Although Paul Ryan’s nomination was bold news on Saturday,
there won’t be any of the drama that Sarah Palin generated four years ago. Sole shareholder Mitt Romney will have no
trouble running the whole show. Idealistic, high-spirited Paul Ryan has been
managed by his Republican elders ever since he left college.
Laid-back George W. Bush certainly didn’t have any problem running
a White House full of political and campaign “giants.” Apparently, for eight years, Bush delighted
in calling Vice President Dick Cheney “Big Time.” Advisor Karl Rove, the
strategist that billionaires still believe walks on water, answered to the
nicknames “Boy Genius” or “Turd Blossom.”
It’s too early to guess what will stick to Paul Ryan. Sooner
or later, however, he’ll get tagged with a nickname more telling than “policy
wonk” and less confusing than “young Republican intellectual.”
Just because he has a shallow sense of humor doesn’t mean
Romney—and the rest of us—need to take Paul Ryan entirely seriously.
Isn’t there something wonderfully funny about this
observation by Ryan’s New Yorker
biographer Ryan Lizza about his 2010 “Road Map” fiscal plan?
“The document’s introduction
referred to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist
Papers, Hayek, Friedman, Adam Smith, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, John Locke,
Alexis de Tocqueville, Georges-Eugène Sorel, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Charles
Murray, and Niall Ferguson. Ryan himself seemed intent on entering the canon. ‘Only
by taking responsibility for oneself, to the greatest extent possible, can one
ever be free,' he wrote, ‘and only a free person can make responsible
choices—between right and wrong, saving and spending, giving or taking.’’’
Without mentioning Russia’s Ayn
Rand, his boyhood crush, he drops the names of nine European intellectuals in a document designed to stop Barack
Obama turning America into another European moral and economic swamp.
Young Congressman Ryan insists
that to be free, one must take “responsibility for oneself, to the greatest
extent possible.” In his cramped world, however, he’s had to make his way—and
find his space—within his family business, within his family compound, with
his family contacts, within the family’s politics, and in his family’s faith.
He must have read Atlas Shrugged secretly
in his bedroom, with a flashlight.
Clearly, he’s exactly the kind of
existential free-wheeler that family man Mitt Romney needn’t worry about.
Ryan may make Republican economics
a self-defeating election issue. But neither one of them, nor the Romney-Ryan
ticket, will capture the fascination Americans still have with Barack Obama.
No comments:
Post a Comment