Joel Achenbach - The 2016 Contenders--Rand Paul

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First Diversion Books edition July 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62681-997-9

by Joel Achenbach

Here we go again with presidential politics in the Live Free or Die state, with a man named Dr. Paul making his pitch in this historic town hall across from a vintage gazebo.

Theres hardly a place in America more receptive to Dr. Pauls libertarian message, which drew big crowds in the 2008 and 2012 campaigns. But this time its a different Dr. Paulnot 79-year-old libertarian hero Ron but his crafty, ambitious son Rand.

Do we have any lovers of liberty in here? the 52-year-old freshman senator from Kentucky asked Wednesday as he took the stage, and the Stand with Rand supporters standing all around him cheered affirmatively.

When the founders of New Hampshire came up with the motto Live Free or Die, they didnt leave a lot of wiggle room, Paul said. I came to New Hampshire to announce that I will fight for your right to be left alone.

The Pauls are the other political dynasty in presidential politics, and if theyre not quite the Bushes or Clintons, theyre still a recognizable brand, one crackling with intensity and quirky appeal.

Rand Pauls ability to sell himself as the most libertarian of the presidential candidatesdefending civil liberties at home and opposing military adventurism and nation-building abroadis what can set him apart from his rivals. But those unconventional ideas could also box him in. Libertarians dont win national elections, unless you count Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and 1804.

Still, Rand Pauls greatest asset is the ideological jet fuel that helped his father get more than 2 million votes in the last set of Republican primaries. The son wants to convert that stuff to something less volatile and explosive. In his hands, its ideological kerosene.

Rand Paul is a more nimble, less predictable, more pragmatic politician than his father, who said nay so often in Congress that he was known as Dr. No. The younger Paul is an ophthalmologist who has won just one primary and general election and is still growing into his identity as a politician. But its clear he has been shifting closer to mainstream Republican positions, particularly on national defense, going so far as to call for a bigger Pentagon budget.

Hes even hedged on the libertarian label. In a recent tweet he wrote: Im a constitutional conservative. Libertarianish. Have a foot in both camps.

This is an aspiring commander in chief walking a very fine line.

In Rand Pauls universe, there is always further reading. This has been the case since he was a kid. His father delivered babies by day and read books by night, devouring libertarian classics such as Ayn Rands novel Atlas Shruggedhe had a valuable first edition on his shelfand Friedrich Hayeks treatise on totalitarianism, The Road to Serfdom.

Randal Paul, known as Randy, was the middle of five children and the kid most interested in his fathers ideas. He read every book his father had, says Mary Jane Smith, a former campaign manager for Ron Paul.

The son, who declined to be interviewed for this article, knew exactly what his father perceived as significant in those books: Ron doesnt like to lend any of his books, because he underlines them, says Rands mother, Carol Paul.

Ron Paul ran for Congress the first time in 1974, and young Rand, 11, knocked on doors to try to help his dad get elected. Hed listen to his fathers side of radio interviews over the phone. When people came to the house to talk politics, I was always very comfortable with the adult conversation, he later recounted. He traveled with his family to the rowdy 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City and got a delicious taste of national politics.

From the age of eleven, I followed my father everywhere. I listened to every speech and interview, thousands of them. Are individualists born or nurtured? I think I was both, Rand Paul wrote in the dedication of his book Government Bullies: How Everyday Americans Are Being Harassed, Abused, and Imprisoned by the Feds.

By his own account, he cut his intellectual teeth on Ayn Rand, then moved on to Dostoevsky, and then the free-market fundamentalism of the Austrian school of economics represented by Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbardhis fathers favorites, too.

These authors became lifelong intellectual guides. At the end of his book The Tea Party Goes to Washington, he lists five must-read classics in the cause of liberty: Rands Atlas, Hayeks Road, von Misess Human Action, Rothbards Conceived in Liberty and Barry Goldwaters The Conscience of a Conservative.

The Paul political brand is not personality-based. Its all about the ideas. And the key idea is that liberty cannot easily coexist with big government.

Rand Paul grew up in Lake Jackson, Tex., in a part of the world where the libertarian philosophy is second nature for a lot of people. This is Texas, my dear, Mary Jane Smith says. Get out of my life, get out of my house, get out of my pocketbook.

Lake Jackson is a company town. The company was Dow, which arrived at the dawn of World War II to build chemical plants along the Brazos River as it slithers into the gulf.

Architect Alden Dow, the son of the founder of the company, scratched out a town amid a hardwood forest at a remove from the heavy industry of the chemical plant. The core of Lake Jackson has small-town charm, with curving streets, tidy housing subdivisions and a precious little downtown retail district, where you might find yourself at the intersection of This Way and That Way.

The Pauls moved to Lake Jackson in 1968, raising their five kids in a comfortable home on Blossom Street in a neighborhood shaded by live oaks draped in Spanish moss. The kids could ride their bikes to school.

In high school, Rand was a varsity swimmer and played two years of football. But he wasnt very big, and his mother remembers coaches saying, Were waiting for him to grow.

Marc Monical, Rands close friend since elementary school, says: We werent the tallest guys in the group, so you had to be scrappy. Rand was very competitive.

All the Paul kids became libertarians, according to Rands older brother, Ronnie Paul: Nobody strayed in our family. Nobody believes the governments going to help you.

Rand took that belief with him to Baylor University, where he joined a group called Young Conservatives of Texas.

I joined YCT because it was an ideological group, he writes in The Tea Party Goes to Washington. They believed in limited, constitutional government regardless of party affiliation. My conservatism was, and is, more philosophical in nature than partisan, and I am a Republican precisely because I believe my party is supposed to stand for particular principles rooted in liberty.

He traced his fathers path, going to medical school at Duke. When he was a surgical resident in Atlanta, his friends called him Doogie Howser because he still looked like a teenager.