In the kingdom of the blind, they say, the one-eyed man is king. And so it is perhaps inevitable that outgoing House Speaker Paul “Paulie PowerPoint” Ryan should be considered a brain by a country as anti-intellectual as the United States. This is based on his fondness for the Objectivist, everyman-for-himself theories of Ayn Rand, a poor philosopher and an even poorer novelist (“The Fountainhead,” “Atlas Shrugged”) whose characters are basically stand-in for her bloated ideas.
Thus Ryan’s not really much of a Brainiac but then, he has always given the appearance of being something he is not. ...
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Read MoreIn tennis, one way to serve an ace is to serve right down the middle. But what works in sports doesn’t always work in politics. Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell – how I love it when WaPo posters (that’s Washington Post posters to the uninitiated) call him “Kentucky Fried Voldemort” – tried to serve one right down the middle with the Senate’s health-care bill. But all he’s gotten so far for his troubles is a double fault as Conservatives, that world of No Theater, balk at “Obamacare Light” and liberals decry the bill’s meanness toward, well, everyone but rich people.
Will Mitchie prevail? As he serves for the match, he’ll need every Republican vote – and he’s no Federer. ...
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