To my eyes, the pool of 2008 presidential candidates is dismal. I dislike them all for many reasons, but one thing they have in common is that they are all successful politicians. Politicians are people who do not think it is of primary importance to fully believe words as they exit the mouth. The best leaders in our country are undoubtedly bad politicians: the political system is a horribly failed meritocracy, in which sincerity is penalized. Therefore, I have decided to run a magnifying glass over the worst politician, and in all likelihood the best human being, who is making a semi-credible bid in 2008: Dr. Ron Paul, OB/GYN.
Ron Paul is the only candidate whose success hinges on whether voters decide to think. The other candidates are trying to win by catering to peoples' preconceived notions of how things are and should be. For example, if everybody in America stopped thinking right now, Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) would win because she knows what we already think. If you called her on the phone right now, she could tell you exactly what percentage of Ohio's Democrats favor a single-payer healthcare system. Ron Paul doesn't care. He takes positions that no political consultant could possibly have advised him to take. For example, he wants to withdraw from the UN and pursue a foreign policy of nonintervention. It sure sounds crazy, but I'm not entirely sure that it's a bad idea. I daresay it's worth thinking about.
Paul is running as a Republican in order to appear on the debates, but he is way out of step with the party, and it makes more sense to think of him as a libertarian. Accordingly, his domestic platform is pretty straightforward: he would eliminate or reduce the size of most federal agencies, including the IRS and the Federal Reserve. He would probably veto any legislation that encroached upon states' rights, and he believes that federal income tax is unconstitutional. At first, it seems like he would lead us toward a dangerous, unregulated, frontier-like America, but it isn't quite that simple, because he would try to allow state governments more latitude. Some of them would style themselves as big welfare governments, and others would be unobtrusive. Some would legalize gay marriage, some would ban abortion, and some would levy high taxes. You would be able to move to a different state and experience a very meaningfully different way of life. Interesting, no?
His foreign policy is similarly unconventional. He wants America to never meddle in the internal affairs of other countries - ever. He would never start a war. He would pull out of every "entangling alliance" and withdraw from international organizations to ensure that the military would never fight for any reason except to defend Americans. This proposition is such a complete counterfactual that it's hard to analyze, but it is thought-provoking. For contrast, consider that none of the major candidates can promise not to attack Iran, because each and every one of them - really, seriously - might do it.
On economics, Paul advocates free trade internationally and free markets domestically. (Interestingly, he opposes certain international trade agreements like NAFTA and the World Trade Organization because he considers them "managed" trade and believes that they are designed to favor special interests.) While he would probably not use the federal government as a check on corporate power, he would let states do it if they so chose. His most radical economic view, however, pertains to monetary policy: he wants to return to commodity-backed currency and dismantle the Federal Reserve. This position is frighteningly extreme. But his reasoning is simple and he defends himself astutely: he doesn't think that the government should be able to print its money wantonly because this devalues everyone's dollars. Also, since paper dollars are traded like a commodity on international markets, the U.S. economy is subject to currency fluctuations outside of our control, which creates a further need for the Federal Reserve to fix problems by pulling economic levers which are financed by more money-printing. This is very much an academic question. Dismantling the Fed may well send us back to the old days when recessions were deeper and more intractable. But he also might be right. With a cheap dollar, we're paying for imprudent monetary policy right now.
What if Ron Paul were actually elected? The world wouldn't turn upside down immediately. America would still throw its weight around economically, but its foreign policy would be paper-thin. The dollar would revalue. State laws would grow in importance, and federal laws would diminish. Lots of things might go wrong, too. Rogue dictators might not know what to do with themselves if they didn't have us breathing down their neck. The economy might crash. Our image would be totally refashioned. I wouldn't vote for him, but I'd certainly think about it.
Matt Prewitt '08 thinks that if Ron Paul didn't have a whiny voice people would take him more seriously.
