The 2009 TIME 100 - vote Ron Paul!

Republican congressman and former presidential candidate, Ron Paul, is currently sitting in third place on the 2009 TIME 100 finalists list, behind 'moot' (aka Christopher Poole, the 20-year-old New Yorker who founded 4chan.org), and South Korean pop-star, Rain.

It was my transatlantic support for Ron Paul's presidential campaign that really inspired me to start this blog, back in November 2007. In fact, it was the 'Ron Paul Revolution' - and my efforts to support it - that formed the basis of my first blog post. Taking my first tentative steps into the hitherto uncharted world of Internet blogging, I wrote:

I’m a British citizen, born and bred, which means that I have no vote in the forthcoming 2008 U.S. Presidential election. So, the question is: why have I just spent £50 of my money on materials to make a Ron Paul sign? And furthermore, why was I running around at 2am in the morning with a video-phone gaffer-taped to my head, while securing said sign to some traffic lights at a motorway intersection?

The answer to these questions was: I believed in Ron Paul, and wanted to contribute to spreading his message in any way I could. He had inspired me. But I wasn't alone...

Not only had Paul become an Internet phenomenon (with his online 'money bombs' breaking 24hr fundraising records), but he had also spawned a formidable, highly visible, creative, organised and impassioned following. I remember some days when Ron Paul stories dominated Digg's front page, with each story clocking up between 4,000 and 6,000 Diggs. There were few places to hide from the mild-mannered Texas Congressman, which was testimony to the spirit and ingenuity of his supporters, and to the unbridled power of his message that captured their imagination and galvanised them in the first place.

Ron Paul eventually called time on his presidential ambitions in June 2008, after seeing off supposed big-hitters such as: Rudy '9/11' Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson. And much to the delight of those who had tirelessly campaigned on his behalf, Paul refused to endorse presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. In a message posted on his website at the time, he told his supporters: "It is time now to take the energy this campaign has awakened and channel it into long-term efforts to take back our country." (Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty was subsequently formed to meet those challenges.)

Ron Paul remains a highly influential figure. Amid the bleakness of the American political landscape and the illusion of the two-party system, he continues to stand as a shining beacon of incorruptible hope. As possibly the most honest man in Washington, he's never shyed away from asking the tough questions or addressing the elephant-in-the-room issues that others, too busy feathering their own political nests, dare not touch.

Furthermore, the press and mainstream media - who were once hell bent on marginalising, overlooking, misrepresenting and smearing Ron Paul's presidential campaign - are now keen to pick his almost unrivaled economic brain to get his take on the current global financial crisis. His uncomfortable economic truths are now also starting to get a foothold in some elevated political circles. “Before last summer, in meetings nobody really knew I was there. Now they often defer to me on economic matters. But you won’t catch any of them admitting that publicly – not yet at least,” Paul told the Financial Times recently.

Former president George W. Bush is also on the 2009 TIME 100 list. However, the only pro point the news magazine could muster in order to justify his place was that "despite predictions, the last months of his Administration were admirably apocalypse-free". A village idiot, who somehow managed not to kill us all, doesn't deserve anybody's votes. Ron Paul, on the other hand, deserves to be recognised as the kind of influential politician the world needs in these turbulent times.

Make sure you cast your vote!