After Juan Williams Stopped Crying, He Explained Why Ron Paul is the One to Watch

It was difficult to tell whether Juan Williams, a Fox News political analyst, was happy or sad that his son graduated from Haverford College yesterday. “I graduated from there 35 years ago,” he told Imus. “It’s amazing to me how long I’ve been out of college. It makes you stop and think about how quickly time’s passed.”
 
For Imus, on the other hand, life seems to be moving in slow motion, particularly at this very moment, as Williams droned on and on about his dopey kid. Hoping to pull his guest out from his abyss of self-reflection, Imus wondered if Mike Huckabee’s announcement over the weekend that he would not run for president in 2012 was at all surprising.
 
“I didn’t think he was getting in,” Williams said, noting that the Fox News Channel host is “living better than he’s ever lived in his life: he’s finally got his dream house down in Florida; he likes what he does in terms of media now; he’s more popular among people than he’s ever been.”
 
Though Huckabee does well in presidential polls, the big money needed to finance a campaign has never come rolling in. “So he’d have to get out there and hustle for money, give up his lifestyle, and he’s getting older,” Williams said. “Not to be rude about it.”
 
Imus, however, had no problem being rude about it. “Plus, the dude’s fat again!” he said. Along those lines, Imus observed that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s decision to run for president in 2012 is “a big, fat joke,” much like Gingrich himself.
 
“I like him, I think he’s a nice guy, and I think he’s a really smart guy,” Williams said, for some reason, about Gingrich. “But this is ridiculous. I haven’t seen anybody on the Conservative side say, ‘Oh yeah, this is a winning ticket, we’re going to go all the way with Newt!’ Nobody thinks that.”
 
Like Bernard and Imus, Williams thinks Gingrich might be simply looking to garner higher speaking fees and sell more books, though it seems too obviously self-serving even for someone as egotistical as Gingrich, who has been married three times and served one wife with divorce papers as she was dying in a hospital.
 
Told that he asked God for forgiveness on that one, Williams said, “I hope we all ask God for forgiveness. I know I do. But I’m not running for president.”
 
Of all people, Rep. Ron Paul is quickly rising to the top of prospective Republican candidates to take on President Barack Obama in 2012. “I think he’s one of the more dynamic people in politics these days,” Williams said, and credited Paul with the rise of the Tea Party because of his Libertarian positions on government and taxes.
 
In Williams’s opinion, the only thing more unbelievable than Paul making the case for drug legalization and for troop withdrawal in Iraq and Afghanistan during a Republican debate in South Carolina two weeks ago was that he got a standing ovation for it.
 
“He is changing the Republican Party more so than the Republicans apparently realize,” Williams noted.
 
Before saying their goodbyes, Imus encouraged his guest not to get “all bummed out” because his kid graduated college. “I feel blessed!” Williams blubbered. “It’s unbelievable.”
 
Calm down.
 
-Julie Kanfer