I'm going to figure out how Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin, managed to fool so many people for so long. He's a garden-variety supply-side faker. His alleged economic "wonkery" consists of a B.A. in economics from Miami of Ohio — which he would not have been able to achieve without my generosity in helping him out with the Social Security survivor's benefits that got him through high school after his father kicked. (You're welcome, zombie-eyed granny-starver. Think nothing of it. Really.) Whereupon he went to work in Washington for a variety of conservative congresscritters and think-tanks, thinking unremarkable thoughts for fairly unremarkable people. Once in Congress, however, he has been transformed into an intellectual giant despite the fact that, every time he comes up with another "budget," actual economists get a look at it and determine, yet again, that between "What We Should Do" and "Great Things That Will Happen When We Do" is a wilderness of dreamy nonsense, wishful thinking, and an asterisk the size of Lake Huron. At which point, Republicans who'd like to have careers in five years take to hiding behind the drapes when he comes down the hall. Then, a few months later, he's at it again. And even some putatively liberal commentators shrug and tell themselves that, at least, Paul Ryan is a Serious Person. He gets credit for sincerely wanting to "reform" entitlements, when his entire career makes it quite plain that he doesn't believe in the concept of entitlements, let alone the ones we actually have. He gets a pass on obvious mendacity that none of us would buy from, say, Herman Cain. (In a way, it's not dissimilar to all those valentines to the mighty intellect of Newt Gingrich that we read back in the early 1990's, until everybody figured out that Newt's default position on almost everything was being a thoroughgoing creep.) Outside of the very real possibility that it's all being done to give Paul Krugman a stroke, I don't get it.

(UPDATE, ON THE VP PICK: Paul Ryan, Murderer of Opportunity, Political Coward, Candidate for Vice President of the United States)

This all comes up again because, apparently, there's a big push on from his extreme starboard side to get Willard Romney to sign the ZEGS on as second mate aboard the good ship Malaprop. The most vivid evidence of what's going on came from the nervous hospital that is the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. It begins with now customary draping of the toga across the shoulders of the Pericles from Janesville....

Too risky, goes the Beltway chorus. His selection would make Medicare and the House budget the issue, not the economy. The 42-year-old is too young, too wonky, too, you know, serious. Beneath it all you can hear the murmurs of the ultimate Washington insult-that Mr. Ryan is too dangerous because he thinks politics is about things that matter. That dude really believes in something, and we certainly can't have that.

First of all, "dude"? When did the WSJ editorial board become such hepcats? Bob Bartley is rotating at 78 R.P.M. And Ryan isn't dangerous because he believes in stuff. He's dangerous because he believes in stuff that will hurt millions of people who never did anything to him

Against the advice of every Beltway bedwetter, he has put entitlement reform at the center of the public agenda-before it becomes a crisis that requires savage cuts. And he has done so as part of a larger vision that stresses tax reform for faster growth, spending restraint to prevent a Greek-like budget fate, and a Jack Kemp-like belief in opportunity for all. He represents the GOP's new generation of reformers that includes such Governors as Louisiana's Bobby Jindal and New Jersey's Chris Christie.

Oh, balls. His strategy is to do away with entitlements by letting them die on the vine. The second sentence is, of course, belied by eight years of Reagan, four years of Daddy Bush, and eight years of C-Plus Augustus. It isn't going to work any better just because Paul Ryan proposes it. And, by all means, lump him in with the Bayou Demon Catcher and the Jersey Barrier. I'm sure he's thrilled.

As important, Mr. Ryan can make his case in a reasonable and unthreatening way. He doesn't get mad, or at least he doesn't show it. Like Reagan, he has a basic cheerfulness and Midwestern equanimity.

Okay, here's where you really lose me. I knew Jack Kemp. I watched Ronald Reagan. You could say anything about Jack Kemp and he'd come up smiling. (I mean, once you've been chased out of the pocket by Buck Buchanan, what do you care about snarky commenters?) Reagan was similarly untouchable, although entirely more oblivious, especially by his second term. But Ryan? He's a bit of a whiner. Back in April, he fell splendidly back onto the fainting couch on the subject of the president's tewwible, awful betwayal of what Paul Ryan's idea of government is. He also confused Barack Obama with George W. Bush, which is unfortunate.

I seem to remember him saying that he was going to be a uniter, not a divider. Frankly this is one and the worst of his broken promises. We do not need a campaigner-in-chief, we need a commander-in-chief. We we need a leader that America deserves. The presidency is bigger than this. He was supposed to be bigger than this. We need solutions, not excuses. We need a president who takes the lead in not one that spreads the blame. We need someone who appeals to our dreams and aspirations, not to our fears and anxieties. We as Americans deserved to choose what kind of country we want and what kind of people we want to be.

We've pretty much done that, Paul, and 58 percent of us decided that we didn't want a country in which zombie-eyed granny-starving becomes the norm. His deep and abiding teenage crush on Ayn Rand couldn't outlast a barrage of public criticism from nuns. He cut and ran on the political philosophy he'd heretofore said was formative. And when the president really let go a right hand, Ryan went meeping back to his happy place.

"History will not be kind to a president who, when it came time to confront our generation's defining challenge, chose to duck and run," Ryan said. "The president refuses to take responsibility for the economy and refuses to offer a credible plan to address the most predictable economic crisis in our history."

This is a guy in love with his own concocted genius. Pick him if you want, Willard. I don't think he's got the chin for it.

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GREATEST HITS FROM THE POLITICS BLOG ON PAUL RYAN:

• ON THE VP PICK: Paul Ryan, Murderer of Opportunity, Political Coward, Candidate for Vice President of the United States

•

• Paul Ryan Is Faking It Until He Makes It

• The Budget Kabuki and Our Too-Broken Government

• A Man Who Looks Paul Ryan's Storm Dead in the Eye

• A Triumphant Paul Ryan Is a Tragedy for the Rest of Us

• Ryan and Romney: A Marriage of Our Insane Times

• This Is Not Our Beautiful House

• Paul Ryan's Budget Is a Cowardly Political Joke

• The New Rights of Paul Ryan, CPAC's Public Intellectual

• Lyin' Paul Ryan and the End of Medicare

• Paul Ryan Is Living in a Fantasy Land Older Than Ayn Rand

• And So Begins the Great Paul Ryan Comeback

• Paul Ryan and the New Politics of Sadism

• State of the Union: Winning the Future, or Losing Our Mind?

• ...and More

PLUS: Tucker Carlson Interviews Paul Ryan for Esquire >>

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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