[Vision2020] Rosie Ruiz Republicans

[Art Deco]

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September 2, 2012
Rosie Ruiz Republicans By PAUL KRUGMAN

Remember Rosie Ruiz? In 1980 she was the first woman to cross the finish
line at the Boston Marathon — except it turned out that she hadn’t actually
run most of the race, that she sneaked onto the course around a mile from
the end. Ever since, she has symbolized a particular kind of fraud, in
which people claim credit for achieving things they have not, in fact,
achieved.

And these days Paul Ryan is the Rosie Ruiz of American politics.

This would have been an apt comparison even before the curious story of Mr.
Ryan’s own marathon came to light. Still, that’s quite a story, so let’s
talk about it first.

It started when Hugh Hewitt, a right-wing talk-radio host, interviewed Mr.
Ryan. In that interview, the vice-presidential candidate boasted about his
fitness, declaring that he had once run a marathon in less than three
hours.

This claim piqued the interest of Runner’s World magazine, which noted that
marathon times are recorded — and that it was unable to find any evidence
of Mr. Ryan’s accomplishment. It eventually transpired that Mr. Ryan had
indeed once run a marathon, but that his time was actually more than four
hours.

In a statement issued by a spokesman, Mr. Ryan tried to laugh the whole
thing off as a simple error. But serious runners find that implausible: the
difference between sub-three and over-four is the difference between
extraordinary and perfectly ordinary, and it’s not something a runner could
get wrong, unless he’s a fabulist who imagines his own reality. And does
suggesting that Mr. Ryan is delusional rather than dishonest actually make
the situation any better?

Which brings us back to the real issues of this presidential campaign.

Obviously nobody cares how fast Mr. Ryan can run, and even his strange
marathon misstatement wouldn’t be worth talking about in isolation. What
makes this incident so striking is, instead, the way it resonates with the
essential Rosie-Ruizness of Mr. Ryan’s whole political persona, which is
built around big boasts about accomplishments he hasn’t accomplished.

For Mr. Ryan, as you may recall, has positioned himself as an icon of
truth-telling and fiscal responsibility, while offering policy proposals
that are neither honest nor responsible. He calls for huge tax cuts, while
proposing specific spending cuts that, while inflicting immense hardship on
our most vulnerable citizens, would fall far short of making up for the
revenue loss. His claims to reduce the deficit therefore rely on assertions
that he would make up for the lost revenue by closing loopholes that he
refuses to specify, and achieve further huge spending cuts in ways that he
also refuses to specify.

But didn’t the Congressional Budget Office evaluate Mr. Ryan’s plan and
conclude that it would indeed reduce the deficit? I’m glad you asked that.
You see, the budget office didn’t actually evaluate his plan, because there
weren’t enough details. Instead, it let Mr. Ryan specify paths for future
spending and revenue, while noting — in what sounds to me like a hint of
snark — that “No proposals were specified that would generate that path.”

So Mr. Ryan basically told the budget office to assume that his plan would
slash the deficit, then claimed the resulting report as vindication of his
deficit-slashing claims. Sorry, but that’s the policy equivalent of
sneaking into a marathon near the finish line, then claiming victory.

Still, Mitt Romney, not Mr. Ryan, is the presidential candidate, although
that’s sometimes hard to remember. So how does Romney/Ryan differ from Ryan
alone? It’s worse. Like the Ryan plan, the Romney plan offers huge tax
breaks to corporations and the wealthy, while pledging to offset these cuts
by closing unspecified loopholes; but Mr. Romney adds to the implausibility
by also demanding higher defense spending and eliminating the Medicare cost
savings contained in Obamacare. Realistically, the Romney plan would
explode the deficit, not reduce it.

Yet Mr. Romney boasts about his fiscal responsibility; in Tampa he accused
President Obama of hurting the economy with big deficits (while also
declaring that Mr. Obama was destroying jobs by cutting military spending —
go figure), then declared that “We will cut the deficit and put America on
track to a balanced budget.” Yep, he’s another Rosie Ruiz Republican.

So what is this election about? To be sure, it’s about different visions of
society — about Medicare versus Vouchercare, about preserving the safety
net versus destroying it. But it’s also a test of how far politicians can
bend the truth. This is surely the first time one of our major parties has
run a campaign so completely fraudulent, making claims so at odds with the
reality of its policy proposals. But if the Romney/Ryan ticket wins, it
won’t be the last.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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