Perry’s Dog Whistle

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

A “dog whistle” to the supporters of Congressman Ron Paul is how Governor Perry’s remark about Ben Bernanke was characterized by the political sage John Fund. The Texas governor on Tuesday had suggested that the chairman of the Federal Reserve would be treated “pretty ugly” in Texas and called printing money “at this particular time in American history” almost” “treasonous.” There has been a lot of negative comment on the tone of Mr. Perry’s remarks, but we — like the Wall Street Journal and Jeff Bell in USAToday — were delighted to see him make a start, if only that, on the monetary question.

It happens that the day before Mr. Perry’s demarche The New York Sun had issued an editorial in which we’d remarked that the Texan was “unclear” on monetary matters, while the three top finishers in the Iowa straw poll had signaled they were on to the potential of the monetary issue. Congressman Ron Paul, in particular, had tied for first place by mounting a career long campaign in respect of sound money. Our editorial suggested that it was going to be illuminating to see how the candidates for president picked up on the 40th anniversary of President Nixon’s closing of the gold window and the collapse of Bretton Woods.

So while we are delighted that Mr. Perry has so flamboyantly picked up the monetary issue, our sense is that he will have to work the question some more until he has some impact. For the question is not so much Fed policy — whether Mr. Bernanke is or is not making the correct tactical decisions in respect of the dollar and of his mandate under Humphrey Hawkins, which tasks him with also keeping up employment. We wouldn’t belittle the debate on Fed policy as irrelevant. We note simply that the big question is monetary reform, how the dollar is defined in American law and how the definition comports with the constitution.

And how the disconnected state of the dollar connects to our current travail. Here the only candidate with a sustained critique is Congressman Paul, with Governor Pawlenty, who has now dropped out, also putting in a credible showing. There is clearly a view among the commentators that Dr. Paul’s candidacy is a sideshow; no less a liberal than John Stewart has a hilarious riff on the invisibility of the congressman’s first place tie in the Iowa caucus. But the fact of the matter is that the candidate who, at this stage of the game, is tied for first place in the Republican race is, in Ron Paul, the congressman has made the issue of sound money a sustained campaign for more than 30 years.

There are those who say that the reason Dr. Paul is being ignored by the commentators is that he can not be elected president. The theory goes that his foreign policy views are so isolationist as to take him off the board. We ourselves differ with Dr. Paul on foreign policy. Our own view though is that the problems with his foreign policy views make it all the more astonishing that he was able to tie for first place in Iowa. Imagine the horsepower he could generate were he able to sustain a strong foreign policy with his highly principled views on sound money. That is the point to focus on for Governor Perry and the other Republicans who want to marry the issue of sound money to a winning presidential campaign.

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This editorial has been updated to include links to the Wall Street Journal editorial and the op-ed by Mr. Bell in USAToday.


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