Wikipedia helpfully points out that Richard II
was "probably not insane," so that's a plus.
I suppose it should not be much of a surprise, but many of the serious intellectuals of the Republican Party (don't snicker, they're very sensitive) are still, at this late date, pining for a new savior-candidate. Someone to save them from the current field, including their past savior-candidates. Foremost among them appears to be Bill Kristol, who is one of the founding members of the current Republican Brain Trust, a thought that depresses nearly everyone in the world aside from Bill Kristol.
Kristol points approvingly to an analysis that uses charts and whatnot to prove that it would be possible, in theory, for some savior-candidate to jump in the race somewhere around Valentine's Day and save conservatism from the current crop of sorry losers. From there, he rubs bacon on himself, climbs to the top of a four-story hotel, and dives towards the swimming pool, just to prove to you bastards that he can.
So (as I argued a year ago—and several times subsequently), why not the best? Ryan-Rubio 2012?
And don’t think, by the way, that Ryan and Rubio are too young. One of the first references to Valentine’s Day in connection with romance is in Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules (1382). Chaucer wrote:
For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.
(“For this was on Saint Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.”)
This poem was written to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia, who were married less than a year later, when each was only 15 years old. Yes, I know the reign of Richard II didn’t turn out so well. But the first 20 years or so weren’t bad—and Ryan-Rubio would only have to govern for 16.
There's a fine line between conservative intellectualism and the scrawled notes of people high on illegal substances, but usually spelling suffers in the latter case, so I think this one counts as intellectualism. Here Kristol is using a Chaucer quote to note that back in the 14th century King Richard II married at age 15, which proves that Paul Ryan isn't too young to be president because things under Richard went fine, at least up until the time when they didn't, and if it was good enough for the inbred monarchs of 14th century Europe it probably would work for us too.
If the "intellectual" part of this argument escapes you, say because you were perhaps looking for Kristol to explain why his painfully silly fellow "intellectual" Paul Ryan would make a good president in spite of his notable inability to add numbers together, or what on earth the arranged marriages of teenaged royalty has to do with the presidential campaign cycle: The "intellectual" part is managing to wedge a bit of Chaucer into there, so shut up.
I have quite frequently opined on the state of conservative intellectualism in the past, and how illustrative that Paul Ryan, Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and others are held up as the deepest thinkers of modern Republicanism. You may recall, however, that one of Bill Kristol's defining contributions to recent politics was none other than the supposed "discovery" of one Sarah Palin, one of the conservative saviors that he still pines for, even to this day:
In June 2007, a cruise hosted by the political journal The Weekly Standard set anchor in Juneau, Alaska. Standard editors William Kristol and Fred Barnes then lunched with Governor Sarah Palin. It was a moment of discovery to equal Hernando Cortez’s landing at Veracruz.
That description seems a bit hyperbolic, although I suppose if you wanted to more directly compare the discovery of Sarah Palin to the introduction of smallpox to the New World, I could get behind that. In any event, the sort of people that intellectual giant William Kristol praises as fellow intellectual giants should, at the least, give a person pause. The fellow who is currently pining for Paul Ryan to come save conservatism from the wreck of the current campaign season was previously pining for Sarah Palin to fill the same role. That right there should prove blunder enough for most people, but it is hard to discredit the undiscreditable, and so the merry, smarter-than-you ship of Kristol sails merrily on to its next destination. Paul Ryan it is.