It's an odd experience these days to see a presidential candidate not pander to any particular group, not promise anything or not even go much of out of his way to inspire except through his own example.

It's an odd experience these days to see a presidential candidate not pander to any particular group, not promise anything or not even go much of out of his way to inspire except through his own example.



Meet Republican presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul of Texas who exudes an American-rooted utopianism that appears delivered from another planet — or at least another century. It's all the more exotic when compared to the modern corporate political campaign run by armies of experts and advisers who slice and dice the electorate like so many chefs in search of the perfect winning recipe.



With his strict libertarian approach to the federal government (small to the point of disappearing), Paul talks "common-sense," freedom-fueled rhetoric that crosses enough ideological traffic lines that you suspect the D.C. establishment police will pick him for driving under bad political influence. What Paul offers is a pure vision of political religion. What he promises is a constitutional baptism.



A case in point: when I saw Paul recently at the University of New Hampshire, the people who came out to support this soft-spoken 72-year-old congressman represented a political gathering not unlike the intergalactic bar scene in Star Wars — passionate anti-war doves mingled with passionate anti-abortion activists who mingled with potheads yearning for drug legalization who sat next to budding anarchists and gun lovers and those who think the Federal Reserve is destroying the economy.



The festival mood was punctuated by the signs I saw for Paul around campus — one sign emphasized "Hope for America" and a flier emphasized "Revolution." It wasn't either/or. It was very much both, which seems to me a sane response after almost seven years of drunken hubris and systemized incompetence delivered by the Bush gang.



Paul's message of freedom and liberty resonated well with a predominantly young crowd that can't have enough freedom and liberty — and, of course, has the potential to resonate even more in our first-in-the-solar-system primary state, which has a deep libertarian strain (just read the license plate).



Paul, as you may have heard, has made headlines of late by slowly creeping up the polls and raising loads of dough (some $4.2 million in one day) from tens of thousands of devoted supporters from one coast to another.



Because he's stood up in the Republican presidential debates to the war macho boasting of Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani — he was the only Republican in the race to vote against the Iraq war authorization in 2002 and eloquently opposed the Patriot Act — he has carved out a niche for himself in a party not given to much ideological diversity.



Alex Machajewski, an 18-year-old freshman from Hampstead who looked as though he just attended a Grateful Dead concert circa 1985, told me he was casting his first vote for Paul. He was impressed with Paul's anti-war stance and his views on freedom.



"I think they are interrelated," he said.



Paul views the war as illegal, unconstitutional and a true danger to national security because it's bankrupting the nation. In his eyes, he's the true conservative who stands for (really) free markets and small government. He doesn't view himself as a revolutionary or radical at all, but what he proposes is an extreme makeover for the country.



According to some press reports I've read, Dr. Paul has delivered some 4,000 babies in his career. What he hasn't delivered to his constituents along the Gulf Coast of Texas — which he has served from 1977 to 1985 and again since 1997 — is political bacon. He is known as "Dr. No" in the House, which has annoyed his own party to no end and baffled Democrats who can't figure out how he gets away with it.



He told me and other reporters after his UNH appearance at the University of New Hampshire that voters in his district have figured him out. They know he stands by his principles (he hates to spend, tax, and recoils from anything he considers anti-constitutional). And he has practiced what he has preached. As a doctor, he says he didn't accept Medicaid or Medicare payments (he pro-rated or donated his services), and he has declined to take a congressional pension.



Paul, who ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1988, said to me: "I think I was born with" a passion for constitutional freedom and liberty. Modern American political life with its large federal government presence and its welfare state promises "bangs it out of us, our natural instincts," as freedom lovers.



"He's the only guy that makes sense," said Morgan Binns, a 20-year-old Vermonter who was traveling around to see and support Paul throughout the state.



Binns talked to me about the importance of "personal liberty" and America getting out of the empire business and getting rid of the Federal Reserve, which "has the power to enslave and debase the economy."



"That's too scary," said Cindy Pulkkinen, a UNH lecturer who lives in Effingham, about Paul's strict constitutional approach. A self-described liberal, Pulkinnen said Paul "offers a different voice." But she believes Paul is wildly off the mark on how to realistically deal with issues such as foreign policy, the environment and global warming.



Paul believes the country went off the total deep end on Aug. 15, 1971, the day that President Richard Nixon took the country off the gold standard and imposed wage and price controls to battle inflation.



Paul has been a gadfly in Congress sponsoring a wide range of legislation, including a human life amendment, scores of bills to gut anti-trust laws, environmental and worker safety protections and voter rights and civil rights. He's not convinced global warming exists, and even if it did, he trusts industry and people to do the right thing.



One could go on and on about Paul's war against what he considers an unconstitutional intrusion of federal power.



"Freedom brings people together," Paul told the students at UNH.



One could view him as an early 19th-century constitutional warrior walking in the wilderness of a much more complicated America that, for better or worse, already settled the argument.



Purity does have its limits. There are plenty of historical examples from civil rights to environmental degradation to rampant corporate abuse to labor suppression that show that freedom without restraint can be as equally destructive as freedom denied.



When I mentioned to one student that Paul's policies would cut off her Pell grants and student loan guarantees, she replied, "Really?"



Paul views New Hampshire as a key primary state, one receptive to the concept of "personal responsibility." He said his recent fund-raising success has given his campaign a boost of credibility — "it was worth $10 million in free publicity" — and allowed his small operation to expand to nine staff members working out of one office in Concord (Kate Rick, his state communications coordinator, works out of her farm home in Wentworth.)



It's too bad Paul didn't campaign here more, didn't take part in the house parties and town hall meetings and create a grassroots movement on the ground to equal its Internet power. Paul said he has no plans to run a third party candidacy if he doesn't win the Republican nomination.



Perhaps he was just saying that because he's in the middle of a primary election now, but his followers will no doubt be disappointed if he doesn't because Paul doesn't have a party that will embrace much less tolerate him.



Paul should have a seat at the debate — as much to decide who wins or loses, but who we are as a country. It's not either/or. One can disagree with his diagnosis or his solutions, but be glad he's asking questions that challenge the status quo and our constitutional complacency.



Political columnist Michael McCord is the opinion page editor of Seacoast Sunday and the Portsmouth Herald. You can read his Primary Pundit blog at www.thenewhampshireprimary.com. He can be reached at mmccord@seacoastonline.com.