'Ron Paul Is Starting To Make Sense: The Esquire Profile'

Writes John Richardson on his blog: "Ron Paul is the most important politician in America today because he's the rare politician — maybe the only politician — who always says exactly what he really believes. Unlike Paul Ryan, Hayley Barbour, Mitt Romney, Mitch Daniels, and Mike Huckabee, who all raised taxes while calling for lower taxes...." Here is the profile, Ron Paul: The Founding Father, and here is a (non-political) taste of it:

Paul usually stays away from personal topics — and he wouldn't think of framing a political attack in personal terms — preferring to focus instead on ideas. But the intensity of the moment leads to a rare glimpse of his earliest memories and deepest motivations. "We were five boys and we were all born in the Depression, so there wasn't really a lot of stuff around," he begins. "You didn't get allowances — you wanted money, you had to go work."

He was five when he got his first job, checking the bottles on the conveyor belt at his father's small dairy and earning a penny for each dirty one he caught. For the rest of his life, he remembered taking four or five of those pennies to the local store and getting a small bag of candy. He also remembered his grandmother saying they should hold on to the family land "in case the money goes bad."

After that, Paul worked all the time. He was a star on the high school track team, president of the student council, a wrestler, a swimmer, and an honor student, but he also managed to mow lawns, deliver newspapers, clerk in a drugstore, paint his high school, and work for his father's small dairy business. "I remember when I was sixteen, I thought I was pretty grown up because my dad allowed me to drive a truck," he says with a smile. "The milk truck was a very important thing to me."