Seriously, kill me now. From the MFing Washington Post:
But Ryan (Wis.) appeared rumpled, slightly sloppy for a vice-presidential candidate. As if he’d flown in hours before and mistakenly picked up someone else’s suitcase. His pants sagged at his ankles. His starched, white shirt bunched at his stomach. His dark jacket drooped, better suited for a man of the cloth than a man on a presidential ticket.
Ryan, a high-ranking House Republican, known as a stickler for numbers and a devotee of hard-core workouts, seemed oddly unconcerned about the clothes he wore during the most important announcement of his political career. How could a fitness buff with 6 to 8 percent body fat wear a suit that looked two sizes too big?
“Paul Ryan looked like what he is: a rumpled, think-tank policy wonk sort of guy,” said Christine K. Jahnke, president of Positive Communications, a Washington-based media and image-consultant company (her hundreds of clients have included The Washington Post). “I don’t think that will change as the campaign goes on. If he clicks it up too much, both he and Romney will have the distant CEO-Wall Street look.”
Perhaps his raw, slightly unkempt suit balances out Romney’s snazzier, controlled appearance. Ryan’s Midwestern sensibilities and baggy pants may appeal to swing voters who think cuff links are wasteful expenditures. The man believes in trimming budgets, not pant legs.
A few points:
Ryan is not stickler for numbers. He’s a fraud, whose budget does not add up in even the most elementary fashion.
Ryan is not a wonky, intellectual too busy with big ideas to worry about fashion. He’s an ideological hack whose lips are permanently set to pucker in case a rich ass happens to walk by.
Ryan is not running for personal trainer-in-chief. He’s running for Vice President of the United States on a philosophy of screwing 99% of the country in order to provide more tax cuts to the wealthy. I think that little factoid is more important than his body fat percentage.
The fact that his suit looked like shit is really beside the point, no?
UPDATE: A number of comments note this piece appeared in the Style section, so who cares? Which is true as far as it goes, except that the piece uses his suit as a way to spin Ryan into an appealing, folksy character who is just too focused on budget details to visit a tailor. He’s not appealing. He’s not folksy. And his expertise on the budget is fraudulent.