I think you have Ron Paul confused with Barak Obama. They have different views.
Ron Paul is the one who thinks that half of the government should be abolished. No, not the defense department, though he would like to pare it down to the size that Eisenhower wanted, basically just the sargents and officers (Who will spend most peacetime playing insipid games while the sargents really run the Army like they always do), with a small core of soldiers for the officers to command for the Army, and keep the Navy, though about a third of the ships could be just placed in storage. Air Force about half way between Army and Navy. Marines, they are part of the Navy.
No, it's the rest of the government he would like to be rid of, The IRS, the Welfare, Education and such like departments. Anything that doesn't pay for itself. He believes that around half of what the Federal Government does is unconstitutional. That half is what he really wants to eliminate. He would have no trouble achieving or surpassing President Obama's goal of eliminating 1.4 Trillion Dollars from the Federal Governments budget. He would probably eliminate twice that.
If any of that is wise is another question entirely. So also is the question of if he could actually DO any of it.
Barak Obama on the other hand wants to expand entitlements (Money the Government promises to give people and corporations). He is the candidate that believes that when you are in debt, the way to get out of debt is to spend more money. After all, -1-1=2 right? To be honest, he probably learned this sort of math in the Senate. That is how Senators seem to think. It doesn't appear to matter which Party they officially belong to.
Also, to continue to be honest, Barak Obama like George Bush (2) before him has most of his problems stemming from action outside the US, or from acts of Congress. Like Bush, he is more a victim of the Pelosi-Reid congress than anything else. Presidents get blamed for everything, and they appear to have a great deal of power, but reality is that they mostly respond to external events and are charged with implementing whatever the House of Representatives and the Senate can sort of agree on saying should be done.
Sorry, that is the job description according to the US Constitution. The President can push and cajole and plead and bargain, but can't just spend arbitrarily or pass their own laws or programs. A US President is much more a COO than a CEO. A President is more a manager than an autocrat. That doesn't mean that some of them don't act like autocrats or even Kings (Andrew Jackson comes to mind). Both the best and worst Presidents appear to have been in office in the 1800s, no matter what Glen Beck says.
No, Barak Obama's presidency is really just about what the Pelosi-Reid Congress said to do. It takes a little over a year for the changes in congress to take effect. So, we will see the effects of the Bohner-Reid Congress by next summer. But, no President in the US ever has a really free hand. The press of course ignores this, and the majority of citizens don't even know it. After all, how many do you think have ever read the US Constitution? Of those, how many do you think understood it? If we take the comments here on Slashdot as typical for the population as a whole, the answers to both questions fall somewhere between very few and none.
However, for the purposes of the actual header for this fine but pointless debate, Barak Obama, definitely. He is running. On the other side, Mitt Romney, as the assumed future victor for the Republicans. The others all seem to be self destructing. Except Perry, who having already self destructing is now trying to destroy everyone else.
Perhaps Hermann Cain too. He sounds interesting. Maybe not credible, but interesting. Sort of like Joe Biden that way, though not wrong as often.
Any of the others who are declared would be nice.
Maybe even Sarah Palin (Yeah, I know she's not even running, but, Obama campaigned mostly against George Bush when HE (Bush) wasn't even running. After that, why should we be surprised that Barak Obama doesn't look like he knows what he is doing? He didn't even know who he was running against three years ago. We saw what we where getting before we ever got it, so we got what we wanted. Don't let any Democrat complain about Obama. They saw what they were getting long before they got it. That was what they wanted. There have been no surprises in this Presidency!) Yes, Sarah would be interesting and educational. Most Slashdotters only know about her from late night comics and journalists who only listen to and quote late night comics. (That is more of them than you might think. a surprising number of them only really listen to people at their cocktail parties and some even just make stuff up.) Slashdot readers might be surprised to find what she really says. It's not what we are told. Kind of like those who 20 years ago thought they knew all about then Vice President Dan Quayle and his statements, but what they thought were Quayle quotes were really Jay Leno quotes. Often Politics is the art of misleading the stupid. (Yes, that would be you!)
From my perspective, her husband, Mr. Palin, would be even better. An Iditarod winner, a major salmon fisherman and a world class snowmobiler. That's better than ANY politician to me.