Ron Paul and Ross Perot

There is an eerie déjà vu to the sight of another Texan with the same initials crossing a Clinton's path to the White House as Ross Perot did in 1992.

News that Ron Paul raised more than $4million on the Internet the other day recalls Perot's surge in the polls back then, at one point running ahead of both the first George Bush and Bill Clinton.

Perot's erratic on-again off-again campaign as an Independent faltered but still drew over 19 million votes, reflecting unhappiness with the two major parties and politics as usual.

Four Presidential elections later, after Clinton and another Bush in the Oval Office, that disaffection has led to the odd sight of another maverick Texan drawing support, this time in the race for the Republican nomination.

Paul's surge reflects a mixed bag of discontent--with the plastic Republican front runners and their failure to call for getting out of Iraq, as he does; with politicians of both parties who hem, haw and hedge about issues, as he does not; with the linear nature of political discourse, which Paul's digital supporters have rejected and imaginatively left behind and, according to some, distorted.

All this makes good political theater to enliven the long, boring slog of an overheated campaign, but older observers may be put off by Paul's oversimplifications and nostalgia for an America-that-never was and troubled by his roots in the conspiracy theories of the John Birch Society.

Perot turned out to be an egotistical clown without staying power, but Ron Paul has been around for a long time and is not likely to fade away. It's time to stop finding him refreshing and take a closer look at what he is really offering.