Paul Ryan thinks he won

No one should be surprised to learn that Ryan is obsessed with health and physical fitness. He is particularly enthusiastic about a training program called “P90X,” which sounds like the name of a Khrushchev-era Soviet mind-control experiment. He loathes tobacco and has been known to whine to any journalist willing to listen to him about this very boring subject. When he inherited the office of his predecessor, he rented a bizarre “ozone” machine at considerable offense to exorcise the hideous spirit of that demon weed. Everything about Ryan screams that he is the guy who would rat you out for smoking behind the gas station or tell Mrs. Stefinitch that you hid your can of chew in the library behind the encyclopedias.

Beneath the politely smarmy exterior — even his enemies will insist that he is very nice — there is a solid core of viciousness and stupidity in Ryan. It is grimly amusing that a man who flies weekly from Washington to his home town in order to participate in various suburban activities with his children could dismiss paid maternity leave as an expensive plot. It is astonishing that a Christian could find anything of value in the writings of Ayn Rand, an atheist who considered charity not just counterproductive but immoral. It is ludicrous that anyone who considers himself a serious student of political economy could restrict his attention to the crude monomania of Ludwig von Mises and the so-called “Austrian school.” It is grotesque that a politician who has devoted decades of his life to the cause of phasing out Social Security — from which he benefited after the tragic death of his father when he was 16 — and Medicare on the grounds of expense could support a tax cut package that will starve the treasury of an estimated $1.5 trillion, much less regard it as the signature achievement of his dubious tenure as the leader of a party.