As we come to the end of an absurd effort based on weak arguments, it’s worth reviewing a few things one more time. The effort to which I’m referring is, of course, the Paul Ryan for President boomlet, which Rep. Ryan mercifully put out of its misery earlier this week. Despite all the pleading and begging coming from The Weekly Standard, Ryan has chosen to stay where he is. That’s the right decision for Ryan, his constituents, the GOP, and the advancement of the issues most closely associated with him. Ryan’s boosters are fortunate that he has rejected their entreaties. Dave Weigel summed up why the boomlet never made any sense:

You take a politician who, currently, is in the busy and low-risk position of writing (and arguing for) budget proposals that advance the GOP’s arguments. You take him from the land of think tanks and friendly interviews, and throw him into Iowa and New Hampshire, where he gets drilled to death about his TARP vote, the fact that Medicare cuts are included in the 2012 budget, the not-good-enough-for-the-Tea Party progress toward a balanced budget, etc and etc. And you leave a less-idolized, less-media-savvy person in charge of the Budget Committee. Great idea! The Ryan hype was always the cult of the presidency/presidential elections blown up to Scientology-sized proportions.

In light of that, Christian Schneider at NRO has one of the more unusual reactions to Ryan’s announcement:

The office is too small for him. The microscope on the presidency takes small ideas and makes them look big; Ryan’s ideas are big enough to be seen from a mile away.

Ryan’s fans naturally believe that it would have been this easy for him to succeed and enter the White House in 2013, which is why they have been calling on him to run. Schneider is no different, but I believe this is the first time that anyone has expressed the view that Presidency is too limited of an office for someone of Ryan’s caliber. It seems that Ryan correctly understood that his presidential bid would be too late, quixotic, and faced with a difficult uphill climb the whole way. No one could have lived up to the preposterously high expectations that Ryan’s enthusiasts were setting for him, and he was wise not to try.