US Republican Congressman and presidential aspirant Ron Paul (Pic: www.roanpaul2012.com)
Of the four remaining Republican aspirants for US presidency, the two most compelling are former Speaker Newt Gingrich and Congressman Ron Paul. They both dislike the idea of federal government so much that they want to preside over it. It is a paradox I have now given up trying to understand.
Both Gingrich and Paul, particularly Paul, believe the less there is of government, the better off everybody is. And yet they both court that very government with such passion. My rational mind would tell me to stay away from something I profess to so strongly dislike and disapprove of. The idea that the more you dislike something, the more you want it is beyond my comprehension.
I have always been fascinated/captivated by delusion. Think of delusion as a highly unstable but extremely potent fuel that can propel you into a high orbit. It has to be handled with utmost care otherwise it can explode in your face. Used sparingly and astutely, delusion can be rather beneficial. That is precisely where the rub lies. Those who are delusional generally do not know that they are delusional. For them that is their real world, a world that they can ordain and alter at will.
I am saying all this to make a point about Gingrich. Listening to his speech in Orlando, Florida yesterday, where he lost the Republican primary to his arch rival Mitt Romney, I kept marveling at how utterly unselfconscious this man is. Even in his resounding defeat, he is vehemently talking about a slew of executive orders he will sign on day one of his presidency, just two hours after his inauguration. Even before he goes to the “various balls that night” because there is “no point in hanging out and having fun.” Those include abolishment of all “White House czars”, immediate deployment of the Keystone oil pipeline, opening of a US embassy in Jerusalem and recognition of Israel, stoppage of all US money in foreign aid than can be used in abortion and repeal of all anti-religious acts of the Obama administration.
Someone who has thought through such specifics of how his presidency will perform within the first two hours of having been inaugurated, even before having been nominated by his own party, not to mention winning the election, has to have successfully harbored delusions of grandeur for a very long time. And I mean it as a compliment. Speaker Gingrich appears to have reached a stage where he can no longer contain his ambition to be the next president of the United States. Left to him he would like to shift to the 1600, Pennsylvania Avenue this morning and ask the current occupant, one Barack Obama, to get packing. He seems baffled that the rest of America does not see so clearly what he does—namely that he belongs there in the White House now, in the next 46 seconds or so.
As for Congressman Paul, he seems a little less consumed by the ambition to be president than Gingrich, but make no mistake he wants it as badly, if only to prove how irrelevant the federal government is. He wants all wars stopped, America to shed its global cop uniform and the Federal Reserves dismantled and mothballed. His overriding philosophy is that the government’s primary job is to foster, guarantee and protect individual liberties and that is all. Everything else can be taken care of by individuals with the help of their neighbors and communities. It is grandiosity of a different kind, the one which says I do not want anything but I don’t mind if I get it all anyway.
