If you blinked, you might have missed it: Michigan Rep. Justin Amash was a candidate for the 2020 Libertarian Party nomination for president of the United States. “Let’s do this,” he tweeted on April 28. Amash set up his exploratory committee and participated in exactly one debate against such eminent competition as Vermin Supreme. Then, on May 16, he returned to President Trump’s favorite social media platform to tweet: “After much reflection, I’ve concluded that circumstances don’t lend themselves to my success as a candidate for president this year, and therefore I will not be a candidate.”

It’s easy to poke fun at Amash’s earnestness. Running for the nomination of a political party whose presidential candidates have never won more than 3.3% of the national popular vote in order to face a sitting president and a former two-term vice president isn’t exactly conducive to becoming the first person since James Garfield to go directly from the House of Representatives to the White House. If only Amash had made a pit stop with the Democrats, he’d have belonged to as many parties as the metric system-loving Lincoln Chafee, who also launched an abortive campaign for the Libertarian nod this year.