Source: AzureGhost, polit​i​cal​gates​.blogspot​.com

Those who know me, know that I like to run half-​​marathons. The dis­tance (13.1 miles) is not too great, and as a friend said this morn­ing, “I can run a half-​​marathon and still mow the lawn that after­noon.” I’ve tried the marathon dis­tance, run­ning some­where between 15 and 20 of them (I’ve lost count).

When you’re a run­ner, scrupu­lous hon­esty is prized. That’s why a lot of us perked up our ears when Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Paul Ryan (R-​​Janesville, WI) claimed to have run a marathon in under three hours (called a “sub-​​3″ by run­ners). My PR (per­sonal record) is 4:12, a num­ber that’s burned in my mem­ory. Every time I run I have that num­ber in mind. An “aver­age” marathon time nation­wide, across all age groups, is about 4:15. For­mer Sen­a­tor John Edwards posted a blaz­ing 3:30 (the bet­ter to run away from com­pro­mis­ing sit­u­a­tions, appar­ently); for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush owns a much-​​more-​​than-​​respectable 3:44:52; for­mer Gov­er­nor Sarah Palin has a damn good 3:59:36; and for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore has a rather piti­ful 4:54:25. As About​.com snark­ily sug­gests, “If you’re hop­ing to beat a politician’s time and think Bush and Palin’s marks are a lit­tle out of your league, Al Gore’s time is a lot more achievable.”

On the Hugh Hewitt [HH] radio show, Ryan [PR] makes a smooth claim that he was a fan­tas­tic run­ner as a young man. From the transcript:

PR: No, I was stu­dent gov­ern­ment and ath­let­ics, honor soci­ety, you know, that kind of thing. I was kind of a com­bi­na­tion. I was class pres­i­dent my junior year, I was the school board rep my senior year. I let­tered in var­sity, you know, my first year in high school, mostly soc­cer and track. I was a dis­tance run­ner and a soc­cer player. So kind of well-​​rounded. I can’t, I can play a cow­bell. That’s about it for instruments.

HH: Are you still running?

PR: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons any­more. I just run ten miles or yes [ed.: he said ‘less’].

HH: But you did run marathons at some point?

PR: Yeah, but I can’t do it any­more, because my back is just not that great.

HH: I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your per­sonal best?

PR: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-​​something.

HH: Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University…

PR: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.

A run­ner has to have a really good time to qual­ify for the Boston Marathon. (There are char­ity slots for us slow­pokes — in my age group, I’d have to run 3:30, which is sim­ply not going to hap­pen.) All peo­ple who have ever run a marathon know their times in rela­tion­ship to Boston Marathon times. “Wow, John Doe really burned up the course today. He got a Boston qual­i­fy­ing time,” is some­thing I’ve heard at every marathon I’ve ever run.

Ryan’s time would have eas­ily qual­i­fied him for the Boston Marathon that year. (The cur­rent Boston qual­i­fy­ing time for an 18-​​to-​​34 year old is 3:05.)

Alas, one thing run­ners know is that The Inter­nets (a series of tubes) com­bined with The Google makes for a pow­er­ful means of check­ing claims of marathon glory. Thus it was revealed, later that week by Runner’s World, that Ryan ran his only marathon as a 19-​​year-​​old, in the 1991 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota.

His time was … 4:01:25.

Every­one who hasn’t yet done it wants to run a sub-​​4 marathon. I’ve tried it; as you know by now, I never achieved it. You remem­ber miss­ing a goal like that. Absent mag­i­cal think­ing, 4:01:25 is not a sub-​​4 marathon. It’s espe­cially not a sub-​​3.

On August 31, Ryan’s spokesman issued a state­ment:

The race was more than 20 years ago, but my brother Tobin—who ran Boston last year—reminds me that he is the owner of the fastest marathon in the fam­ily and has never him­self ran a sub-​​three. If I were to do any round­ing, it would cer­tainly be to four hours, not three. He gave me a good rib­bing over this at din­ner tonight.

His brother Tobin’s time in the 2011 Boston Marathon (at the age of 46) was 3:34.

It’s indis­putable that Ryan is a very ath­letic man. The search “Paul Ryan shirt­less” spiked on Google on August 11, the day Ryan was announced as the Repub­li­can Vice Pres­i­den­tial nominee:

Google searches for “Paul Ryan shirt­less” on each day of August 2012.

(The elu­sive Paul Ryan Shirt­less Photo finally emerged on TMZ: Ryan and his wife Janna in bathing suits on vaca­tion, from 2006.)

Poli­ti­fact rat­ings for Obama, Biden, Rom­ney and Ryan as of Sep­tem­ber 1, 2012.

Per­haps you feel mis­rep­re­sent­ing your marathon time is an incon­se­quen­tial error. Per­haps it is.

But is it part of a larger pat­tern? Ryan’s con­ven­tion accep­tance speech set of a round of fren­zied fact check­ing (exam­ples here, here, here and here). Notably, The Wall Street Jour­nal failed to fact-​​check Ryan’s speech, which got them this sting­ing rebuke from the Colum­bia Jour­nal­ism Review.

Ryan Chit­tum of the Review says:

Look, when a vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date makes a speech with so many mis­lead­ing and/​or shame­less state­ments in it, it’s a story.

Lying about his marathon time seems to be part of a pat­tern of some­one who at best has a light touch on the truth. Do all politi­cians lie? Cer­tainly, all peo­ple who speak pub­licly with­out a TelePrompTer say things that they later regret. I tell my stu­dents I esti­mate about two seri­ous mis­takes an hour when I speak (hope­fully that, at least, is true). But even after almost four years in office, Pres­i­dent Obama has col­lected but six “Pants on Fire” rat­ings from Poli­ti­fact (one per­cent of the total they’ve researched).

Tak­ing the first three “truest” clas­si­fi­ca­tions in aggre­gate, Pres­i­dent Obama gets at least a half-​​truth out of his mouth at least 73 per­cent of the time. Vice Pres­i­dent Biden hits 66 per­cent or more. Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial Nom­i­nee Rom­ney gets it half-​​right at least 58 per­cent of the time. Repub­li­can Vice Pres­i­den­tial Nom­i­nee Ryan is now at 55 per­cent, but it’s still early for him; notice the small total num­ber of claims by Ryan that have been inves­ti­gated. (As Poli­ti­fact inves­ti­gates only dubi­ous claims, this met­ric likely far under­states the per­cent­age of truth­ful state­ments each has made.)

I actu­ally find this level of hon­esty sur­pris­ingly high, given the demands made on politi­cians by our 24⁄7 news envi­ron­ment and the pres­sures they must oper­ate under.

Still, Ryan is begin­ning to estab­lish a trou­bling pat­tern of pre­var­i­ca­tion about things big and small. His “run­ner story” was the hot topic at this morning’s half-​​marathon (the per­son who told it to me, a Polit­i­cal Sci­ence pro­fes­sor at a nearby uni­ver­sity, rou­tinely runs a sub-​​3 marathon). He needs to run no fur­ther down the Road to Perdi­tion, regard­less of the pace.

Well…assuming he told the truth about AC/​DC, per­haps he prefers the High­way to Hell.

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