Long days. Delays. Struggling to get his message heard when the major networks all but ignore him.

But the real rigors of the campaign trail for Gary Johnson? Airports. Or, as Johnson calls them, "Constitution-free zones."

The former New Mexico governor bristles when speaking of the Transportation Security Agency. And he scoffs at the full-court security press in America after Sept. 11, 2001. It is not simply a question of whether the beefed-up security actually equals homeland security, Johnson told a small audience Thursday night at New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord. It is about the overarching, overreaching government bureaucracy squashing constitutional protections, he said.

"I believe," he said, "that less government is the best government." Johnson spoke next to a banner: "America has a date with Liberty." That only begins to sum up his goal of carving up federal government, starting with transferring certain programs to the states to administer. He wants to abolish the federal Department of Education, for example, so that there are "50 laboratories of innovation" at the state level.

His message is stitched together with Libertarian thread, and it has appeal for Nicholl Marshall, an undecided Republican from Manchester who came out to hear him speak at the Concord stop.