One more thing on Ron Paul.

After this I’m done. Dude ain’t gonna be president and I’m sick of pretending he’s relevant.

The only decent responses to Paul’s racist past in favor of the candidate that I’ve seen are ones that acknowledge it, consider the candidate greatly flawed because of it, yet insist that he would be nonetheless instrumental in implementing other desirable policies. Look here, here, and here for examples of that. My problem with these, however, is that they imagine Paul as a vehicle for political action rather than voter protest — and nothing about Paul suggests he could ever effectively act on the things these supporters appreciate about him.

To explain why requires imagining a President Paul, and the trouble with doing this is that the way Paul would operate in office is exactly why he can’t get elected. You’ll see what I mean as I continue.

The first thing a President Paul would have to do is staff his administration, which means getting his appointments confirmed by Congress. But who will Ron Paul appoint? He could put in place a whole bunch of Lew Rockwells and John Birch Societiers, but they would both have a lot of difficulty getting confirmed by any Congress that America would vote for in 2012, and they would be entirely lacking in the experience required to run a complex department. (There’s a reason why Obama looked to former Clintonites to staff his White House, for instance.) So Paul would spend a lot of time trying to get his administration staffed, or he would have to put traditional Republicans in place. Even if he chooses Republicans more sympathetic to his views, this is going to result in an administration that looks a lot like prior Republican administrations. A President can’t run everything single-handedly and has to be able to rely on his appointees to uphold his vision. Washington is too lacking in Paulites for Paul to run a government that is much different to a traditional Republican one.

Then, Paul would have to try to implement his agenda. The trouble is Republicans don’t like his agenda. Paul can say how much he likes black folks because he wants to end the War on Drugs, but no matter how much he wants to end it, he can’t do so unless Congress repeals a whole bunch of laws. Congress isn’t going to do that now, and there’s no Ron Paul caucus in the Republican Party pushing the issue so the groundwork will be laid when a sympathetic president arrives in office. Ron Paul’s Justice Department will go out and prosecute coke dealers and heroin users because that’s what the law says they have to do.

The same goes for military spending. Congress controls the purse strings, and it will send Paul’s Pentagon lots of money to spend, with stipulations on how to spend it. It can, like it did to Barack Obama, effectively prevent him from closing down Gitmo. Paul would be able to limit American military engagements overseas, but — and his supporters always forget this — his specific brand of isolationism would be just as hostile to global institutions that seek to foster diplomatic resolutions. A Ron Paul America wouldn’t just stop fighting wars with the world; it would stop engaging with the rest of the world entirely — on diplomatic matters, on trade matters, on all matters.

We know that President Ron Paul could not get anywhere with Congress because Congressman Ron Paul cannot get anywhere with Congress. In his entire career, he has sponsored one single piece of legislation that became law: the sale of an old customhouse in Galveston to an historic society. Ron Paul is not interested in the coalition building and compromise it takes to become a successful representative:

For most members of Congress, passing a bill starts with one-on-one lobbying: They look within their party, or their state’s delegation, to build up a large number of co-sponsors. Then a member ­lobbies the relevant committee chairman to take up the bill, using those co-sponsorships as proof of support.

Other Republicans said Paul takes a more low-key approach. He will seek out a small circle of lawmakers who have supported him on previous issues, and he will let potential allies come to him.

“He has a particular spot on the floor: about four rows up on the middle aisle,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). If you want to be lobbied, Chaffetz said, you walk by, and “he’ll say, ‘Hey, Jason, I want you to look at this.’ ”

That approach has paid limited dividends, even in the current Congress, which is controlled by Paul’s fellow Republicans. Among his 47 new bills, Paul has attracted a very large number of co-sponsors for only one, which demands a full audit of the Fed. It remains bottled up in committee.

For Ron Paul to be a successful president, he would have had to have been spending his last decade creating a Ron Paul Congress. He would have had to have been actively lobbying fellow members to adopt his ideas, and been encouraging other libertarians to join the Republican Party and get elected to Congress. But Paul prefers ideologically rigid stands and lonely principles. He’s an extremist, and because of that, he can’t accomplish anything.

What this suggests to me is that a President Ron Paul would be very weak. He would hold little sway over Congress and the result of his presidency would be the elevation of areas of his agenda that align with the Republican mainstream. Congress won’t send him a bill legalizing ecstasy, but it might accede to a Paul request to dismantle social security, unemployment insurance, the minimum wage, and Medicare, and to stop the FDA and the EPA regulating safe food, drug, and environmental standards. And because Paul’s an extremist, a Republican Congress would feel comfortable going as far as they can on these reforms.

The other important thing about Paul is that he’s a nut. This is where we must return to his newsletters. Even the parts he will claim authorship of are told in the same paranoid, conspiratorial tone as his racist rants. Ron Paul is bad at thinking. His economics is just crazy, particularly his jones for the gold standard. Note: Economics is not politics. It’s related to politics, but it’s not politics. So whereas I disagree with some of the conclusions and recommendations of someone like Milton Friedman, I can still acknowledge he made a significant and valuable contribution to economic knowledge. Paul’s economic beliefs are the social science version of intelligent design. They are disconnected from reality and  have little credibility in mainstream circles.

Presidents have to work with Congress on a lot of things, and I think a President Paul would be weak. But he would still hold enough administrative authority to have a lot of economic influence. So paranoid is his tone, so disconnected from reality is his intellect, that he could really ruin the economy. Not, “Republican policies will harm growth” ruin. Not “Bush’s lack of oversight caused a financial meltdown” ruin. An actual breakdown in the functioning of the American economy.

I know we don’t like the NDAA, but if the choice is between someone who’ll say “I’m going to make Congress override my veto of this terrible act!” and then fucks up the global economy, and someone who says “fine, I’ll sign it” and doesn’t blow up civilization, I’ll reluctantly side with the latter.