“He lost his father early and had to grow up sooner than he wanted to,” said Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). “That certainly has informed his policies and his outlook. We’re better off looking inward . . . individual responsibility is where it’s at.”
Ryan, 42, still lives in his home town of Janesville, Wis., with his wife, Janna, and their three children, and he sleeps in his congressional office on weeknights. In his private life, Ryan pursues the hobbies of an everyman with an overachiever’s zeal. He sweats through grueling “P90x” workouts in the House gym. He beats other legislators in contests to recite the most lines from “Fletch.” And he fishes for catfish — with his bare hands.
Flake remembered once calling Ryan’s cellphone on a weekend: Ryan answered in a whisper. Flake talked for five minutes about the farm bill before Ryan cut him off: “Can I call you back? I’m in a deer stand.”
Ryan has, in many ways, lived a life that is the inverse of his running mate’s.
Romney is the son of a politician who found great success in the private sector. Ryan is the son of a lawyer who died when Ryan was 16. He has spent almost his entire adult life in Washington — either in government or in think tanks trying to influence government. He has cited his Catholic faith and author Ayn Rand as major influences on his conservative thinking.
Despite their differences, Romney and Ryan have an unusually easy chemistry together, one that began in 2007, when the two met for the first time.
“They hit it off instantly. They really wonked out, about taxes, budget, entitlement reform,” said Cesar Conda, then an adviser to Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign. Conda was taking Romney around to meet congressional Republicans. The meeting with Ryan was supposed to last just a few minutes. It went close to an hour.
“When Romney and I left the office, Romney was saying, ‘Wow, I really like this guy,’ ” Conda, now chief of staff to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), recalled Saturday.
People have always liked Ryan. The story of his political life has been his success in charming people — including a string of powerful friends in Congress, think tanks and the conservative media — in small rooms.
But now, the big rooms. Stadiums, even.
Ryan has never run for anything bigger than his congressional seat and has rarely had to campaign hard for that. It remains to be seen whether he can work the same magic of his town hall meetings on the vast crowds of a presidential campaign, many of whom will be getting to know him for the first time. In a recent CNN poll, 54 percent of the public said they either didn’t know Ryan at all or had no opinion about him.
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