‘everything’s free, government can accomplish anything, what can you give us’ constituency. She’s doling it out as fast as she can. Trump is appealing to this anti-abortion, anti-immigration, ‘bomb the hell out of them, lock them up, throw away the key’ constituency.”

Johnson is charming and more transparent than most politicians—sometimes to a fault—and has a knack for putting a happy face on the rougher edges of libertarianism. Weld has a shabby-genteel bearing and a boarding-school sarcasm that comes across as both appealing and arrogant. Together, Johnson and Weld represent the first Presidential ticket with two governors since 1948, when the Republicans nominated Thomas Dewey, of New York, and Earl Warren, of California. One of the Johnson-Weld campaign slogans is “A Credible Alternative to ClinTrump.”

Johnson was born in Minot, North Dakota. His father was an Allstate insurance salesman, and his mother worked in accounting for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. His father, who had fallen in love with New Mexico during a trip there as a Boy Scout, moved the family to Albuquerque when Johnson was thirteen and worked as a public-school teacher. When Johnson was eighteen, he read a book—he has forgotten the title—about what it means to be a libertarian, and it changed his life. “It was a thirty-minute read,” he told me. “I have identified myself as a libertarian ever since.”

Johnson, who as a teen-ager earned money by doing odd jobs, founded a construction company, Big J Enterprises, in 1975, when he was a senior at the University of New Mexico. He married his college girlfriend, Dee Simms, and they had two children. In 1986, Big J became the facilities contractor for Intel in New Mexico, where the company had a major manufacturing plant. A few years earlier, Intel had introduced its 286 microchip, which became the dominant processor for personal computers. “They couldn’t make them fast enough, and I was in at the very start,” Johnson said. He became wealthy enough that he would be able to self-finance his first gubernatorial campaign.

By 1987, Johnson was overwhelmed by the success of his business. “I wrote down the ten worst times of my life and the ten best times in my life,” he told me. The best times “had to do with fitness.” The worst times “had to do with drinking or substance—I don’t want to say substance abuse, but just not getting enough rest, not being as healthy as I could be. So the epiphany was ‘Man, I’m going to be in the best shape of my life every day. Why not?’ ” Johnson does not think he was an alcoholic, but he decided to give up drinking. He is now a triathlete and a competitive bike racer, and has scaled the tallest mountain on every continent. “I could go climb Mt. Everest tomorrow,” he boasted.