The New York Times editorial, “Paul Ryan, Brought Down to Size” succinctly remarked, “Mr. Ryan revealed that all along, he doesn’t have anything more creative in his cranium than stale conservative dogma.” The flashy PowerPoint presentations and glossy handouts only demonstrated that “the discrepancy between promise and reality should be no surprise to anyone who has looked at Mr. Ryan’s proposals over the years.”
Indeed. In 2010 Paul Krugman noted that “Mr. Ryan isn’t offering fresh food for thought; he’s serving up leftovers from the 1990s, drenched in flimflam sauce.” Krugman astutely observed then (as is now) that ” the G.O.P. is a resurgent political force, so one mustn’t point out that its intellectual heroes have no clothes. “ Seven years later, nothing about Paul Ryan has changed.
Paul Ryan reminds me of Walter Simmons, number 149 in Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950) Spoon River Anthology (1916).
MY parents thought that I would be
As great as Edison or greater:
For as a boy I made balloons
And wondrous kites and toys with clocks
And little engines with tracks to run on
And telephones of cans and thread.
I played the cornet and painted pictures,
Modeled in clay and took the part
Of the villain in the "Octoroon."
But then at twenty—one I married
And had to live, and so, to live
I learned the trade of making watches
And kept the jewelry store on the square,
Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,—
Not of business, but of the engine
I studied the calculus to build.
And all Spoon River watched and waited
To see it work, but it never worked.
And a few kind souls believed my genius
Was somehow hampered by the store.
It wasn't true.
The truth was this:
I did not have the brains.