Why Did It Close? And What Now?

Kruse: JANESVILLE, Wis. — The Labor Day parade here in Paul Ryan's hometown started with a police siren. It moved slowly down Milwaukee Street, followed by clowns, a green-fatigued Vietnam vet with a rifle and a limp, a high school marching band's pimple-faced clarinetists, members of the United Auto Workers Local 95, and its many retirees.

Sitting in a lawn chair on the curb, Lisa Hansen watched the parade move past in the direction of her former workplace — the shuttered General Motors plant on the bank of the Rock River, more than 4 million empty square feet surrounded by chain-link fence and barbed wire.

The plight of the GM plant, forgotten almost everywhere outside of Janesville, burst into the news during the Republican National Convention when Paul Ryan mentioned it in his speech. Barack Obama, the vice presidential nominee said, had pledged to work to keep the plant open. That didn't happen.

The suggestion that Obama was at fault triggered a brief frenzy as fact-checkers and campaign officials parsed quotes for intent, dissected the time line and accused each other of distortion.

It was a debate that left Lisa Hansen largely unmoved.

"Politically, the Republicans were in office," she said, "but I don't know who's to blame. Just the economy."