A year ago the Internets were littered by Ron Paul news stories, it was painful to read Digg with all the gaming his advocates were doing to get Paul’s word out to the population. But as I knew he wasn’t going to get the Republican chrism to run for President, I avoided reading more about him.

Since last night’s charge of the presidential election, I gave him a chance though. I never read the biographies of politicians, as I am not interested in their past, marriage, religion, or their lives in general. I am interested only in their political positions and the day forward. And so I sat down and read Ron Paul’s.

Reading about his foreign policy, it became very clear to me that the guy is a xenophobe. Sure, as a non-US citizen it’s nice to hear that he wanted to withdraw troops from around the world, bring them home and stop messing around with third world countries, but when reading that he also wanted to withdraw USA from the UN/NATO/etc, and instead secure the borders adamantly and create harsh laws for immigrants, it became very clear to me that the reason for his non-imperialistic position was not pacifism, but xenophobia. He seems to be the kind of guy who longs for the idealistic, growing America of the late ’40s, early ’50s. Problem is, this is 2008.

Some of his internal policies were ok (smaller government, no surveillance), some were very Republican-ish and unfair (e.g. gay, capital punishment, abortion issues). But it’s that xenophobia vibe I get that would make me to never have rooted for him. In fact, McCain and all his shortcomings, seems 10 times better to me that Ron Paul as a candidate.

Ultimately, apart from my favorite Mike Gravel (read the link for his liberal positions) who opted out early in the race, the best guy won, and that’s Obama.