Megan McArdle and Lawrence Auster are not likely to agree on much about the public policy, but they seem to be on the same page regarding Ron Paul's recantation of the Ron Paul Letters—how come he didn't read them?

McArdle:

The Washington Post is reporting that Ron Paul actively signed off on the not-so-veiled racism in the newsletters published under his name in the 1980s......

I think the arguments and counter-arguments about what he knew and when he knew it will be rather beside the point. It is simply not credible that Ron Paul never saw any of the newsletters published under his name, and so the minimum working thesis has to be that whether or not Ron Paul believed that the biggest problem America faced was all those black folks getting one over on the white man, he was perfectly willing to encourage such sentiments if doing so would advance his political goals. This alone should disqualify him from office....[VDARE.com note: Does the converse argument disqualify the current President?]

Even if it were actually true that Ron Paul had allowed a newsletter to be published under his name without ever reading it, this would not do; the first thing that any aspiring leader should learn is that you are responsible for what is done by your subordinates, whether you knew about it or not. "I am the kind of leader who allows my subordinates to run a multi-year racist newsletter under my name without ever once stopping by, or even picking up the damn newsletter, to see how they were getting along without me" is not mitigation. Rather, it should be the first count on the indictment...

What Did Ron Paul Know, and When Did He Know It? - Megan McArdle - Politics - The Atlantic, January 27, 2012

Auster:

By the way, how could anyone take seriously as a leader, let alone as a candidate for the presidency of the United States, a man who for many years published newsletters under his own name, such as The Ron Paul Report and The Ron Paul Survival Report, and who now says that he never read the articles published under his name? Which is more disqualifying, to have said that the black population is vastly more violent and criminal per capita than the white population, or to avow that one had no interest in, and took no responsibility for, the words and ideas published in one's own newsletter?

How could anyone take Ron Paul seriously after this? Lawrence Auster, View From The Right, January 27, 2012

We've argued on VDARE.com that the individual quotes from the Ron Paul Reports are actually far from indefensible. What is not very defensible is having a huge body of work published under your name and never reading it.

Of course, Auster raises an important point—it was even less defensible for Obama to claim he'd never heard Jeremiah Wright's anti-white, anti-American rantings. He was actually in the Trinity United Church of Christ while Wright was preaching, and only a man who was stone-deaf could have missed it.