'Why don’t we just follow the Constitution?' Ron Paul asks. Ron Paul is on time and on message

NEWTON, Iowa — Ron Paul does not overpower a room when he enters it. He barely occupies it.

He aspires to medium height and is thin, though not frail. He has, at least temporarily, given up the gap-at-the-neck suits that made him look shrunken at debate after debate.


He shows up at a speech here, 30 miles east of Des Moines, precisely on time, which is virtually unheard of in the world of politics. David Fischer, co-chair of the Paul campaign in Iowa, seems as shocked as the audience when Paul, his two daughters and a small entourage slip into the room at the stroke of noon, almost unnoticed.

“How about that! Twelve o’clock straight up!” Fischer crows from the podium. “That’s how Ron Paul rolls!”

One doesn’t often think of Ron Paul “rolling” anywhere, but it is apt for this location. We are at the Iowa Speedway, an enormous double-decker racecar track that soars above the farm fields that surround it. If an ordinary politician would make some joke about racing or some mention of farming or even some small shout-out to Newton, then Paul is no ordinary politician.

His speeches are rarely place-specific. They could be made anywhere. In fact, in his 20-minute talk he will mention only once at the very end that “there is an election here Jan. 3.” He will fail to ask anybody to vote for him in the caucuses.

Though he is introduced as the “founder of the tea party” and his literature claims that he is the “father of the tea party” (carefully citing Fox News as the source), there is one word that the Paul campaign is avoiding.

Not in his introduction, nor his speech nor in any of his literature handed out this day, will the word “libertarian” be used, though Paul is the best-known libertarian in the nation and was the presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party in 1988 (garnering only 0.5 percent of the popular vote).

Instead, Paul sticks to a single point from which everything, he believes, logically flows.

“Why don’t we just follow the Constitution?” Paul asks. “I believe people have the right to keep life, liberty and the fruits of their labor. The Constitution is meant to severely limit the size and scope of government.”

While conservatives often champion small government, Paul believes in a government so small that few would recognize it. “Theoretically, about 80 percent of what the government does is unconstitutional,” he says. “Medicare and education are not in the Constitution.”

The crowd of about 250 this day is made up largely of older people, and Paul hastens to assure them he would not end Medicare. Not right away, anyway, though he would eventually like to “work out” of the Medicare program.

Paul judges programs not by whether they do good, but by whether government should be involved in them. Asked about the Peace Corps, Paul says that while it “has done a lot less harm than dropping missiles on countries,” he believes the Peace Corps’ work should be done “by private charities.”

“The Peace Corps is not authorized by the Constitution,” Paul says.

Which is Paul’s gold standard.

Though don’t get him going on the gold standard. Because that will lead him to the silver standard and his pointing out that, once upon a time, the U.S. dollar was supposed to equal “371 grains of silver.”

“If we have an honest dollar, honesty will win in the end,” Paul says.

Conservative audiences like this — whatever it means — but when Paul slides over into foreign affairs, as he always does, he inevitably loses some people.

Paul says his foreign policy would be “to follow the Golden Rule.”

“Don’t do anything to a foreign country we don’t want done to us,” he says.

To some, especially his Republican opponents, this is incredibly naïve.

Newt Gingrich says Paul’s views are “totally outside the mainstream of virtually every decent American.”

Michele Bachmann says Paul is “very dangerous.”

And Rick Santorum has been telling Iowa audiences that Paul “is going to be 78 years old. How many 78-year-olds change their opinion?”

While Paul may well reach 78, he is currently only 76, which still makes him the oldest candidate in the race. Newt Gingrich is next oldest at 68. Mitt Romney is 64. Barack Obama is 50. And if Paul were to win the presidency, he would be 77 and the oldest president in U.S. history ever to take his first oath of office. Ronald Reagan was 69 when he took office and 77 when he left.

Paul continues speaking, saying he does not want the U.S. government “assassinating U.S. citizens without trial,” a reference to the U.S. drone strike that killed American-born Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in September. Al-Awlaki was a high-ranking operative in al Qaeda and not a good guy, Paul admits, but if the U.S. government can “assassinate” al-Awlaki, it can assassinate any citizen, basing its attacks on what “groups, websites or meetings” one belongs to or attends.

“If violence comes to our streets, which is quite likely, this will be important,” Paul warns. The governments wants “to take over the Internet” and “be able to restrict everybody and monitor everybody.”

Paul’s TV ads are very dramatic, very edgy and Paul often looks like an extra, not a major player, in them. While his supporters are often referred to as passionate, Paul seems more assured than passionate on the stump.

“We have to question what the role of government will be,” Paul says in an argument that goes back at least to 1800 when Thomas Jefferson defeated the incumbent John Adams. “Will we protect liberties or police the world?”

“Freedom. Property rights. The rule of law.” That is what he wants, Paul says.

What he does not want is any questions from the scores of reporters who line the edges of the room. And as soon as he shakes a few hands, he slips out of the room as quietly as he arrived.