If you walked up to random Americans on the street and asked them to define "leadership", chances are very good that you get a modest number of different definitions. This would be based mostly on the life experiences and education level of the respondent.
When I think about leadership, I think of a person who is calm in a crisis, who can bring disparate forces to the table for the greater good and is able to take credit or blame for tough decisions.
Which brings me to Paul Ryan, and why, particularly after this week, he will never have a snowball's chance in Hell of being the President of the United States.
The "magic" of Paul Ryan, as compared to his Republican colleagues, is that he has the rhetorical gift of making the abominable sound reasonable. From his more-of-the-same Republican budget suggestions, to his currently-stalled plan to destroy Social Security, he is able to present it in a way that on the surface paints it as the prevailing wisdom, when in actuality it plunges half the population deeper into an economic meat grinder. Someone who fills a glass with urine and convinces you to drink it could be one definition of leadership I suppose, but that's never been mine.
Two days ago, at arguably their lowest point since Watergate, the Congressional Republicans came to Paul Ryan. Unable to guide itself out of the dark, it turned to him to unite its warring factions and to guide the party out of its self-inflicted crisis. It seems that the six years of seed planting spent kowtowing to the darkest elements of American society in order to temporarily sustain a majority finally bloomed, only to smell exactly like the fertilizer from which it grew.
The Republicans wanted leadership. The party wanted someone who would be calm in a crisis and who could control the worst impulses of the Ali Baba and the Forty Rednecks that make up the "Freedom Caucus" to actually get something done.
At it lowest point, having identified Paul Ryan as the leader it needed, Paul Ryan instead used his rhetorical gifts to explain that he had no interest in leadership. Friday was spent having every major living Republican call Ryan on the phone to have him reconsider, and so far, the answer is still no. Had the great world leaders of the last century, such as Churchill, Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Truman, implemented the same tactic, we'd be having either schnitzel or borscht with every meal.
Being considered for the Presidency requires at the very least a prior demonstration of a willingness to lead. Given the callousness of his economic policies, I would have been hard-pressed to see Paul Ryan being the President of the United States, given our shifting demographics. Now, having told his own party in its hour of darkness to go find someone else to fix its failures, I see absolutely no path to the Presidency for Paul Ryan. An elephant never forgets, but a Republican elephant never forgets and never forgives.