Anyone who has read Friedrick Hayek's The Road to Serfdom should be able to understand the new popularity of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate. When Hayek writes that the average person is attracted to the "can do" leader, it is not hard to believe that Trump fits within the broad definition of what Hayek had in mind.

It is the belief that what the country needs is a leader who can fix things. As far as Trump on the issues, it appears his view is exactly this view that what is needed is a qualified leader and that he is such a leader and President Obama is not.

With this as his sole guiding light, Trump can come down anywhere on any issue. He does not appear to have any deeply formed views about free markets, foreign affairs or anything else. He has a very gut instinct view, which attracts the average man in the street.

The masses can also sense that Trump is not beholden to the usual special interest groups. He does not appear to couch his words for the benefit of protecting any particular group. This also makes Trump attractive to the masses. But deep down, what Trump would be as a candidate is the anti-Ron Paul. Where Dr. Paul is humble, Trump is boastful. But more important, where Dr. Paul has a studied and deep appreciation of liberty and the intricacies of what liberty means in different situations, Trump has an off the cuff, ad hoc manner of looking at issues.

During a recent interview on the Today Show, Trump said that he wished that President Obama was the "greatest President since Abraham Lincoln", which shows that Trump has no deep understanding about Lincoln and simply has the pedestrian view, fed to us by mainstream media and the government controlled education system.

He also said during the interview that the only reason that he would be interested in interfering in Libya is if  "we can get the oil". If nothing else, this is certainly an open and blunt statement about the fact that the United States is an international bully, and that he wants to maintain that policy, at least as far as Libya goes.

Trump can read a financial statement so he knows the current budget posturing between Democrats and Republicans over a tiny portion of a huge out of control budget is a joke. During the interview he called the cuts, "peanuts".

Some time back, I heard Trump criticize Fed Chairman Bernanke for not pushing interest rates down fast enough, so this means Trump either doesn't understand the destruction that Federal Reserve manipulation of interest rates causes or he doesn't care as long as it helps the sector where he makes a good chunk of his money, the real estate sector.

Outside of the few positions reflected in these Trump comments, it is hard to know how Trump will land on any issue.