Detours and disguises on Romney trail

IT WAS a scene more fitting for a whodunit mystery than a vice-presidential roll-out.

US house budget committee chairman Paul Ryan — determined not to be seen as he began making his way from his Wisconsin home to the Norfolk, Virginia, battleship where he would be named Mitt Romney’s running mate — left through the back door of his house on Aug 10 and crept into the woods that led to his boyhood home.

On the other side, he met an aide who would sneak him to a small airport for a flight that would begin an adventure he says is still “going from the surreal to the real”.