The Ron Paul Flap

The current controversy on the left about Ron Paul suggests a need to recall that old political maxim: “No permanent friends; no permanent enemies.”  Overall philosophical agreement is great, but the fact is that when it comes down to specifics, yesterday’s ally may just be tomorrow’s foe – whether we’re comfortable with that or not.  In the case at hand, for all of the issues on which Ron Paul is anything but our friend, when it comes to Afghanistan, or American foreign policy in general, he certainly is.  And if you have any doubt about that, you need only look at his antiwar ad, Chinese Army in Texas.

Does Paul’s antiwar stand matter?  Well, probably anyone concerned about America’s role in the world ought to at least watch his ad – it’s that good, particularly at a time when hardly anyone else is being heard on the topic.  And we just might want to ask ourselves how it has come to pass that a Republican presidential candidate is putting something like that out there and we’re not.  At the very least we shouldn’t pretend that the Ron Paul antiwar phenomenon isn’t happening simply because we don’t like the man’s stand on other things.

Really, this whole thing shouldn’t be that confusing to us in the first place.  Since we don’t have the tightly disciplined parties found in some other countries, this short of crossover phenomenon is a somewhat regular feature of American politics.  During the Vietnam War, for instance, liberal California Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey famously challenged his party’s sitting president, Richard Nixon, on the war issue in the 1972 primaries.  Of course, what’s set current antiwar activists in a tizzy about Paul is that he ain’t no liberal.

Still, the intensity of the debate over whether he is ultimately, on balance, a good guy or a bad guy seems somewhat misplaced, given how little it has to do with any likely set of events.   For one thing, few, if any, of those engaged in the argument are going to ever find themselves standing in a voting booth holding a primary ballot that includes Ron Paul’s name.  And so far as November goes, let’s face it – the Republican Party isn’t going to nominate him.

Better, perhaps, to direct this passion to analyzing how we might conceivably steal his thunder on the war issue.  For again, like it or not, the man has demonstrated an ability to attract political support among independents and young voters.  He drew 48 percent of the entire under-thirty vote in the Iowa Republican caucuses and 47 percent in the New Hampshire primary; and led with 44 percent of independents in New Hampshire and 32 percent in Iowa.  He also held a 34 percent plurality of first time participants in Iowa and was the top vote getter among those making less than $50,000, with 31 percent in both states.  He actually polled better among self described “moderates” than among those calling themselves “very conservative” – in Iowa by a factor of two to one.

We don’t want to make too much out of numbers from Republican voters, certainly, yet it’s hard to ignore those demographics.   And there seems little doubt that Paul’s anti-imperialist stance constitutes a very significant aspect of his appeal.  Unquestionably, Paul’s Republicanism has given him greater leeway on foreign policy than a Democrat or an independent from the Left might have.  It’s the Nixon-goes-to-China, Clinton-ends-welfare-as-we-know-it syndrome.  Even the Republicans who hate him don’t call him an “un-American” or a “terrorist sympathizer” – not yet, anyhow.

It’s also not the case that he’s saying things that we haven’t said.  What’s important though, is that he’s delivering that message to people and places that haven’t heard it before. What is ultimately so impressive about Paul’s Chinese in Texas ad is the empathy at its core.  Americans would resist foreign invaders, it argues, just as others do when it’s the Americans who are the foreign invaders.  Why, one might even conclude that the lives of people in strange countries are just as valuable as those of Americans!

(A Guardian article denouncing “Ron Paul’s useful idiots on the left” provides a useful contrast, as author Megan Carpentier berates said “idiots” for thinking that “people whose lives, safety, livelihoods and health depend on them [policies and programs opposed by Paul] should accept that they are trading their concerns for, say, the lives of Muslim children killed by bombs in Afghanistan” – the idea that the latter could approach the former in importance being so obviously ridiculous as to require no further comment.)

Who could have imagined that the best mass market educational material on American foreign policy would seen mostly by Republicans?  Perhaps if some of the vehemence currently displayed in rendering an overall judgement on Paul were redirected toward figuring out what we could do to change that situation, we just might have an antiwar movement worthy of the name.