a critique of Ron Paul

I'm a big Ron Paul fan. As candidates for political office, we're quite similar but still noticeably different.

He's more of a macro-oriented Libertarian-- for example, making our fiat money system a point of emphasis. And he's more interested in issues of civil liberties. I care about both topics, but not as much-- and those are not among the issues I have chosen to emphasize.

In contrast, he doesn't talk as much as I do about micro policy issues. And often, when a Micro topic comes up, he turns it to his key talking points in Macro as soon as it's convenient. As such, he misses some fine opportunities to score easy political points and to make an even more valuable contribution to the policy debate.

For example, at the New Hampshire debate in which he was allowed to participate, there was a question about health care. The question mentioned Governor Romney's plan-- or Romney answered first and described his plan. When Ron Paul fielded the question, he turned it quickly into ripping the war, war spending, inflation and debt. First, that's not the strongest of points. Second, it misses some important points one can make about the question at hand.

To be specific, I would have said that Governor Romney's plan may have been excellent, but what does that have to do with a federal role over such things? In fact, whatever success his state may have had simply points us to trying more of the same at the state level. Too often-- from health care to highways-- we deal with local and state problems through federal approaches. We send local/state money to DC; they take a cut of it; attach some strings; and then send it back to us. Instead of debating S-CHIP at the federal level, it should be addressed purely by state and local policies.