See Me Squeegee

Paul Ryan is a liar.

I actually defended him, somewhat, in the wake of the RNC – he never actually lied about that GM plant closing in Wisconsin.  While fact-checkers may have classified his comments as “misleading” (that plant was closed before Obama took office, and the plan to close it was made well before the election), he was deft enough as a lawyer/politician to phrase it such that his comments were 100% true.  If the American people want to blame Obama for the plant closing, well, they can choose what to believe, but Ryan did not lie.

Oh, but he did…in a way that cuts closer to my heart than a slam at  Obama does (and we all know that hurts me).

Paul Ryan claims to have run a sub-3-hour marathon – he said as much, with surprising specificity, in a recent interview.  Even worse, given my PR of 3:10, Paul Ryan says he ran a faster marathon than me, and a faster marathon than George W. Bush (who has a 3:44…but I remember him doing something closer to 3:30).  But in fact, Ryan lied.  Ryan’s time is actually worse than Sarah Palin’s.  She was 3:59.  He was 4:01, according to Runner’s World.  P.R. lied about his PR.

Now, one could argue that this story will blow up out of proportion and detract attention from the real issues and that Ryan was trying to be affable on the radio and may have misspoken.  But that’s bull.  A few reasons, some personal and some not:

-Ryan’s brother is a Boston qualifier, and Ryan is a self-described workout junkie.  He knows marathon times, at least somewhat, and knows what that kind of thing means to competitive runners.  No excuses.

-Ryan also knows that he’s under public scrutiny – the same kind of scrutiny that he gleefully exploits with Barack Obama’s misplaced pronoun “that”.  Can’t have it both ways, Paul.

-Sub-3 is a huge deal.  Above the Olympic Trials cutoff and below the Boston qualifying times, that’s the milestone for elite.  Ryan can’t just claim to have that standard and be over an hour off.  That’s like claiming to have run around a 4-minute mile in high school, or to have been a state champion.  If Ryan were off by 10 minutes in the 3:45-3:55 range, whatever.  But he picked a big milestone.

-Not only that, but he just missed a milestone in the 4-hour mark in his actual race.  He wasn’t “just under” anything – he was just over another hourly milestone.  So he can’t even claim that.

So what does this mean?  Paul Ryan is a jerk in the John Edwards mold.  He thinks he can strut around and impress people with his P90x workouts, fake-marathon times, folksy charm and handsome-for-a-politician looks, and we’ll just eat it up.  I don’t want to play the “if he’s lying about this who knows what else he’s lying about” card, so I’ll hold back on that.  But let’s call it what it is – Paul Ryan is a devious character.  If Politifact is to be believed, his political speeches are deliberately misleading – almost worse than lying, in fact, because he obviously pored over the details to make sure that he spoke exactly the truth but not a word more colorfully to shed any light on what an appropriate understanding of the truth would entail.  And now this – a blatant, specific lie to make himself look good, and a half-assed attempt to cover it up.

Paul Ryan’s greatest sin in my eyes?  He lied to say that he was better than me.  Rosie Ruiz Ryan, faking marathon excellence for limited glory.  If he can cut taxes as quickly as he cuts hours off his race time, he may be onto something.  But from now on, I don’t believe him for a minute…or for the 62 minutes he’s probably lying about.