Can't help but wonder if he's trying to convince his audience or himself. He severely underestimated the amount of rot that had set in the system (a lot of us did, in fairness). That had a huge effect on me, but fortunately I'm not a public figure so I'm more free to say "well this is a problem I think should be fixed, and libertarianism can't fix it; so I guess I'm no longer a libertarian"