David McElroy

Director Frank Capra was a great filmmaker, but he used his talent to promote a utopian vision that never existed and never can exist. Capra was a progressive who clearly believed in the perfectibility of man — if only more people would faithfully follow the civic religion that worships the goodness of the “common man.”

In “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Capra’s Jefferson Smith (memorably played by Jimmy Stewart) is a small-town nobody who’s suddenly propelled into Washington politics when he’s appointed to the U.S. Senate. Smith is a wide-eyed innocent who’s surrounded by crooks and thieves. He just wants to use the power of government to do good — for the boys of an organization he works with, mostly — but everyone else is in it for money and power.

It’s a good movie, even if it’s really corny and wildly two dimensional. If you watch it, you have the idea that everything could be great in this country if we would just trust the simpletons such as Smith, who live in the uncorrupted small towns of the country, far from the influence of the evils of Washington.

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In most parts of the country, schools have either just started back for the year or they’re just about to. Most children are sad about this, but many parents are excited to have some peace and quiet for a change.

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What does Rand Paul believe? Does he really know anymore? Or have his efforts at pragmatic compromise left him just as confused as the rest of us about who he really is?

For a long time, many people have believed that Rand Paul can’t be too much different from his uncompromising father. Ron Paul has preached a purist message for decades, as a Republican congressman, a Libertarian Party presidential candidate and then as a Republican presidential candidate. No matter how politically unpopular it was, Ron Paul could be counted on to be consistent — every single time.

How much different could his son be? He called himself a libertarian and he’s said many of the right things about reducing the size of government and about the virtues of making governance as close to local as possible. But ever since he entered GOP politics, he’s been ever more willing to say and do things to court the Republican mainstream and the party powers. Libertarians are now looking at him and wondering whether the man they saw as the heir to his father’s movement is one of them or if he’s really one of the people they’ve spent decades fighting.

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