The Libertarian presidential candidate was touring a co-working space in the same San Francisco building that houses Twitter. Clad in his signature suit and sneakers, he donned a virtual reality headset for a quick demo. It wasn't his first time doing VR, but he was still game—for a politician, it's the Silicon Valley version of kissing a baby. Afterward, he took a seat in a glass-walled conference room near desks once occupied by a drone startup to shoot a Facebook Live interview hosted by Data4America, a civic tech nonprofit building online "life maps" of the presidential candidates. Johnson laid out his own life story, from his birth in North Dakota to his two terms as New Mexico's Republican governor to the paragliding accident in Hawaii that made him a true believer in the benefits of medical marijuana. And like any good candidate, Johnson used his biography to frame his politics.

He's a successful entrepreneur who's against big government (opposes higher taxes, supports school vouchers). He's an outdoorsy individualist who thinks the law and law enforcement sometimes go too far (opposes the War on Drugs, supports Black Lives Matter). Above all, he's a free-enterpriser who believes unfettered capitalism drives progress toward a better future.