The quirky candidate
DURHAM, N.H.
RON PAUL has just reached the peak of geek chic.
Having delivered a passionate paean to libertarianism at Oyster River High School, Paul has been presented with a pair of sporty two-tone sunglasses.
"Put them on!" the students yell. The 72-year-old Republican presidential candidate obligingly dons the youthful shades - then stands there beaming as the assembly hall erupts in delight.
Moments later, the kids flock around him, seeking autographs. Later that afternoon, Paul earns another enthusiastic reception from a capacity crowd at the University of New Hampshire.
So what explains Paul's appeal?
For starters, the rumpled septuagenarian is light-years distant from your typical pol, and young people are drawn to someone who is different, notes Tess Milliken, a senior at Oyster River High.
And authentic. Or, as Nick Mennelle, a junior, puts it: "He's straight up."
Plus, "He doesn't use big, complicated words," says Louis Maude, a junior.
Like Stacy's Mom (of Fountains of Wayne fame), Paul has got it going on, and not just with the young.
A new Boston Globe poll shows him at 7 percent in New Hampshire, putting him fourth in the Republican field. On Nov. 5, Paul's fans shattered the single-day Republican fund-raising record by pulling in more than $4 million over the Internet, a sum that seems as stunning to the candidate as it has proved to others.
Some of his attraction also lies in the areas where Paul's libertarianism overlaps liberalism. While the other Republicans all back the Bush administration's approach in Iraq, Paul argues for a speedy withdrawal. His opposition to both the Patriot Act and President Bush's electronic eavesdropping program also exists in that political penumbra.
And at a time when the Iraq war has made an interventionist foreign policy deeply suspect, he is pushing a hands-off approach - trade and talk, but no dictating or meddling - as a return to what the founders favored.
The Texas congressman is also sounding generational themes. The way things are going with deficit spending and the future funding gap for Social Security, there won't be anything left for their generation, warns Paul. He earns a tumultuous UNH hand by vowing, "I would absolutely never use the federal government to enforce a law against anybody using marijuana." The federal government has no legal authority for its war on drugs, he declares.
But in other areas, his emphasis on self-reliance - he wants to cut government spending enough to eliminate the income tax - may put him at odds with the idealistic, activist ethic often important to the young.
He speaks disapprovingly of any federal response to national disasters, saying that should be left to the states. He'd let young people opt out of Social Security, but stresses that they couldn't come looking for help from the government if they found themselves in need later.
On Darfur, his noninterventionism takes on hues of hard-hearted realism. He is unwilling to spend tax dollars "on the pretense that we are going to help people in Darfur," he says at UNH, adding that he doubts humanitarian aid would even find its way to intended recipients.
Asked what he'd do if a bloodbath occurs when we leave Iraq, Paul notes that there was "a surge upward in violence" when we left Vietnam, "yet they sorted it out." He continues: "I can't further tax you in order to rebuild these countries. . . They have to sort out that mess that we created."
Queried on global warming, Paul makes it clear that he is agnostic on the issue. Afterward, Erin Thesing, a UNH sophomore, presses him on the matter, telling him she lies awake at night worrying about climate change.
"If you want to lay awake at night worrying about something, worry about the value of the dollar," replies Paul.
"I don't understand how someone can not care about the future of the world," she tells me later.
Further, in a stand that's counterintuitive for a libertarian, Paul opposes abortion rights, though he says abortion legislation should be left to the states.
Paul now appears to be entering a classic arc in presidential politics: that of the quirky candidate who suddenly catches fire, but often fades when his unorthodox ideology comes into sharper focus.
Still, right now he is clearly on the ascending leg of that arc. And that means the likable Lone Star State libertarian is poised to become a wild card in New Hampshire.
Scot Lehigh's-email address is lehigh@globe.com. 