Rand Paul's finest moment

Yesterday morning, ranking member Rand Paul (R-Ky.) filed into a small committee room with his staff for a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security committee.

The hearing was not a grand affair. There was no Anthony Fauci to draw the attention of the press, so media attention was sparse. This low-profile and mostly ignored hearing was not the sort of capstone that most politicians who have successfully clawed their way into the halls of the United States Senate dream about.

But as the small assembled group of witnesses and staffers settled into their seats, Paul was in reality enjoying a victory of the rarest kind in Washington, D.C.: a victory that actually matters.

The victory was that the hearing, which was titled "Risky Research: Oversight of U.S. Taxpayer Funded High-Risk Virus Research," was occurring at all. And as Democratic committee Chair Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.) gave his opening remarks — remarks that reflected, in their sincerity, just how far Paul has pushed the national discussion on this issue — Paul waited quietly for his turn to speak.

And then there's Rand Paul. In ordinary life, his haphazard mop of curls would probably not draw a second glance. But in the United States Senate, it's the equivalent of a two-foot-tall pink mohawk.

As Peters wound down his remarks and turned to introduce Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky practically leaped forward to take the floor from Peters, because he had important things to say. And before Peters had even fully finished talking, Paul opened his mouth to speak.

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The first thing that always comes to mind when I think about Rand Paul is his hair.

I know what you are thinking: Where does a guy with no working follicles north of his ears get off talking about anyone's hair?

Let me explain: I am not here to criticize Rand Paul's hair. His hair is fine. Clearly better than mine, for sure.

But it is a strange fact of life that you can tell a lot about a lot of people by looking at their hair. For instance, Josh Hawley's hair is Josh Hawley. When you've seen Hawley's hair, you have a pretty good idea of what you're going to get from him as a person, and for better or worse, you won't be disappointed when he starts talking.

Same thing with Bernie Sanders. If you knew nothing about politics and came across Bernie Sanders on the street, with his crazy shock of likely uncombed white fuzz, you would think to yourself before he even opened his mouth, "I have a pretty good idea where this guy is going." And you would probably be right.

And while we are on Hawley (whose fine hairdo I am also not criticizing), we should note that Hawley has what could be fairly called the Median Male Senatorial Hairdo. With rare exceptions, the Median Male Senatorial Hairdo is the hairdo you are supposed to have in the Senate. Almost all the guys in the Senate are walking around with some version of it, albeit in varying stages of gray and afflicted with various degrees of male pattern baldness.

But here on this seemingly random Thursday was a hearing whose very existence testified to Paul's victory on an important issue — perhaps the most important issue of our times.

And then there's Rand Paul. In ordinary life, his haphazard mop of curls would probably not draw a second glance. But in the United States Senate, it's the equivalent of a two-foot-tall pink mohawk.

In an institution that has a 200-plus-year history of successfully enforcing visual conformity, Paul's hair says things about him as a senator. It says he is not afraid to stick out. To happily be the only crusader on a cause that no one else cares about. In other words, it says things about him that are pretty accurate.

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An honest appraisal of the success of most of Paul's crusades would say that he has not enjoyed a lot of what most people would call success.

Although his annual Festivus lists of grievances against wasteful government spending have become must-read political entertainment every year, federal government spending has continued to balloon out of control. It is definitely true that the GOP's foreign policy vision is now much more aligned to Paul's isolationist tastes than it was 15 years ago, but it's an open question how much Paul is responsible for that as compared to Trump. And while his 2016 presidential campaign raised his national profile, it did not have the kind of on-the-ground success that his supporters hoped for.

Through it all, Fauci has had the good media sense not to respond in kind. Instead, when attacked, he has retreated to a very effective device, an affectation of being an exasperated grandpa. He shrugs his shoulders and releases an exasperated sigh that says, 'Gosh, these crazy Republicans. Can you believe it?'

But here on this seemingly random Thursday was a hearing whose very existence testified to Paul's victory on an important issue — perhaps the most important issue of our times.

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Four years ago, even as the world was being ravaged by the opening stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, a Senate hearing chaired by a Democrat that was designed to curtail gain-of-function research would have been unthinkable. At the time, most members of the Senate — and even more, the American public — had little or no idea what gain-of-function research even was.

Paul was, without question, the earliest and most persistent voice on Capitol Hill demanding a re-examination of this country's funding of gain-of-function research after the pandemic. While other GOP senators were either going along with Fauci or politely ignoring him due to political pressures, Paul was grilling him on questions he clearly did not want to answer, on a subject the American people did not know they were supposed to care about.

Consider, if you will, how far the world has moved on this issue since Paul began beating this drum. When Paul first began to harangue Fauci at public hearings about the issue, he was dismissed or tsk-tsked by the media and ignored by Democrats. But in July 2021, his persistent and disturbingly informed questioning on this issue finally did the unthinkable: It made Anthony Fauci lose his temper.

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Say what you will about Anthony Fauci's policies, but the man is a consummate media professional. Fauci has now been hauled before various congressional hearings dozens of times and has often been subjected to harsh grilling from Republicans in particular. Most of this grilling has been fair and well informed, but some of it has not.

Through it all, Fauci has had the good media sense not to respond in kind. Instead, when attacked, he has retreated to a very effective device, an affectation of being an exasperated grandpa. He shrugs his shoulders and releases an exasperated sigh that says, "Gosh, these crazy Republicans. Can you believe it?"

It works because it's good theater but also because the majority of the media, for partisan reasons, decided early on in the pandemic not to question the pronouncements of Anthony Fauci too closely — even though the pandemic instantly turned him into perhaps the most powerful bureaucrat in history. Their own internal narrative views Fauci as the savior of the country who is standing in the breach against a bunch of anti-science lunatics, so his "What are you gonna do with these guys?" act only played up the media's natural sympathies for him.

What was notable about the interview was that one of the first softballs Colbert lobbed at Fauci was about ... gain-of-function research.

Very rarely did Fauci ever break character. But the most notable time he did, it was thanks to Rand Paul. In a July 2021 hearing, Paul's questioning over the U.S. government's funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology caused Fauci to lose his cool. He angrily wagged his entire head at Paul and righteously declared, "Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, frankly." After further back-and-forth, Fauci yelled, "I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating."

Although we know now, as Fauci's own successor has admitted, that Paul was right and Fauci was wrong, at the time the world press almost universally took Fauci's side in the exchange. The Washington Post, in a representative sample, quoted Fauci's words in the headline and all but stood with Fauci in declaring that Paul did not know what he was talking about.

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Fast-forward three years to 2024, and you could find Fauci sitting down for the most comfortable of interviews: a late-night session with the formerly humorous de facto DNC spokesperson Stephen Colbert. A visibly besotted Colbert opened the festivities by asking Fauci if he had considered running for president.

Clearly, Fauci had found an interviewer who was more interested in protecting his reputation than even he was.

What was notable about the interview was that one of the first softballs Colbert lobbed at Fauci was about ... gain-of-function research. And Fauci, who had spent the last two decades of his public career fighting aggressively against oversight of gain-of-function research, was forced to concede, even in this friendliest of forums, that the time has come to "put better constraints on [these] kinds of experiments."

This remarkable about-face was, to close observers, a reflection of how far the national conversation on gain-of-function research has moved in the four years since Rand Paul and his nonconformist hair decided to become a thorn in Fauci's side on the issue.

Having set the table for the stakes, Paul got right to the point: 'So what has been done since the uncovering that our government was funding dangerous virus research overseas with little or no oversight? The answer is stark and chilling: virtually nothing.'

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Another, perhaps more substantive, indication is that yesterday's hearing occurred at all and that the Democratic committee chair who opened the hearing did so by accepting the premise of Paul's four-year crusade, noting that Congress does, in fact, have a responsibility to make sure that the public is protected from the unintentional consequences of risky scientific experiments, regardless of whether you believe the COVID-19 pandemic started in a lab in Wuhan or as the result of animal spillover.

When he opened his mouth to speak, Paul spoke with the clarity of someone who has understood the truth for longer than most: that risky biological research is the most genuine existential threat we face as a species.

"Since 2020, Americans have borne the devastating costs of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lives were unnecessarily lost, civil liberties were unilaterally stripped away by government bureaucrats. Taxpayers will bear the burden of the trillions of dollars borrowed and spent by the government for decades and generations to come," Paul said.

Having set the table for the stakes, Paul got right to the point: "So what has been done since the uncovering that our government was funding dangerous virus research overseas with little or no oversight? The answer is stark and chilling: virtually nothing.

The next lab-created pandemic might involve something far worse, like H5N1, which has killed roughly half of people who have contracted it, as compared with about 1% for COVID-19.

"Some prefer this inaction, preferring the shadows of government bureaucracy and secrecy. They want Congress to remain passive and accept their reassurances without question ... but we cannot stand idly by," Paul intoned.

"How can we trust in a system that so blatantly ignores its own safeguards? How can we believe in leadership that permits such dangerous research without stringent oversight, risking global health for the sake of dubious scientific advancement? This is not merely a failure; it's a betrayal of public trust. We sit here today at a critical juncture, facing what many believe is the nuclear threat of our time: gain-of-function research. Manipulating viruses to make them more lethal poses a danger akin to that of an atomic bomb.

"In this dystopian reality we find ourselves in, it is our duty to challenge the status quo, to shine a light on the darkest corners of government operations, and to protect the lives and freedom of the people we serve. The era of complacency must end, and change must begin with us."

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Time will tell whether the bill submitted by Dr. Paul will survive the legislative process and ever become law, although the scuttlebutt is that Democrats are not prepared to oppose it in toto. Time will tell whether, if it passes, it will be sufficient to meet the challenges posed by this danger.

But the seriousness of this moment demands that we try. If anything, Paul understated the danger by comparing it to a nuclear bomb. SARS-CoV-2 is definitely not the worst virus that could have escaped from a lab, and it killed 20 million people and counting. No atomic bomb has that kind of power.

The next lab-created pandemic might involve something far worse, like H5N1, which has killed roughly half of people who have contracted it, as compared with about 1% for COVID-19. The impacts of such a pandemic, if a mutant strain of H5N1 escaped from a lab and became capable of aerosol transmission in humans, would be almost literally unimaginable. And scientists have been working on creating exactly such a virus, right here in Wisconsin, America, for years.

If we are all still alive 20 years from now, we might one day have Rand Paul to thank for it, even though we likely will not know. And if we do, this little-noticed moment in an obscure hearing room will deserve to be known as Rand Paul's finest moment and a finer moment than many of us can ever claim.