This Fall I read Jeff Taylor’s Where Did the Party Go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy, in which he argues that the Democrats have traded a “Jeffersonian” ideology (decentralist, populist, libertarian, and non-interventionist bordering on pacifist) for a “Hamiltonian” one (basically the opposite). Bryan and Humphrey are for Taylor emblematic figures of this transition, with the Great Commoner playing the role of the last Jeffersonian populist and Humphrey representing the rise of centralized technocratic liberalism.

Here (via A Conservative Blog for Peace) Taylor makes the case for Ron Paul. Paul, with his opposition to the warfare state, represents the kind of Jeffersonian values that put him at odds with establishment candidates. Taylor concedes that progressives will disagree with Paul on a variety of issues, but he does his level best to demonstrate a compatibility of spirit, if not policy preferences.

There is something to this, I think. A certain strain of left-populism emphasizes the way that the playing field has been tilted by the influence exercised by powerful special interests on the government. These special privileges are made possible by government intervention, so you can see how this outlook could in principle be made compatible with a certain kind of libertarianism. And Ron Paul’s views on the Fed, NAFTA, the WTO, etc. can be given a left-populist spin if you emphasize the way these institutions act as tools of elite control and privilege. (Of course, the question that liberals and progressives would want to press is whether simply “leveling the playing field” is sufficient or merely necessary, and if more positive government action isn’t required to address social inequalities.)

Taylor recognizes that Paul remains far from perfect, even from the perspective of the decentralist left, but he argues that voting for a candidate who is strongly committed to peace and civil liberties is important in an election where the establishment candidates are already taking anti-war voters for granted:

To me, voting for Kucinich, Gravel, McKinney, or Paul makes some sense even though they’re unlikely to win. At least we’re asking for something honest and principled during the first round of voting. Ron Paul isn’t the perfect candidate and his Jeffersonianism is not as full-bodied as I would prefer (e.g., he’s too weak on the ecological dimension), but at least he’s a step in the right direction and his ability to attract a wide range of grassroots support is commendable. He’s not the only good choice, but he’s no lunatic and there is some logic behind his campaign. It’s not everything, but it is something. In a rigged system with a populace divided by secondary issues and exploited by a bipartisan elite, it may be the best we can do in 2008.