The biggest surprise so far in the 2016 presidential campaign isn’t the success of Donald Trump, but of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Despite being a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist”[1] and a registered independent, he’s become a serious contender for the Democratic nomination following his strong showing in Iowa and runaway victory in New Hampshire. Many left-wing Democrats are “feeling the Bern” and even some right-wing Republicans admit to respecting him.[2]

They see him as a (perhaps misguided) fighter for the “working class” against corrupt “big business” and “politics as usual,” an honest statesman who “tells it like it is,” and a man of principle. In reality, he has the same failings as other Washington politicians—and some more serious ones. Yet his shortcomings might produce a Sanders presidency that would be good for America.

The Washington Post editorial board—usually a dependable cheerleader for bigger, more interventionist government—recently attacked him over some of those failings. Claiming he’s running a “fiction-filled campaign,”[3] the Post charged that he deceives voters on everything from blaming corporations for all of America’s woes, to ignoring the complexity of the country’s economic problems, to hiding his proposals’ high costs and questionable benefits, as well as the enormous tax and debt increases they would require.

Sanders is guilty of all of those things, but he’s hardly the first politician to fudge the truth, distort complex issues, and demonize others. If those were disqualifiers for high office, there wouldn’t be much left of the 2016 presidential field.

The Post also criticized him for supporting legislation important to firearms manufacturers in Vermont and Massachusetts’ “Gun Valley,” saying this proves he’s no anti-corporate crusader. This charge parrots a distortion spread by Sanders’ Democratic rival (and Post favorite), Hillary Clinton. It refers to a 2005 federal law explicitly granting gun makers civil immunity if criminals use their products wrongfully and illegally—immunity that historically has been given to all manufacturers.[4] Some states wanted to pass laws stripping gun makers of that immunity, and then use civil suits to drive them into bankruptcy, circumventing the Second Amendment. Sanders, to his credit, opposed those cynical efforts as a violation of basic fairness. However, now that the law has become a campaign issue, he is backtracking, saying he wants it repealed.[5] So the Post is right—though for the wrong reason—in claiming that Sanders abandons his principles for political gain. But again, he’s hardly the only politician to yield to political expediency.

Sanders’ real failings don’t lie in his dishonesty and backsliding, but in his ideas. He wants to increase Social Security benefits for retirees, though Social Security and other American entitlement programs already face insolvency. He promises to relieve college students of school debt, but he’ll raise their taxes to cover the cost. He vows to get rid of everyone’s health insurance premiums and other medical payments, but he’ll pay for this “Medicare for all” by increasing everyone’s taxes. He says he worries about workers’ stagnant take-home pay, but he wants to impose a bevy of new taxes on that pay. In essence, Sanders’ “revolution” would merely change people’s bill-paying process: they’ll be forced to pay the government for what they now buy (or choose not to buy) privately. That may be a revolutionary, but it would hardly improve Americans’ lives.

And it underscores his most serious problem: his certainty that Americans would be better off if government had far more control over people’s lives. Implicit in this is Sanders’ belief that politicians and bureaucrats always act with perfect knowledge, motivations, expediency and responsibility, while no one else does, and that all people have—or should be forced to have—the same desires, concerns, conditions and values.

Such thinking isn’t surprising for a white, Northeastern, “suburban socialist” septuagenarian with a 45-year political career that includes the last quarter-century in Congress. That likely explains why many racial and ethnic minorities—important members of the Democratic Party coalition—are skeptical of Sanders. And if those coalition members don’t support him, then what about the roughly 50 percent of Americans who don’t belong to the Democratic coalition?

But that’s what might make a Sanders presidency a good thing. Senator Sanders has a well-earned reputation as a cantankerous, inflexible ideologue who can’t work with progressive Democrats, let along conservative Republicans. So what chance would a President Sanders have of moving his agenda through Congress? (The same thinking, from the opposite side of the political spectrum, goes for a President Ted Cruz.) Thanks to the genius of America’s Framers, who wisely made it hard for the federal government to impose nationwide laws without broad consensus, a Sanders or Cruz presidency would so gridlock Washington that the Obama years would seem bipartisan, pragmatic and harmonious in comparison.

Of course, America is desperate for real policy change. People need greater control over their own lives, rather than have the political system take more of that control away. But currently there aren’t many candidates for elected office who understand that. So if we can’t have more freedom, then at least we can constrain government’s power. A powerless President Sanders or President Cruz may be a good start.

Thomas A. Firey is a senior fellow with the Maryland Public Policy Institute and a Washington County native.