Johnson’s belief that government should do less, not more, applies to immigration as well. Although he says “we shouldn’t stop what we’re currently doing” to secure the border, Johnson rejects the idea of building a fence or deploying the National Guard as “a whole lot of money spent” without much effect. Instead, he thinks, we should create “an easy way to come across the border documented.” He defends Bush’s botched immigration package — “amnesty is not citizenship,” he reminds us — and warns against the “vilification of foreigners.” Comparing worries about illegal immigration to Cold War–era red-baiting, Johnson dubs immigrants “the new Russia.”…

On foreign policy, Johnson is a noninterventionist. He opposed the Iraq War from the start and believes we have stayed in Afghanistan too long. We went into the latter country to root out al-Qaeda, but “they’re not there anymore,” Johnson argues. On the home front, he thinks Pres. George W. Bush went too far. “I’d like to think I would have said no to the Patriot Act,” he says, but as a governor he didn’t have to take a stand.