OK. Just for a moment, ignore the odds and assume that Ron Paul is prez.
What could he actually DO?
Well, first off, the margin to get virtually any new legislation through would jump to 67%, in order to get past Paul's vetos.
Only legislation that reduced illegitimate government (from a limited state libertarian point of view, not necessarily the same as my anarchist position) would make it without a two-thirds majority. So, every bill would probably come in as a trade-off, trying to bribe Paul to let it pass by including something such as reduction in some other area.
However, the executive branch has quite a bit of power on its own, as our current prez has demonstrated. So, to the thirty million or more people who have family members incarcerated on victimless crime charges: Here's Your Chance!!!
If Paul is the least bit consistent, he would immediately pardon all those people and turn them loose. And there would likely be a lot of other people who would end up being turned loose after agreeing to pay off the damages they had caused in the case of property crimes, such as simple robbery or shop-lifting. Here, in California, which is neck and neck with Texas in terms of having the highest percentage of people incarcerated in the entire world, many people are serving 30 to life for crimes such as - literally - stealing a pizza.
Only the people who present a real danger would remain locked up, which would result in a HUGE tax savings. It costs more to incarcerate someone here in CA than it would cost to put them through college.
Couple that with all the other cutbacks and the withdrawal of U.S. troups from around the world, including Iraq, and you can forget about any recession. We would be swimming in productivity.
So, thirty million just of the people who might like to see their relatives free again, and how many others of us who would like to stop trying to run the world and just live and prosper?
FACTS (Families to Amend California's Three Strikes), are you listening?