Just two days after presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton faced off in their first debate, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson published an op-ed in the New York Times. The headline: “Take a Deep Breath, Voters. There Is a Third Way.”

Johnson, a former New Mexico governor and construction mogul, built a public persona this year by splitting the difference between Trump’s blowhard conservatism and Clinton’s technocratic liberalism. In recent months, he has consistently polled at about 6 percent nationwide. Four state legislators have defected from the Republicans to join the Libertarian Party and endorse his candidacy. Amid this year’s electoral circus, Johnson fancies himself the only grown-up in the room.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that after an evening of back-and-forth between the two major candidates — during which Trump boasted about evading federal income taxes and Clinton hid her own dismal economic policies behind the sound-bite “Trump’ed-up trickle-down” — Johnson couldn’t wait to sop up the mess.