If you thought Greenspan was bad

Just wait until you see the damage that the latest and possibly most overly trumped up political hack the Republicans have to offer, Lyin' Paul Ryan, can do. It is our misfortune that the so-called fiscal policy wonk, for whom budget numbers float around like gnats in a mid summer fuck fest, is the gatekeeper for any policies that President Obama may have a hope of passing.

Although he has served as a partisan warrior and foil to Mr. Obama throughout Mr. Obama’s presidency, his committee is at the junction where the White House and Republican agendas overlap — trade, taxes and possibly health care. And in an odd political twist, Mr. Ryan’s longstanding enmity for All Things Obama may be key to efforts to burnish the president’s legacy in the twilight of his second term.

If Mr. Ryan can strike a deal with the administration and Democrats on “fast track” trade authority, an agreement with a dozen economic partners along the Pacific Rim, an expansion of the earned-income tax credit and an overhaul of the tax code, he may be the only one on Capitol Hill who could sell it to his skeptical conservative colleagues.

“I think he sees that, and I think I see that,” said Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, the committee’s ranking Democrat, as firmly in the party’s liberal wing as the chairman is in its conservative camp. “That’s why he and I have had so many discussions on how to proceed.”

Mr. Ryan, in recent days, has picked up something of a mantra: “Working to find common ground and moving forward where we can find it.”

“There are a lot of things we can do with this administration,” he said in a lengthy interview.

There is, of course, grave skepticism that Mr. Ryan will be able to deliver. As Budget Committee chairman from 2011 to 2014, Mr. Ryan could paint broad themes on balancing the budget, transforming entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid, shriveling government and simplifying the tax code. As Ways and Means chairman, he has taken a job that is far more transactional, and his record for legislative accomplishment is scant.

Indeed, for all of Mr. Ryan’s policy prescriptions that so enrapture his House Republican colleagues, he has never really put together a major piece of bipartisan legislation, has rarely bucked a party-line vote and remains one of the more polarizing figures on Capitol Hill.

A man whose words mean even less than his numbers, if that is possible, finds himself at a key legislative junction. We will see if he can take direction well, he certainly doesn't have the stuff to lead on his own.