For a while now, “hopefuls” for the 2008 presidential election, have been, well, “hopeless”. They have been nothing more to me than peripheral annoyance. Like that buzzing fly that keeps flapping in your ears, and after every shoo and slap of the hand, comes right back tauntingly to the same ear. I can’t get myself to trust any of them. Everything they say is so carefully worded to avoid alienating any voter group, and in essence, they end up saying nothing. And when they do say something meaningful — as in something that’s not nothing — they end up recanting the comment or pretend they never said it: a gracious example (ge.), Hillary on driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. But John Edwards cleans this one up quickly before it seeps into the fabric, “Unless I missed something, Senator Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes.” Talk about pitch pots-o-tea and black kettles!
Just look at all these candidates. Is this really the best we can come up with? It’s like a game of Scrabble, in which after pulling out 7 tiles out of the pouch, our rack has nothing but vowels. If we had the option, I imagine the American people would be willing to lose a turn and try their luck again at another 7 tiles. But with Dubya on the other end mockingly placing down proper nouns on the board like “Iraq”, and “Al-Qaeda” for which we’ve left woefully unchallenged (who also overrode the Scrabble laws to permit a blank to transform into a hyphen), it hastens us to desperately seek out a replacement.
And I have felt this way, invidiously apathetic towards our current candidate pool, till about late this week. No, I didn’t completely hang my coat in despair, it was actually something surprisingly serendipitous. By accident, I stumbled upon a clip of one of the candidates. It was clip of one of the Republican debates where a candidate known as Ron Paul was among the contenders. I have never seen any one quite like him. Normally, for people like Giuliani, Obama, I’d use the phrase “a politician disguised as a nice person”. But, in this rare instance, Paul seems to be a “genuinely nice person disguised as a politician”. I have never in my life, heard anyone — politician or otherwise — talk so honestly before. Ron Paul caught my attention on that clip, and from there I looked up more clips and my appreciation and enthusiasm for him has grown steadily ever since. I’m so enthusiastic in fact, that I’m writing a blog entry about him! And tell, when is the last time I actually wrote a meaningful blog entry? I can’t think of one!
Ron Paul seems honest, clear, precise, and unrelenting to his position despite growing unpopularity with other shnobby members of his party. He’s a medical doctor, an obstetrician, a former army surgeon, and a strict constitutionalist. And although he has been pulling low numbers in scientific polls, he has a tremendous lead on online polls — more than any of the other candidates. His name has been goggled more times than any of the other candidates; he’s raised more money online than any one else; and I believe he has more friends on myspace than “Tom”.
Here are some clips that will give you an idea of Ron Paul’s platform. I recommend you watch at least the first one, or the last one (which is biased and campaign-ish but is still spot on with Dr Paul’s philosophy.)
1. Republican Debate, Ron vs Guliani
4. Great Overview of Dr. Paul’s beliefs
Most of the media would lead you to believe he is not doing as well as the internet data would suggest. My theory on this is that the media is downplaying Ron Paul’s appeal to maintain an illusion that they, the media, are the only qualified bearers of the stethoscope that measures the American pulse. This may have been true at a time, when people had no other choice but to listen to what losers like Bill O’reily, Sean Hannaty, or USA today have to say. But since the internet, I think the media’s true usefulness is starting to erode. The accuracy of the information they have been peddling for years, and the clear one-sided biasness of it is starting to become more transparent. There are some exceptions: Jon Stewart’s Daily Show for one, as well as Jay Leno, and Steven Colbert. It’s interesting that the comedy news sources seem to be the most truthful. But all the rest, I’m really starting to take less seriously – if at all.
Hopefully, the media and the rest will start thinking clearly and take Ron Paul more seriously. Otherwise, we’ll lose again, and we’ll be challenged on simple terms like “liberty”, “freedom”, “rights”, “peace”, and we’ll be forced to take them off the board — they won’t exist anymore in the American Dictionary, and now you lose a turn.