Paul can’t quite acknowledge his penchant for inconsistency, because there’s a convention in politics that equates consistency with strength. But it’s perhaps his most genuine quality. In August, Ann Coulter, who eloquently channels the id of the right, called him a compass. She was not being nice. “It used to be whatever would please 15-year-old Ayn Rand readers was his position. Now, it’s whatever will please basically the mainstream media.”

Paul here had flopped on foreign aide, specifically aid to Israel. Elsewhere, he hasn’t really settled on how to talk about immigration policy, at once cautioning his own party to avoid seeming so hostile while being hostile to comprehensive reform proposals that he might otherwise support. He is, like all elected men and women, somewhat craven, and somewhat fearful of throwing darts at the voters he needs to win the nomination.

But there’s a genuineness to his interestingness, and if you listen to him for a while, you get the sense that he’s puzzling out his positions on issues, just like the rest of us do. His political mind is not fully formed. This is not an insult.