"You’d expect a Rand devotee mired in the bureaucratic maw of the federal Leviathan to emulate her heroes by cultivating their sneeringly autocratic flare for rebellion. But Ryan has been an arch GOP loyalist, backing George W. Bush’s massive expansion of Medicare drug coverage and the costly invasion of Iraq, in spite of his carefully curated image as a crusading budget slasher.
On closer look, though, Ryan’s Randianism seems like a pose adopted as a deeper psychic compensation to make up for a chronic need to please in every conventional manner. He shows a craving for approval going back to his senior year in Janesville, Wis., when the yearbook named him the school’s “biggest brownnoser.” And that penchant for not merely pursuing, but luxuriating in, the ripest opportunity has stayed with Ryan ever since."
