by Clarence Page

I was a little disappointed to hear that Rand Paul was not named after Ayn Rand. It would have made sense for his famously libertarian dad, Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, to name young Rand after the famous ultralibertarian author. It would also be ironic, now that victory in Kentucky's Republican Senate primary has transformed young Rand's Randian libertarianism from a guiding light into a stumbling block.

It turns out that the Bowling Green, Ky., eye doctor's real name is Randal Howard Paul. In a video that he posted on the web, he explains that his wife dubbed him "Rand" for short and it stuck -- although he has thoroughly enjoyed the myths and speculation about his name that he finds on the Web.

Besides, he acknowledges, he has been a fan for many years of the perennially best-selling author of "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged." That gives young Paul and me something in common. I, too, was a fan of Ayn Rand. Then I grew up.

Like J. D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye," Ayn Rand offers much that connects with the adolescent mind, especially that of teen-aged boys. She opposed national government funding or management or regulation of just about everything except a standing army and, maybe, certain police functions. That meant she opposed the draft, taxes and prohibitions against alcohol, prostitution, recreational drugs and anything else that didn't hurt anybody but the knuckleheads who participated in it.

For teen guys, what's not to like about that? Rand's books were a big hit in my high school, especially among us debate team, student newspaper and chess club dweebs. As my own college-aged son has since demonstrated with his futile arguments for "freedom" against mom-and-dad's "fascist oppression," reading Ayn Rand can be as much fun as defying your parents without worrying about getting grounded.

But running for public office, as Rand-fan Rand Paul is learning, is a time to put aside childish things to reconcile one's ideology with other people's reality.

Paul failed to pull that off when, a day after clobbering the GOP-endorsed candidate, Paul let himself muse on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show" about the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the rights of businesspeople to discriminate. Paul repeatedly declared his support for the intent of the law, but he could not bring himself to support a key provision in the law.

That was the provision that banned discrimination by restaurants, hotels, theaters, lunch counters and other public accommodations. Opening up this long-settled area of law might have scored points in a law school class. But in a political campaign, saying you favor the law's intent without favoring the law is like saying you'll do anything to lose weight except diet or exercise.

By the next morning, Paul was claiming he was sandbagged by Maddow's civil but persistent questions. His congressman dad dutifully fumed that "loony liberals" should lay off his son. The family that brays together stays together, but this was no gaffe or "gotcha." It was a significant revelation of how this candidate thinks.

Or not. As Paul backpedaled in subsequent interviews, it became quite clear that he apparently had not really thought very much about issues like race and civil rights versus property rights, beyond the easy one-size-fits-all categories of libertarian dogma.

Paul's amateurism showed itself again Friday morning. As pressure mounted on the Obama administration to take charge of the plug-and-clean-up at BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Paul on ABC's "Good Morning America" decried the administration's attitude as "I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP," which, he added, "sounds really un-American" in its "criticisms of businesses."

With many Americans clamoring for the White House to more aggressively to stop the thousands of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf, one might think this was not the best time for an aspiring candidate to rush to the defense of the oil company.

As a budding politician, Rand Paul obviously is a work in progress. Kentucky voters will decide whether they want to assist in his on-the-job training. For the anti-tax, anti-Big Government tea party movement that has embraced him as a champion, Paul's amateurism reveals a big challenge. It's easy to complain about incumbents. It's not so easy to come up with workable alternative ideas that won't make voters gag.

 

Available at Amazon.com:

The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics

Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks

The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House

 

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Rand Paul: Radical Rookie | Politics

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