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Ryan Lizza -- a Fix friend and not only because we always get mistaken for one another -- has a massive profile of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul in this week's New Yorker. It's a long and good read detailing Paul's ambitions to be president and the things -- namely his father, Ron -- that might keep him from that goal. I plucked out five people talking about Rand in the piece that I found particularly telling -- and explained why.

1. Ron was always content to tell the truth as best he understood it, and he saw that as the point of his politics. Rand is the guy who is committed to winning. -- Paul family strategist Jesse Benton

This gets to the core of the difference between Rand and Ron Paul. It's not -- as Lizza correctly notes in his piece -- fundamentally about their policy views on which there is considerable overlap. "They dont really have differences," Carol Paul, wife of Ron and mother of Rand, told Ryan. "They might have fractional differences about how to do things, but the press always want to make it into some kind of story that isnt there. The real difference between the two men is stylistic and focus-oriented. Many Republican strategists admit that if Ron Paul had simply refused to go down the rabbit hole of his foreign policy views (over and over again) during nationally televised debates, he might well have won a primary or caucus in 2012. Rand Paul, by contrast, understands the need to pivot off of topics where his views are not entirely aligned with the people he is trying to woo.

2. Hes not naturally gregarious. Hes not a natural politician. -- Longtime Louisville Courier Journal reporter and columnist Al Cross

Cross is right. Paul doesn't fit the charismatic pol stereotype like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio do. If he's like anyone in the potential field, it's Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a wonky guy with a sort of off-beat appeal. To Paul's credit, he understands that he is not the back-slapping, hail-fellow-well-met candidate in the race and uses his occasionally awkward personality as a public-facing sign of just how different he is from the longtime politicians he hopes to beat. (A more concerning character trait that Lizza picks up on is that Paul is "prickly.")

3. Kelley [Paul] is going to say whats on her mind. She eggs him on when he gets attacked. -- A former Paul aide

Rand Paul's wife, Kelley, is someone the national media -- and the average voter in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina -- knows very little about. That, of course, will change as part of the process of running for president in this media age is that your significant other also must step into the spotlight. The comment about Kelley from the former Paul aide is part of a broader section in the Lizza piece about Rand's political antennae not always being perfectly tuned. But, it's worth noting that Kelley Paul, according to the Lizza piece, advised her husband against appearing on Rachel Maddow's showin May 2010-- good advice given what a mess he made of that interview.

4. [Mitch McConnell] realized that he was not his fathers son in all respects, and that he was interested in winning and achieving things rather than just making philosophical points. McConnell quickly realized that this is somebody with whom political business can be done. -- John David Dyke, Kentucky GOP commentator

The relationship between Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell -- brokered following the former's thrashing of the latter's hand-picked candidate in a 2010 Republican Senate primary -- may be the single most telling thing about the rise -- and change -- of Kentucky's junior senator. Dyke's praise of Paul as "somebody with whom political business can be done" is something that would have never been said of Ron Paul or even Rand Paul as recently as 2010 when he ran, at least in part, to teach the establishment a lesson for their long opposition to his father. But Rand doesn't want to be a hopeless cause. He wants to be a winning candidate. The relationship with McConnell speaks to that fact.

5. Ive seen him grow and Ive seen him mature and Ive seen him become more centrist. I know that if he were President or a nominee I could influence him, particularly some of his views and positions on national security. He trusts me particularly on the military side of things, so I could easily work with him. It wouldnt be a problem. -- Arizona Sen. John McCain

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The 5 most important quotes from the New Yorkers Rand Paul profile

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In this interesting recent post at Concurring Opinions, liberal land use scholar Kenneth Stahl asks why there arent more libertarians in his field:

Many professors who study land use and local government law, myself included, consider ourselves leftists rather than libertarians. That is, we have some confidence in the ability of government to solve social problems. Nevertheless, were you to pick up a randomly selected piece of left-leaning land use or local government scholarship (including my own) you would likely witness a searing indictment of the way local governments operate. You would read that the land use decisionmaking process is usually a conflict between deep-pocketed developers who use campaign contributions to elect pro-growth politicians and affluent homeowners who use their ample resources to resist change that might negatively affect their property values.

The organization of local governments, on the surface a merely technical matter, has fallen victim to a similar pattern of what public choice scholars call rent-seeking.

It hardly paints a pretty picture of local government. Yet, most leftists prescription is more government.

So why would left-leaning scholars, who have seen so clearly the failures of local government, place so much faith in a largely untested restructuring of governmental institutions, rather than looking to less government as the solution? Libertarians often point out that Houston, the lone American metropolis without single-use zoning, has far lower housing prices than comparable cities elsewhere, and has become a magnet for young families and immigrants. What is holding leftists back from embracing Houstons (sort of) free-market solution?

Its a good question! In attempting to answer it, I would start by pointing out that there are in fact a good many libertarian land use scholars. I am one of them myself. For years, I have argued that cities should adopt the Houston approach to zoning (or go even further in a free market direction), strengthen protection for property rights, and severely limit the use of eminent domain. I even wrote an entire article devoted to explaining why state and local governments are likely to be particularly dysfunctional when it comes to regulating property rights in land and other immobile assets.

Obviously, the vast majority of land use scholars are far more left-wing than I am, and far less willing to impose tight constraints on government power. But thats largely because academia in general is dominated by the political left, as is legal academia in particular. Relative to the general distribution of opinion among legal scholars, land use and property law specialists are probably more libertarian than the average. Admittedly, I dont have systematic survey data to prove it. But that is my strong impression based on over a decade of experience in the field. Certainly, the percentage of libertarian scholars in the land use/property law fields is much higher than in my other field, constitutional law. Some of the most famous libertarian legal scholars of the last several decades have been property law specialists, most notably Richard Epstein and the late Bernard Siegan.

Even left-wing property and land use scholars are often more skeptical of government than liberal legal scholars in other fields. For example, many of them advocate tighter constraints on zoning authority that leads to exclusionary zoning that fences out the poor. As compared to several decades ago, few scholars still support the Progressive/New Deal era vision of systematic comprehensive land use planning. The backlash against the Supreme Courts decision in Kelo v. City of New London has even led many on the left to look favorably on reinvigorating public use constraints on takings, though this trend is much stronger outside of academia than within it.

That said, I agree with Stahls suggestion that most left of center land use scholars are much more supportive of government intervention than its track record can justify. Most still reject the imposition of tight constraints on zoning and the aggressive use of eminent domain, despite extensive evidence that zoning and blight and economic development takings inflict great harm on the poor and racial minorities.

There are a variety of reasons for that trend. But one important one is that what Stahl calls confidence in the ability of government to solve social problems is almost a defining feature of modern left-liberalism. To give up on that idea is almost to reject more left-wing ideology generally. Like adherents of other ideologies (including libertarians), left-wing land use scholars are very reluctant to give up on their core commitments. As a result, even when they see an extensive pattern of government failure, they instinctively prefer to look for ways to address the issue without giving up on government intervention more generally. We often make marginal adjustments in our views on specific policy issues. But it is psychologically difficult to reject long-held basic precepts of your world-view.

See the article here:
Volokh Conspiracy: Why arent there more libertarian land use scholars?