When a record 84 million people tuned in to watch the first presidential debate last month, they anticipated an event of Super Bowl proportions. But thirty miles away from the hubbub sat someone who only a few weeks earlier had hoped to share the stage: Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

While initial predictions had optimistically characterized Johnson as the strongest third-party challenger since Ross Perot in 1992, Johnson failed to reach the 15 percent threshold required to participate in the debate. In the weeks before and since, Johnson has done little to flatter himself: professing ignorance about the Syrian city of Aleppo; blanking when asked to pick his favorite foreign leader; and declining to name the dictator of North Korea.

Yet despite such mental lapses, Johnson has continued to attract more support than any other candidate in Libertarian Party history. According to one Quinnipiac poll, an estimated 29 percent of voters between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four say they would vote for the man National Review once applauded as a true “Reaganite anti-tax crusader.”