Reagan Youth: MR. RYAN´S WASHINGTON
After I saw this: “Mr. Ryan was born in 1970…” in the New York Times profile of the Republican V.P. candidate, I thought how baby boomers must be reeling at how young Paul Ryan is. At 42, he´s younger than JFK-who remains forever 47 in our Camelot-arrested minds-and even younger than Barack Obama, who was born in 1961.
Wait. Didn´t the Yippies say, “Never trust anyone born after ´69, man”?
No, they did not say that. Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman said a lot of far-out things, but since they´re not here, it´s up to me to say this about Paul Ryan.
He’s Reagan Youth.
Yep. They’re heeeere… Okay, maybe not them, but he is. Think about it. Born in 1970 means that by the time the future Wisconsin Congressman left for college it was the end of the Reagan administration. From the age of 10 until he turned 18, all Ryan knew was…well, according to that Times profile, “A Conservative Star With Roots in Small-Town America,” Ryan by 1988 “already had his core conservative beliefs and trickle down economic theories.”
“I don’t think it was a great professor who opened his eyes in college,” said his brother and confidant Tobin Ryan.
So who did raise the Wisconsinite´s baby-blues? Ayn Rand? No, because it wasn´t until his junior year (1991) that he took macroeconomics and a professor at Miami U says he talked to Ryan about Rand.
How do I define Reagan Youth? Someone who came up age during the Reagan revolution 1980-1988. Paul Ryan was high school class president during those formative years. He was also a child during the decade made famous by video games like Pac Man, which taught children the all-important basics of hand-eye coordination. Like many young Americans, Ryan got this skill not through sports – he only played a little soccer in high school- but via video screens. Think of it: if Ryan weren´t on the GOP ticket he could be a drone pilot killing Yemenites and Pakistanis.
Think about your own years between ages 10 and 18. Back when you were starting 5th grade or lived on your bicycle, hung out at a bookstore (so many more existed to do that at) or were taken “from crayons to perfume,” as Lulu sang to Sidney Poitier in “To Sir With Love.” My path to maturity was shaped from the late-60s to mid-70s, living through the assassinations of MLK and RFK, seeing young people beaten in the streets during the ´68 Democratic National Convention in Chicago on my TV. I remember asking my father, watching with me: “Why are police beating up students?” And my father, ever wise, replied, “I don´t know, son. I don´t know.” (And from that I learned to question authority because often, they did not know.)
What years informed you?
Where was I during young Mr. Ryan´s 1980s? Hiding out in San Francisco, New York, Greece and Minneapolis. Trying for a while to miss the entire Reagan administration. In fact, once, while Ryan was attending Miami of Ohio, I served as road manager for a standup comic who played that very university. Ryan may have been in the audience! (Yeah, right. He claims he was into Rage Against the Machine) I remember after the performance walking around campus avoiding a steady procession of students crazy drunk all over the lawns and roofs of frat houses. It was like a scene out of Indignation, the Philip Roth novel, where his protagonist is drafted into the Korean War after being kicked out of an Ohio college for his own fraternity hijinks. Only here it was the era of Reagan-Bush.
What made Ryan such a conservative and why is the Tea Party so excited about him? Just three years after forming that political party, one of their own could be a heartbeat from the top spot. You watch: one day the Tea Party will be the name of the party and Republicans will go the way of Bull Mooses, forever recalled as something known as one helluva “Grand Old Party.”
This is why Vice-President Paul Ryan is my worst nightmare. Forget policy – think mythology. By his 18th birthday in 1988, the country´s path had been set toward this B-movie disaster being played out in front of us today. As the potential leader of Reagan´s children on the radical right returning zombie-like to capture power, Ryan is someone about whom “Death of a Salesman’s” Arthur Miller warned us, “Attention must be paid.”
Does Romney-Ryan sound like it´s got any rhyme or reason to you?
Originally published in The Santa Monica Daily Press
