Texas Senator Ted Cruz set off a media firestorm last week by becoming the first to announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination in 2016. The media has generally described Cruz as a passionate, hard-line conservative and a polarizing figure. Writing for Fox News, Michael Goodwin argued that Cruz has a chance at becoming our next president, calling him “a brilliant man of clear conservative convictions, not muddled by the politics of calculation.” It’s a nice sentiment, but it also effectively illustrates the underlying problem with candidates like Cruz and with our political system in general: being “muddled” by a...