President Ron Paul


Ron Paul is one candidate I listen to who doesn't seem to be just talking in sound bites approved by handlers. I don't think he has to practice, and that he says clearly and simply what he believes. I don't agree with everything he believes but I can put up with serious policy difference with another person. What I can't put up with is a weasel in an expensive suit.

I didn't have cab fare to Iowa but I knew I was supposed to go there because I had a dream about the upstairs shower stall. It was making cracks, but all I remember was, "caulk us." Obviously an instruction to get to Iowa for the caucus. I met Dr. Paul just below the materialization level of the probability spectrum, where he was temporarily dematerialized. In such a state conversation is almost impossible. All I could make out was "we sell in the suite." That was enough. I knew we were going to meet at his hotel and order from room service.

The first time I homed in on the location I was off by a hair, and found myself at the Dodge City graveyard. I was a little cross but it was nothing monumental. With a few adjustments to my attitude the inner GPS delivered coordinates and I popped into the room like a parachute opening. "How'd you do that?" He was already sitting in one of the four stuffed chairs, sipping what I assumed was whiskey with branch water.

"How'd I do what?"

"Get to Boot Hill when you've got no boots."

"I'm traveling in my fuzzy slippers."

He nodded but he seemed just a little bit wary of me around the shoes. I had to remind myself that this is an actual conservative. I met Barry Goldwater once, and I guess he was an actual conservative, but in my experience they're scarce as hen's teeth. Everybody who is in the Republican party isn't a conservative. A lot of them just don't have any other place to go where the core group is so sparse backbiting nut jobs have to be tolerated. As they say, it's the only bar where they haven't been kicked out ... yet.

"I'm sorry to stare at you," I said, "but I feel that kind of awe a bird watcher must get when he spots something assumed to be extinct. You're a real, old school, conservative who hasn't been purchased."

"That's right, Dan. Nobody's met my price." He smiled a non-commital smile. I assumed he was putting me on."

"Is that dry wit?"

"Half of it, maybe. No, I haven't been purchased."

"I say that as an observation, because I watch CSPAN, and have noticed that the people who are supporting their investors instead of conserving our heritage can't hide that corruption which comes through the musculature ..."

"I know. The television screen has become the Picture of Dorian Gray," he agreed. "You can see the soul contort behind the public mask."

"Wow. I wish I'd said that."

"You did, Dan; you did."

I relaxed and mixed myself a Jack on the rocks while he called Room Service and ordered us some nachos; I relaxed because this guy is missing something. He's missing the staged quality that would make another candidate nervous to be with a stranger in strange blog. Hmm. Anyhow, we'd been making small talk about the other candidates while I mixed the drink. "Joe Biden's okay," I said. "At least he seems like he's not afraid of anything, so far as I can tell. And Obama is ... "

"Clean?"

"Polished, I would say. I like him a lot. I'm slightly afraid that his image inflated so fast it threatens to take him away with it, into the air. I hope he stays grounded in his naturalness."

"Holding on to those ruby slippers?"

"Well, he's not a girly man, to use one of Arnold's quips, but holding on to his dick, maybe."

"You voted for Bill Clinton."

"Bill's so cool he can drink sweet milk and spit ice cream. Anyhow, I thought everybody understood that liberals are addicted to sex, and conservatives are addicted to power. Present company excluded of course. Hillary doesn't have any more actual experience than Obama, and I suspect she sleeps with a dental guard to keep from grinding her teeth. I try to love her but Bill wants to watch." He winced and finished off the drink.

He's too classy a guy to come down to my level, so he moved the conversation along.

"They're all good people, Dan, but they're network television, and everybody knows the action has moved to the internet."

"How about cable."

"The Sopranos is over, Dan. Now it's mostly just Hollywood trash. Did you ever read Sid Fields' book on screenwriting?"

"I did, and I know what you're saying. It's all formulaic, with a setup, a plot point that turns the action around page thirty and another one at page ninety, followed by the wind down, a product produced to fit the distribution network to a young demographic, like Bosco or Levi's 501's."

"Exactly. I like foreign movies."

"Made in Texas, you mean?"

That tickled him and he swirled the ice around in his glass and nodded. "Pour me two fingers of Jack if you're going to assume I drink."

"That's a good one, Dr. Ron. Look, seriously, aren't you afraid they'll just shoot you if you try to curb the imperial ambitions of the dark lord?"

"I'm from Texas, Dan, and I understand the dangers I'm facing. We've had one old man shot in the face down there. People from outside the state think that was just an accident. It was a warning, Dan, to old men across Texas, that dissent will be quailed."

"Quelled?"

"No, quailed. You don't know Texas gangland lingo, do you, Dan?" I shook my head in the negative. "Being quailed is having one side of your face shot off."

"What if that's not enough?"

"Then you get wood peckered." This time I winced.

"Like the New York cops did to Abner ... what was his last name?"

"I think it was Louima, wasn't it? These are not nice people we're dealing with in that particular part of the coalition. A lot of them larry the stall, as they say."

"What's that mean?"

"They pretend to be conservatives but they encroach on other people's private space with their wide stance and willingness to suck up to authority figures."

"You're a real regular guy. You know, I expected you'd be kind of straight laced, even though you're obviously well read and have a grasp of history. You're the only candidate I have heard talking straight about the fact that our military squatting all over the damned world, like Rome's, is draining us like a crack whore draining her dealer in the john. You don't larry the stall."

"Thank you Dan. My position is that we don't need to have troops all over the world, and September 11 happened not because they hate our freedom, but because they hate our military presence in their countries. What would we do if the Chinese occupied this country? Realize we're insurgents and commit suicide? Maybe, but not without the vestments of rebellion, I'll wager."

"I never knew you were such a poetic guy."

"It could be projection. But you wanted to ask me about abortion."

"Yea. How can you support a libertarian position on everything else, but take that issue and be in favor of making abortion illegal?"

"Men always decide moral issues, Dan, because that's the realm in which we live. We structure principles and apply them to the people. To me, the issue of abortion involves the principle of protecting life, and I'm a doctor."

"There's a story about Baba Yaga, the witch, where a girl has to go to her house. There's a pair of disembodied hands doing the dishes. Baba Yaga says to the girl, 'Is there something you want to ask me about?' And the girl says, 'No.' She's smart enough to know better than to admit to everything she sees. If she wasn't that smart she couldn't survive the encounter with the witch. We're mammals, doc, and every mammalian female has a drive to nourish and a drive to refuse to nourish. Men don't have those drives and they don't understand them. And stem cell research ... how can you oppose that?"

"Nobody's gonna be a perfect fit for you, Dan, except maybe Kucinich. If you can tolerate our points of disagreement, I'll trim this military industrial complex down to size. It's sucking the treasury like a weasel on a witch's tit."

"You don't like weasels either?"

"Not even in uniforms."

"I've got to get back to Arizona to frame the prints."

"Frame the prince?"

"That's right, frame the prints."

What are the chances I'd pick up his cellphone signal inside the maze of possibilities intending to square into probabilities? One in a trillion? Must have been an improbability drive, because I heard him talking to the White House security desk. "There's a plot to frame the Prince."

"One moment. I'll connect you to David. Addington. He's in charge of paranoid fantasies."

Posted: Tue - November 6, 2007 at 04:17 PM