I added the parenthetical because I was briefly, briefly alarmed when I saw the headline, “Rand Paul for President,” atop one of the three opinion pages in The Wall Street Journal this morning.
But then I was reassured, and entertained, when I read the column by Bret Stephens. An excerpt:
Republicans, let’s get it over with. Fast forward to the finish line. Avoid the long and winding primary road. It can only weaken the nominee. And we know who he—yes, he—has to be.
Not Jeb Bush, who plainly is unsuited to be president. He is insufficiently hostile to Mexicans. He holds heretical views on the Common Core, which, as we well know, is the defining issue of our time. And he’s a Bush. Another installment of a political dynasty just isn’t going to fly with the American people, who want some fresh blood in their politics….
No, what we need as the Republican nominee in 2016 is a man of more glaring disqualifications. Someone so nakedly unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of sane Americans that only the GOP could think of nominating him.
This man is Rand Paul, the junior senator from a state with eight electoral votes. The man who, as of this writing, has three years worth of experience in elected office. Barack Obama had more political experience when he ran for president. That’s worked out well….
Stephens goes on to have some fun with the fact that Paul is going around telling conservatives how they need to reach out to minority voters, while his friend, former aide (until last July) and co-author Jack “The Southern Avenger” Hunter once published a column on his blog headlined “John Wilkes Booth Was Right.” An excerpt from that:
“The Southern Avenger”
This Wednesday, April 14th, is the 139th anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Although Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth’s heart was in the right place, the Southern Avenger does regret that Lincoln’s murder automatically turned him into a martyr. American heroes like Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee have been unfairly attacked in recent years, but Abraham Lincoln is still regarded as a saint. Well, he wasn’t it – far from it. In fact, not only was Abraham Lincoln the worst President, but one of the worst figures in American history….
But I digress. Mr. Stephens concludes his column in the WSJ thusly:
This man wants to be the Republican nominee for president.
And so he should be. Because maybe what the GOP needs is another humbling landslide defeat. When moderation on a subject like immigration is ideologically disqualifying, but bark-at-the-moon lunacy about Halliburton is not, then the party has worse problems than merely its choice of nominee.
Related Posts
Obama kicked a lot of his controversial “friends” and religious advisers to the curb, as I recall.
I’m sure Rand Paul is deeply hurt by the words of well known authority and hugely successful Brett Stephens. I mean Paul has only achieved a medical degree and won a seat in the U.S. Senate.
And Stephens only holds a prestigious op-ed position in the nation’s best-read newspaper (circulation 2.38 million; second-place New York Times at 1.87 million).
Let’s run some numbers…
The voter turnout in Kentucky in 2010 was 1,411,695. Of course, not everyone would have voted in the Senate election, but let’s assume they all did. Paul won 55.7 percent of the vote. So, at most, he received 786,314 votes.
So… Rand Paul got 786,314 votes from the people of Kentucky. Once. Meanwhile, 2.38 million people across the country and around the world pay good money to read Bret Stephens’ paper every day except Sundays.
Guess which is more impressive to me.
Brad, I think you are making several errors in your comparison. First of all, many readers of the WSJ don’t read the op-ed page. I know, the horror of that, you think. Of course, many people that don’t subscribe to the WSJ read parts of the paper, including the op-ed for free online, so the paid readership isn’t a good statistic for the writer’s import.
Meanwhile, Paul has a fairly strong national appeal, and would be a strong contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Despite Kentucky’s lack of population, he would likely garner far more votes than the WSJ has daily readers, so his relatively small voter base is just as poor a statistic as the WSJ’s readership numbers.
Rand Paul will get at least a couple million votes to be the leader of the free world… maybe many more than that if things go his way.
Brett Stephens writes words.
Which makes me wonder – has there ever been an opinion writer who has made a successful transition to become an elected politician? I know it’s a whole lot easier to go the other direction. Even Sarah Palin can write an op ed.
Doug… Editors will let anyone who is in the public eye write an occasional op-ed. Even Sarah Palin. I don’t know of any editors who would hire her to do that day in, day out.
At the moment, the only daily newspaper journalist I can think of who went on to win public office is Al Gore. There are probably others. But it would be EXTREMELY unusual for someone who has a job on an editorial board to consider public office. To begin with, it would almost certainly violate the newspaper’s ethics policy.
I think Vincent Sheheen’s father Fred used to work at The Charlotte Observer, and may have been an opinion writer (someone correct me if I’m wrong here; I may be confusing Fred with someone else). He went on to have a career in public service, but it was in appointive, rather than elective, positions.
According to this account, Fred was Columbia bureau chief for the Observer. I don’t see any reference to his having been an editorial writer, but I still think he may have been…
Steve Forbes ran for President – and I supported him. He wasn’t successful at all, though… and spent a LOT of his own money. I still find his editorials in Forbes to be very well done.
Winning elections means saying things you don’t believe… and not saying things that might turn off voters. Not a competency newspaper opinion writers tend to have.
Yeah, I was going to say something like that. Journalists, and especially opinion writers, have a habit of frankness that can be death in politics. It’s not that politicians are all dishonest — you know how I resist that cliche — but they do have to be more careful and discreet in what they say.
It’s particularly tough if you’re an opinion writer, ESPECIALLY if you write columns or a blog, so that your opinions have been signed. You’ve committed yourself on thousands of topics, every one of which can potentially lose you thousands of votes.
And if you’re nonpartisan like me (most opinion writers embrace either the right or the left), you’ve said plenty to infuriate both ends of the spectrum.
The two-party system is set up to elect people who are doctrinaire one way or the other. Show any sign of thoughtfulness, any tendency to be iconoclastic, and you’ve sunk yourself politically.
Every time I think about running for office — and since I DON’T have a newspaper job, I think about it frequently — I immediately see a minefield laid out in front of me.
I’d spend the whole campaign carefully explaining the positions I have taken, and begging people to go back and read what I said rather than accepting the bumper-sticker distortion of it or going just by the headline. And a candidate who spends all his time doing that is a losing candidate.
Of course, I would INVITE people to examine my written record. I’d want them to do it. I’d portray the fact that I had laid out my thoughts on far more issues than any other candidate they’d ever seen as a STRENGTH. I could see running no other way.
But I’d be up against a partisan — or more than one — who cut his teeth making his opponents’ records look worse than they are. And I’d be giving them more material than they’d ever seen in their lives…
“Journalists, and especially opinion writers, have a habit of frankness that can be death in politics. It’s not that politicians are all dishonest…but they do have to be more careful and discreet in what they say.” Indeed they do, lest their refreshing frankness lead them to be accused of “barking at the moon” by the likes of Stephens. On the other hand, here is a much more balanced assessment of Rand Paul’s comments re the pre-and-post-Halliburton versions of Cheney on Iraq.
What terrifies Stephens is not so much the possibility that a Rand Paul nomination would lead to GOP defeat, but rather that Rand Paul’s early strength in the polls reflects a possible sea change in the party’s attitude towards American military interventionism.
So… you’re saying you think a President Rand Paul would be a GOOD thing? I don’t think you are, but I just want to be sure…
I don’t think a President Rand Paul would be a good thing, for the same reasons that although I’m a pretty fierce civil libertarian, I feel the inherent contradictions and conflicts between modern mega-capitalism and democracy make economic libertarianism something that just cannot work anymore in my opinion, the democratic institutions of the state having to act as a bulwark against the excesses of pure capitalism.
But this IS what I think could be a good thing. You’ve often written of the once-bipartisan-agreement on certain aspects of foreign policy. I’d like to see a return to that bipartisanship, but with a different view, where a much more stringent standard is applied before American military involvement is even considered. If the Paulist view on foreign policy grows in the GOP, I think that would be a great thing. It would be nice to have a straight-up choice between two candidates for President where the honest disagreement over economic philosophies is the dominant issue, or at least where you don’t feel forced to vote for one over the other because one candidate can’t wait to prove America’s “resolve” to the world. And that always means one thing.
Actually, “resolve” means a lot of things. And they are the opposite of the Paulist view, which is very closely related to not giving a damn about other countries, about wanting to be inward and selfish, a “we’ve got ours and to hell with the rest of the world” approach to life.
I see no room for a consensus in which that plays a part.
Some of the most dangerous ideas are the ones that the far left and far right agree on.
I’m thinking of a leftist professor my wife had in college who supported George Wallace for president, because Wallace would keep us out of “foreign entanglements,” and Congress would never let him accomplish anything domestically. Very, very dangerous thinking…
Why is it when someone puts forth the opinion that the needs and best interests of the United States of America should be put first and foremost over the rest of the world, that is considered “selfish” and “dangerous”? Especially when doing the opposite hasn’t made us appear better in the eyes of much of the world?
I think you grossly misrepresent Paul’s foreign policy beliefs. He is not an isolationist except when it comes to how our military forces should be deployed. He is also strongly opposed to paying for wars through deficit spending. That’s not being selfish, that’s being prudent.
Here are Paul’s actual policies…
http://www.paul.senate.gov/?p=issue&id=14
“One of the most significant issues we deal with in the United States Senate is foreign policy. And in my opinion, one of the most important votes a Senator could take is on the declaration of war to send our men and women of the Armed Forces into battle. If the military action is justified and there is no other recourse, I will cast my vote with a heavy heart.
I believe that the primary Constitutional function of the federal government is national defense, bar none. I believe that when we must go to war, we must have a Congressional declaration of war as the Constitution mandates, and we fight to win. And we must fight only under U.S. command and not the UN.”
I hesitate to say this (I’d hate to be proven wrong, because it would mean we were facing an actual existential threat, which aside from the threat of nuclear annihilation in the Cold War, hasn’t previously happened in my lifetime), but I doubt we’ll ever see a declaration of war in my lifetime, or Rand Paul’s, either.
Which is why I think he feels safe in saying that.
At the risk of speaking famous last words, it appears to me that the era of all-out war between nation-states capable of going toe-to-toe with the United States may be behind us. Now, the nations that are advanced enough to be threats AS nations all have nuclear weapons, and so it is that proxy wars have become the way that they engage in conflict with each other.
“Wars” for the foreseeable future (I say with some hesitation, as NATO warily watches the situation in Ukraine) will be low-intensity affairs.
This country would never, ever have declared war on Iraq, any more than it would go to war (today) with Mexico. And if the time comes when we have to fight a nation big enough to give a good accounting of itself — Russia or China being the leading candidates — then God help us all.
But military action still has a role to play in dealing with those who would engage in asymmetrical warfare — terrorists, Somali pirates, warlords, local bullies like Saddam and Qaddafi. And when I say “Saddam,” I’m talking more about the 1991 war than the 2003 one.
Paul, as I gather, disagrees on that point.
Let me add also that I don’t think Paul DOES put “the needs and best interests of the United States of America should be put first and foremost over the rest of the world.”
I think there are many situations in which the forward projection of force is definitely in the best interest of the U.S., and Paul would disagree with that.
Changing the subject…
Phillip, I wrote about “Jesus Christ Superstar” the other day. I realize it’s not your kind of music, but considering what it is, what do you think of it musically?
And yes, that was a much more balanced piece than Stephens, as I would expect from the Atlantic. Stephens is an in-your-face kind of writer.
Of course, his conclusion is one that you prefer to Stephens, just as Stephens’ “bark at the moon” assessment of Paul plays to what I like to hear. Just as long as we’re dissecting people’s motives (which the Atlantic piece does)…
I would, by the way, assess Cheney’s positions in 1994 and in 2002 differently. I would not ascribe any of his changed position to “the vast sums of money that his former colleagues stood to earn if an invasion and occupation were to occur.” But that’s me. Doug Ross would believe that immediately. Since such a thing would never enter my thinking, and since I consider that to be so scurrilous, I am extremely reluctant to accuse anyone of such a thing. And contrary to the author’s thesis, I am no more likely to accuse foreigners of such a thing than I am Americans. Unless it’s just really naked and obvious, which seems the case with Putin and his cronies. But even with Putin, I think he believes the policies he pursues serve the Rodina.
I think the reasons people make policy decisions are complicated. In 1994, Cheney was expressing conventional wisdom. He was also defending the position of the administration of which he was a part — a motivation that I can understand and believe far more readily than the avarice one. Also, the Gulf War had been so wildly successful in achieving its aims that it was natural that an architect of that war would tend to think that all its major elements were wise and justified. (Note that in my mind, the decision in 1991 NOT to follow Saddam to Baghdad is the one that needs explaining, not Cheney’s later position.)
As I have expressed time and again, 9/11 was a wake-up call that I believe should have, and in the case of the neocons did, cause a huge rethinking of smug certitudes of past policies. The 1991 was was prosecuted under the assumption that what we wanted to do in the Mideast was preserve the status quo. What 9/11 did was tell us that the status quo in the Mideast — which kept the oil flowing — was extraordinarily dangerous for the U.S., that our tacit toleration (and sometimes even support) for unjust regimes helped generate people like those who flew those planes into the WTC and the Pentagon. It was natural to think, for instance, “We were wrong about leaving Saddam in power.” (Now, before someone says Saudi Arabia was more of a problem in that regard than Iraq, I say we had more justification to go into Iraq than we did for invading an ally, to say the very least. Invading Saudi Arabia WOULD have been the sort of offense against international norms that many think our invasion of Iraq was. With Iraq, we were going after a regime that had been defying the terms of the 1991 ceasefire repeatedly over the past 12 years. Also, we had a UN resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. And, regime change in Iraq had been the policy of the United States since 1998, set out in a law signed by President Clinton.)
As for his connections to Halliburton, here’s the way I see human nature working in such an instance… a guy who Halliburton would hire is a guy more likely to want to go to war in Iraq. I don’t see it the other way around — that a guy goes to work for Halliburton and suddenly becomes a warmonger. Do you see what I’m saying?
A lot of discussion about Rand Paul and being the GOP candidate for POTUS. Paul, Christie, Perry, and just about everyone on the list of potential candidates do not have the appeal that can cross the lines and bring in enough independents and dissatisfied Democrats to win in 2016. Scott Walker is the best hope for the GOP in 2016. He has withstood the test of a recall and his popularity in a dark blue state is close to the 60% mark.
Factions of the Republican party are looking for absolute purity, whatever that means in politics, and in politics, purity is the kiss of death. Until the Republican establishment, the Tea Party, and Libertarians who tend toward being Republican can come together and support a candidate who has broad appeal whether they agree with him/her or not on all issues, Republicans will be banished to a desolated island when it comes to the White House.
I love my wife and am devoted to her but she has her faults and I have mine. Both of us have accepted the fact that we are not perfect and differ on several issues but we still support each other. Most Democrats accept their candidates, flaws included but Republicans are seeking a Utopian candidate and that person does not exist.
And, in the upcoming elections, the early polls are meaningless. Once the ACA has been rescued by the media and as polls are starting to indicate, it will be a dead issue come September. Democrats will retain control of the senate even if by a margin of 1.