A way that Ryan could have come through this better is to have said, "well, I only ran one marathon and ran it easy just to try one. Mostly I raced shorter distances in college and did pretty decently."
It would have been a lot harder to contest whether he ran easy for a 4:01 marathon--sure, no doubt someone would have come out of the woodwork and said, "no, I saw him--he was struggling," but it would have been a harder thing to prove objectively.
But it does come across as strange to alter one's time and then use the adjective "fast."
I wonder really why any candidate needs to paint him/herself as some superhuman hero. I'm not asking for a president to be God (who, I'm sure, is pretty busy and hasn't time for this gig, which is probably anyway below Her/His pay grade). I'm not asking for someone to run a 2:50something marathon or climb 40x14k peaks or leap tall buildings in a single bound. Superheroes are fun for comic books and Greek mythology.
I want a human being who has the ability to lead, who espouses policies that I can endorse, and who is as honest as someone in that position can be (in politics, I realize perfection is a pretty high bar to clear).
Despite a lot of obstructionism in Congress, Obama has accomplished some pretty significant things. I'll refer readers to this admittedly partisan site, which does, however, provide more objective links to the items it lists:
http://www.obamadidwhat.org
.
Is he perfect? Has he worked miracles? No. I doubt even he would claim that. I think he came in with a lot of people expecting him to work magic. And I suspect he probably hoped he'd accomplish a lot more than he did.
But the perfect person hasn't emerged to seek the job. So I'm going with him. And this is not b/c Ryan is pulling a marathon time out of a hat (although this doesn't endear him to me), but because I worry that the country will go backward if the R/R team is elected. And we'll be back to the policies that brought down the economy in the first place. If we can stick to what makes our candidate the right person for the job, while acknowledging our candidate's failings, we probably will go a long way toward keeping the dialogue civil.
And if the Brojos want to endorse a particular candidate, even one I don't support, I respect their freedom to do so--and the freedom of others (myself included) to disagree with them. Also want to thank them for restoring this thread, even though I REALLY should be doing other stuff. ;)