Rand Paul: The ‘Most Interesting Man’ Inspires The Most Cliched Headlines

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. gestures as he emphasizes a point during his public address at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, Friday April 25, 2014, in Cambridge, Mass. Fight... Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. gestures as he emphasizes a point during his public address at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, Friday April 25, 2014, in Cambridge, Mass. Fighting to move beyond his father's shadow, Paul is crafting new alliances with the Republican Party establishment during a Northeast tour that began Friday in Boston. The 51-year-old Kentucky Republican, son of libertarian hero and former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, headlined an afternoon luncheon hosted by top lieutenants of former presidential nominee Mitt Romney _ a private meeting that comes as Paul weighs a 2016 presidential bid of his own. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia) MORE LESS
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

The classics are classics for a reason, people like to say. Why go with new material when the tried and true holds up so well?

And so when it comes to fawning profiles of Rand Paul, it’s best to just shut up and play the hits.

“The Most Interesting Man in Politics,” reads the headline of Time’s latest cover story on the junior Kentucky senator and possible GOP presidential contender.

Does that description sound familiar? It should!

Let’s flash back to a month ago, when Politico Magazine applied an identical superlative to Paul: “The Most Interesting Man in Politics.”

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza used a slightly different phrase last summer, but the sentiment was all the same. “Rand Paul is the most interesting man in the (political) world,” he wrote.

Not surprisingly, the libertarian magazine Reason hailed him as the “Most Interesting Man in the Senate” months after he took office in 2011.

But these journalists have company. Even members of the Obama administration find Paul to be – you guessed it — “interesting.”

“The Republican I find most interesting is Rand Paul, and the reason I say that is he is the only Republican who seems to know about what their long-term structural problems are and trying to do something about it,” White House communications aide Dan Pfeiffer told BuzzFeed in September.

Latest Livewire
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: