Opinion

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There’s a line of thinking on the political left that Mitt <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Romney</a> served up a great softball in picking Paul Ryan as his running mate. 
 According to <a href="/topics//Chicago_Tribune">Chicago Tribune</a> columnist <a href="/topics//Clarence_Page">Clarence Page</a>, “Ryan brings to the <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Romney</a> campaign the Tea Party’s style of magical thinking, a blissfully simplistic, ideologically driven world view that seems to think candidates can win votes by promising to reduce popular government services.” 
 <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> candidates, they say, are ducking for cover to avoid being branded with budget reforms that Ryan, as chairman of the <a href="/topics//House_Budget_Committee">House Budget Committee</a>, has proposed, particularly for Medicare and Medicaid. 
 Vice President <a href="/topics//Joe_Biden">Joe Biden</a>, eloquent as always, told a mostly black audience in <a href="/topics//Virginia">Virginia</a> that <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republicans</a> want to put “y’all back in chains.” 
 Although <a href="/topics//Joe_Biden">Biden</a> has taken flak for this nauseating remark, he should get credit for summing up how <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a> really think: that government running your life makes you free and that anyone who proposes freedom and choice wants to put “y’all back in chains.” 
 Earlier this year, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan <a href="/topics//Congressional_Budget_Office">Congressional Budget Office</a>, sent a report on the nation’s budget to <a href="/topics//House_Budget_Committee">House Budget Committee</a> chairman Ryan. 
 Here’s what he said: 
 “The explosive path of the federal debt that the <a href="/topics//Congressional_Budget_Office">Congressional Budget Office</a> (CBO) projects under what many observers would view as current policies underscores the need for policy changes to put the nation on a sustainable course. 
 “The aging of the population and rising costs for health care will push spending for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health-care programs considerably higher as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP).” 
 Elmendorf concludes that without major increases in revenues and/or substantial cuts in spending, “the resulting budget deficits will increase federal debt to unsupportable levels.” 
 So Paul Ryan’s high crime is being courageous, honest and leveling with the American people about the tough realities facing us. 
 He, like most <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republicans</a>, believes that raising taxes, when our economy is growing at half its historical average, and with the <a href="/topics//Unemployment">unemployment</a> rate 40 percent higher than its historical average, is economic suicide. 
 So Ryan takes on the major culprits in driving our long-term fiscal crisis — entitlements spending. 
 Is this “magical thinking?” No, it’s guts. 
 And what courageous measures do <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrat</a> critics take on? No major spending-reform proposals and no across-the-board tax hikes, which Elmendorf suggests as the alternative. 
 Just the usual class-warfare rhetoric. Tax the top 1 percent, who already pay 39 percent of income taxes, and who alone could never cover the huge deficits that CBO is projecting. 
 In 1975, 10 percent of the population was on Medicaid. Now it is double that. 
 Ryan’s idea of block-granting federal funds for Medicaid to states would give local latitude and responsibility to promote innovation to make more productive use of limited resources. 
 A new study published in the journal <a href="/topics//Health_Affairs">Health Affairs</a> reports that 31 percent of physicians refuse patients on Medicaid. Yet, when innovative business models emerge to deliver care in underserved poor communities, they are attacked by the left. 
 The <a href="/topics//Center_for_Public_Integrity">Center for Public Integrity</a>, whose funders include <a href="/topics//George_Soros">George Soros</a>, has posted on its website that Ryan’s budget plan is a “Path to the Poorhouse.” Yet it also attacks dental health maintenance organizations, a recent business concept to organize dental practices, making it feasible to accept Medicaid reimbursements and provide dental care in poor neighborhoods. 
 There is a saying that you can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. 
 Paul Ryan is courageously delivering truth to the American people, boldly and clearly. 
 He can’t make anyone drink the water. But if honesty and courage is no longer what sells in America, we can be sure that the future is not pretty. 
 <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Romney</a>’s bet, and I think it is a good one, is that the American people are ready for Paul Ryan and an adult conversation. 
 Star Parker is an author and president of CURE, Center for Urban Renewal and Education. See more at www.urbancure.org.

op-parker

Parker: Paul Ryan wants to have an adult conversation with America about medicare

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The striking thing about <a href="/topics//Paul_Ryan">Paul Ryan</a>'s ascent is the gulf between his proposals and the way the media have characterized them. Since Mitt <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Romney</a> named Ryan to the ticket on Saturday, the news has been filled with talk of the "fiscal conservative" (<a href="/topics//NPR">NPR</a>), "intent on erasing deficits" (<a href="/topics//New_York_Times_Company">New York Times</a>), who has become "the intellectual heart of the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican Party</a>'s movement to slash deficits" (The Post). 
 All of this is demonstrably false. Ryan's con has succeeded largely because <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a> haven't sensed the political salience of assailing his plans from the right; instead, they've chosen to slam only Ryan's regressive priorities and Medicare scheme. 
 This strategic error allows the presumption that Ryan, and thus Romney, are the true apostles of fiscal responsibility in this race, a value important to the voters who will decide November's outcome. But the con has worked in part because budgets make journalists' eyes glaze over, and once the phony Ryan meme took hold two years ago it became hard to dislodge. 
 Now that Ryan is on the ticket, however, the stakes are too high not to expose the fraud. In that spirit (and at the risk of taxing readers who've heard my Ryan rants before), I offer one wonk's guide to what every citizen should know about Ryan's plans. Otherwise, like the talented Mr. Ripley, Ryan will continue to get away with (fiscal) murder. 
 Ryan is not a "fiscal conservative." 
 A fiscal conservative pays for the government he wants. Ryan never has. His early "Roadmap for America's Future" didn't balance the budget until the 2060s and added $60 trillion to the <a href="/topics//US_National_Debt">national debt</a>. Ryan's revised plan, passed by the House in 2011, wouldn't reach balance until the 2030s while adding $14 trillion in debt. It adds $6 trillion in debt over the next decade alone -- yet <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republicans</a> had the chutzpah to say they wouldn't raise the debt limit! (I remain mystified why <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">President Barack Obama</a> never hammered home this reckless contradiction by insisting that the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">GOP</a> "raise the <a href="/topics//US_National_Debt">debt ceiling</a> just by the amount it would take to accommodate the debt in <a href="/topics//Paul_Ryan">Paul Ryan</a>'s budget.") 
 Ryan is an extreme "small government conservative." <a href="/topics//Ronald_Reagan">Ronald Reagan</a> ran government at 22 percent of gross domestic product when our population was much younger. Ryan and Romney want to run government at 20 percent of GDP even as the number of Americans on Social Security and Medicare doubles. Even if we slow these programs' growth, it's impossible to shrink the federal role in an aging society this sharply without eliminating <a href="/topics//VAST_(musician)">vast</a> swaths of what Americans have come to expect from government -- not to mention shortchanging already lagging investments in research and development and infrastructure. Over time, Ryan's "vision" would decimate most federal activities beyond Social Security, Medicare and defense. 
 When I asked Ryan last October why he thought -- in his words -- "the historic size [of government as a share of GDP], or smaller," was sound policy when we'd shortly be doubling the number of seniors on the biggest federal programs, he replied, "Because we can't keep doing everything for everybody in this country." 
 Ryan says that on our current path we will "transform our social safety net into a <a href="/topics//Hammock_(musician)">hammock</a>, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency." But I've never understood what <a href="/topics//Hammock_(musician)">hammock</a> Ryan is talking about. If programs for seniors haven't been a "<a href="/topics//Hammock_(musician)">hammock</a>" until now, simply doubling the number of people eligible for them can't turn them into a "<a href="/topics//Hammock_(musician)">hammock</a>" tomorrow. We have an aging population challenge and a health-cost challenge. We don't have a "hammock" challenge. 
 Ryan is not a truthteller. 
 Ryan boasted on Saturday that he and Romney have "the courage to tell you the truth." But political courage means telling your base things they don't want to hear. The truth Ryan and Romney won't tell - which explains the staggering debt in Ryan's plan - is that taxes need to rise as the boomers retire. (The truth <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a> won't tell is that raising taxes on the rich alone won't suffice.) But on Medicare ... I can hear the Democratic groans coming, but Ryan deserves credit here. Ryan leaves Medicare on its current outsized trajectory for the next decade, as spending soars from $560 billion to $950 billion. Because of our uniquely inefficient health-care sector, which leaves us spending twice per capita what other wealthy nations spend, the voucher he calls for thereafter would suffice to buy seniors terrific care everywhere but here. Even if his approach is imperfect, Ryan is right to challenge our Medical Industrial Complex to change. 
 So, <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a>, if you must demagogue (and I know you must), I say: Demagogue responsibly. Blast the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">GOP</a> for trimming Medicare growth to cut taxes for the rich -- but don't damn the idea of slowing Medicare's growth "the right way." In a few years the cash going to Medicare that's not needed for quality care will be the reason we're too strapped to invest in poor kids. 
 Matt Miller, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and co-host of public radio's "Left, Right &amp; Center," writes a weekly online column for The Washington Post.

Commentary

OPMILL14

Miller: Paul Ryan right to challenge the Medical Industrial Complex

Paul Ryan is not the progeny of <a href="/topics//Ronald_Reagan">Ronald Reagan</a>, as starry-eyed <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republicans</a> would have it. Yes, he has a winning smile and twinkling eyes. But he hasn't run anything bigger than an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. 
 The closer parallel for Ryan is <a href="/topics//Dick_Cheney">Dick Cheney</a>, another Man With a Plan. <a href="/topics//George_W._Bush">George W. Bush</a> needed a running mate who was older and wiser to fill in the blanks in his thinking. So he balanced his own vague compassionate conservatism with Cheney's bloodless neoconservative certainty. 
 On Sept. 11, 2001, as hand-wringers in the West <a href="/topics//Wing_(musician)">Wing</a> were wondering what to do, Cheney pulled his plan right off the shelf. It wasn't the right plan, but having something always feels so much better than having nothing. "Go to <a href="/topics//Baghdad">Baghdad</a>, young man," Cheney told the president, and that's what Bush did. He deposed <a href="/topics//Saddam_Hussein">Saddam Hussein</a>, occupied a country, turned a surplus into a deficit and left office with approval ratings in the 20s and 30s. 
 Now we have Ryan, the Wisconsin representative who is Mitt <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Romney</a>'s running mate. He is another Man with a Plan. Like Cheney's foreign-policy wish list, Ryan's amalgam of neocon dreams doesn't have all that much to do with the immediate economic crisis that Romney says his campaign is all about. His plan is about the federal budget, debt and deficit. It's not about creating jobs. 
 Plan Man Only in the short term is Ryan a plus for Romney. As a Man Without a Plan until last weekend, Romney was losing altitude. <a href="/topics//Rush_Limbaugh">Rush Limbaugh</a>, the Club for Growth and the <a href="/topics//Wall_Street_Journal">Wall Street Journal</a> editorial page didn't mind so much that he lacked core convictions on abortion or gay rights. This crowd was deeply <a href="/topics//Disturbed_(musician)">disturbed</a>, however, that the presumptive <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> presidential nominee didn't have a belief system akin to theirs on the economy. 
 What's more, Romney was being defined not as a <a href="/topics//Steve_Jobs">Steve Jobs</a> kind of rich guy (that is, he built something valuable) but as a Gordon Gekko kind of rich guy (that is, he moved money and workers around a chess board and came out a winner no matter what). 
 It didn't help that the proceeds of that maneuvering found their way to the <a href="/topics//Cayman_Islands">Cayman Islands</a> and other places outside the U.S. In early July, the Journal's editorial board told Romney to get off the water scooter and down to business. 
 Romney needed to quiet those critics. When he looked at those on his V.P. shortlist, great guys all, each had something missing: Was there a Portman Plan? A Pawlenty Plan? A Christie Plan? They had plans born of governing and experience. They did not have a Serious All-Encompassing Plan for the Future, complete with a slick website and catchy name. 
 With Ryan, all Romney had to do was add water, stir and -- voila! -- he had a product line his brand lacked. Sure, Romney had a 59-point plan he threw out during the primaries, but it was such a hodgepodge of bromides the candidate rarely mentioned it. It never became known as the Romney Plan. 
 But Ryan may well be to domestic policy what Cheney was to foreign policy: a fresh vessel for old ideas beloved by the archconservative <a href="/topics//Wing_(musician)">wing</a> of the party yet sadly irrelevant to the current situation or candidate. Privatize Social Security? Check. 
 Cut every line item but defense? Natch. Shift everything to the states and let them kill it? Sure. 
 As for Medicare, Newt Gingrich, who wanted the program to wither on the vine, called Ryan's scheme for it "right-<a href="/topics//Wing_(musician)">wing</a> social engineering." With Ryan's plan, the vine dies. He will end it, not mend it. 
 Gym Rat As Ryan's plan is wrapped around Romney's neck (along with Ryan's behavior when he's not dreaming in his ivory tower: votes in favor of TARP, two wars and adding a prescription-drug program to Medicare), Romney may come to wish for the seasoned counsel of Rob Portman or Tim Pawlenty, or some of the earthiness and extra pounds of Chris Christie. In other words, Romney may find himself wishing for a running mate who spent a little less time in the House gym and a little more with the guy working a double shift. 
 As Bush did with Cheney, Romney decided that it wasn't sufficient just to endorse the policies of Ryan -- he needed Ryan himself on the ticket to placate his right <a href="/topics//Wing_(musician)">wing</a>. 
 For the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican Party</a>, it has been a long march from Barry Goldwater to the present, with a few hiccups (Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush) along the way. Conservatives have achieved dominance of their party. The country now gets to decide if it wants a full dose of trickle-down economics, with the working and middle classes paying for tax cuts for the wealthy, who of course can be trusted to fix everything. 
 At least it won't be a campaign about nothing. This will be one about something. 
 <a href="/topics//Margaret_Carlson">Margaret Carlson</a> is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are her own. Send email to <a href="/topics//Margaret_Carlson">Margaret Carlson</a> at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net.

OPCARL14

Carlson: Is Paul Ryan the second coming of Cheney?

paul ryan dick cheney cropped

Last Thursday's <a href="/topics//Wall_Street_Journal">Wall Street Journal</a> editorial "Why Not Paul Ryan?" made the case for his selection as the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> vice-presidential nominee in this statement: "Romney can win a big election over big issues. He'll lose a small one." 
 After Ryan's serious proposal to restructure Medicare -- which virtually everyone knows must be reformed -- the response from <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a> was an unserious TV ad, which showed a Ryan look-alike pushing an old woman in a wheelchair over a cliff. 
 If Ryan and Romney can effectively respond to such silliness, they will not only win the election; they will actually accomplish something that will <a href="/topics//Benefit_(designer)">benefit</a> all Americans. 
 Is America ready for a serious discussion of issues, rather than the superficial approach that has defined so much of modern politics? We're about to find out. There may be a remnant, a Puritan ethic, still living within our collective DNA that can remind us about the evil of debt, living within one's means and taking care of yourself first, rather than relying on inefficient and overreaching government. 
 The <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a> administration has done nothing to warrant a second term. If Ryan and Romney can force Americans to pay attention to the need for real change, instead of the unaffordable snake oil <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">President Barack Obama</a> has been selling, they will win handily and take back the <a href="/topics//U.S._Senate">Senate</a> for <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republicans</a>. Anyone needing to be reminded of Ryan's debating skills should re-visit his criticism of the president's health-care measure before it passed with most of <a href="/topics//U.S._Congress">Congress</a> not knowing what was in it. It's worth your time to watch this video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPxMZ1WdINs. 
 Ryan will wipe the floor with Vice President <a href="/topics//Joe_Biden">Joe Biden</a> in their one debate in October, but on the campaign trail he will remind Americans that this election is important. It's not about race, class, or envy of Romney's wealth. It is about America's immediate and long-term future. Surgery is painful, but an ailing nation must have it or we will die financially and culturally. It's as simple as that. 
 It is a truism that a nominee's pick of a running mate is his first big decision and reflects on what his approach to the presidency will be. Some other <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> nominees have chosen running mates for reasons other than their intellectual heft. Romney's pick of Ryan shows he means business. 
 The <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a> smear machine will attack Ryan in every conceivable way, but if Ryan does not allow himself to be distracted and frames the issues in the proper way ("under <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a> why would you think you would be better off in four years when you're worse off today than you were four years ago?") he might force many Americans to stop being distracted by irrelevancies and start focusing on what matters most. 
 Romney-Ryan must also re-tell America's story. They should feature at every campaign stop someone who has succeeded without help from the federal government, including small business owners who did, in fact, build their businesses. Let's see some Americans who overcame difficult circumstances by making right decisions. Inspiration and perspiration -- not taxing and spending -- built America and can rebuild it. 
 This election isn't about politicians; it's about us. Clearing the debris caused by broken and dysfunctional government, while maintaining a safety net for the genuinely needy, will not only restore the economy, it will restore optimism. 
 <a href="/topics//Ronald_Reagan">Ronald Reagan</a> (Romney-Ryan is another "RR") ran for re-election in 1984 and inspired people to believe in themselves, not government. Obama appears to want the opposite. 
 Ancient cultures attached a lot of meaning to names. In Gaelic, Ryan means "king." In a country without a monarch, a synonym might very well be "vice president." 
 Readers may email Tribune Media Services columnist Cal Thomas at tmseditors@tribune.com.

OPTHOM14

Thomas: Mitt Romney - Paul Ryan -- real change

Mitt <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Romney</a>'s pick of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate is a bold boom-or-bust move. 
 The potential boom is easy to spot: Ryan is whip-smart on budget numbers, telegenic with a squeaky clean family, and he hails from the Midwest so crucial in the Electoral College. Perhaps most important, his selection finally solidifies Romney's standing with his party's dominant right-<a href="/topics//Wing_(musician)">wing</a> base. But to avoid the bust, <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Romney</a> and Ryan will have to navigate past some tough challenges. 
 For one, Ryan has never run for an office larger than a congressional district. National candidates need seasoned reflexes, to instantly calibrate how their words and actions will appear to the entire country. 
 What's more, Romney's selection of Ryan reignites the tax issue. Ryan is the author of the <a href="/topics//U.S._House_of_Representatives">House of Representatives</a>' budget plan, which prioritizes tax cuts and shrinking government over deficit reduction. While Ryan has been quite specific on what he would cut, he is vague on the tax reform side. An analysis of his plan by the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank, projects that there are simply not enough loopholes to keep the Ryan plan viable. Romney's camp has said the former governor is "putting together his own plan," but any debate that follows about taxes could also add grease to the fire over whether Romney should release multiple years' tax returns. 
 Which brings us to the third challenge. For decades, data developed by social researchers Hadley Cantril and Lloyd Free have been accepted by pollsters and political scientists as the best measure of the American electorate's philosophy. The results of their surveys of public opinion have consistently revealed that Americans are "ideologically conservative," but "operationally liberal." 
 That means that if issues are defined philosophically, the conservatives have the edge, but programs and policies related to Social Security, Medicare and raising the minimum wage prove popular. Interestingly, the nation's balance has remained remarkably consistent: In 1965, the Cantril-Free data revealed only 17 percent of Americans were ideologically liberal -- but 65 percent supported those specific government programs that would put them in the "operationally liberal" camp. When that same measure was used again in 2010, 20 percent were found ideologically liberal -- just a slight increase -- but the same 65 percent were found to be operationally liberal. 
 <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republicans</a> have learned that if they keep issues to ideology, they win -- consider the defeat of president <a href="/topics//Bill_Clinton">Bill Clinton</a>'s health plan in 1994, and the party's gains in the House and <a href="/topics//U.S._Senate">Senate</a> during the fight over Obamacare in 2010 -- but if they get too specific on cutting popular programs, they lose -- such as <a href="/topics//Barry_Goldwater">Barry Goldwater</a>'s opposition to Social Security in 1964, and <a href="/topics//Bob_Dole">Bob Dole</a>'s efforts to cut Medicare and Medicaid in 1995, which he couldn't shake the next year even after changing his position. 
 We don't have to wonder how Ryan's Medicare plan -- which would replace the program for those now younger than 55 with vouchers that would not likely maintain the current level of coverage -- plays politically. In May 2011, in a Western New York congressional special election, <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrat</a> <a href="/topics//Kathy_Hochul">Kathy Hochul</a> pulled off an upset victory after she transformed her campaign into a litmus test on Ryan's Medicare plan. <a href="/topics//Kathy_Hochul">Hochul</a>'s win in a bedrock <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> district could foreshadow problems for the Romney-Ryan ticket from <a href="/topics//Maine">Maine</a> to <a href="/topics//Minnesota">Minnesota</a>, that crucial northern land mass <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a> needs to connect the <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a>' bicoastal coalition. If Ryan's Medicare stance sinks Romney in Ohio and Florida, then his gamble on Ryan will have failed. 
 Ryan on the ticket could also provide <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a> in House races with a magnet for pulling back the older white voters who went for the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">GOP</a> in 2010. How ironic if the addition of the House <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">GOP</a>'s intellectual star, Paul Ryan, to the national ticket, put the GOP's current House majority truly in jeopardy for the first time. 
 Ryan is unlikely to be a neutral factor for the Romney campaign. There's a huge upside for Romney, given Ryan's policy prowess and his vibrant down-home appeal. But there is also a downside to Ryan's assault on the gravitational forces underlying the political equilibrium on tax equity and Medicare. It will be fascinating to see whether Romney's daring selection ultimately proves a boom or bust.

OPGYO14

Gyory: Where does Paul Ryan fit in with decades of social science research?

Paul Ryan Budget

Now that conservative budget warrior Paul Ryan is slotted into the No. 2 spot on the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> presidential ticket, the stage is set for a rare political event: A campaign that is actually about big ideas. The public should demand nothing less. 
 <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">President Barack Obama</a> and <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> presidential hopeful <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Mitt Romney</a> have starkly different visions of the proper size of government and its role in American life. Fundamental to that divide is how much government taxes and spends, and that's where Ryan has made his mark while representing his Wisconsin district in <a href="/topics//U.S._Congress">Congress</a>. 
 As chairman of the <a href="/topics//House_Budget_Committee">House Budget Committee</a>, he crafted a controversial budget proposal for 2012 that was passed by the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">GOP</a>-dominated <a href="/topics//U.S._House_of_Representatives">House of Representatives</a> but rejected in the <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrat</a>-controlled <a href="/topics//U.S._Senate">Senate</a>. Whether you favor his prescription for deep cuts in spending and taxes, which Romney largely shares, or <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a>'s vision of targeted cuts, key investments and increased tax revenue, Ryan has helped tee up an adult debate the nation desperately needs at this pivotal moment in its history. 
 A campaign that gives voters a clear choice between competing views on issues such as government regulation, Social Security, Medicare, health care, green energy and military spending is the best hope that either <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a> or Romney will enter the White House in January with a mandate for decisive action. Without that strong mandate, the nation will be in for more dispiriting ideological warfare and policy paralysis, which it can ill afford. 
 Stubborn <a href="/topics//Unemployment">unemployment</a>, sluggish economic growth, ruinously costly health care, uncompetitive schools, growing poverty and crumbling infrastructure are undermining our ability to prosper in the global economy. To turn that around, the nation faces a momentous decision. The key choice is who will lead us for the next four years and where they will take us. But so far the presidential campaign has been a desultory affair. 
 Bumper sticker-level discourse such as "Obamaloney" and "Romneyhood" has taken the place of substantive debate, and we could be in for much worse. If the campaigns sink into the mud and stay there, irresponsibly demagoguing opposing positions on serious issues, thoughtful voters will look back come January and decry the shameful waste of a precious opportunity. 
 Unfortunately, even if <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a> and Romney campaigns take the high road, there's no guarantee that super PACs and other players, who by law are not controlled by the candidates, won't carpet-bomb key regions of the country with attack ads that bear only a passing resemblance to the truth. A well-funded disinformation campaign spewing a vision-distorting fog would make it all but impossible for voters to send a message about the nation's future. The public should sidestep the dirt and those who shovel it. People spending to elect presidents rely on negative ads that gin up controversy for one simple reason: They work. If voters reject them they'll be abandoned. So there is a real opportunity to make this year different. 
 Voters should insist on a serious campaign befitting the serious times.

VPCAMP14

Editorial: Mitt Romney's choice of Paul Ryan makes 'big ideas' debate possible

Now that Republican vice presidential pick Rep. Paul Ryan is in the limelight, a number of reports have focused on his open admiration for <a href="/topics//Ayn_Rand">Ayn Rand</a>. 
 To some, this makes him a thrilling champion of liberty; to others, it's a sign of kooky extremism. Rand, the Russian-born philosopher and best-selling novelist who died 30 years ago, has devout followers who see her as the greatest mind since Aristotle; most mainstream commentators dismiss her as a dreadful writer and worse thinker who appeals to selfishness and greed. 
 In fact, Rand is neither prophet nor caricature. I myself was once fascinated by her work; I never became a true believer -- and never rejected her as a youthful infatuation. She had important ideas and insights; but her thinking had some major problems and limitations that could also point to problems with Ryan's views. 
 A refugee from Soviet communism, Rand wrote at a time when collectivism was widely seen as the inevitable future. She became a powerful voice for each person's supreme right to exist for his or her own sake. She asserted the importance of individual spirit, intelligence and creativity as a driving force in human progress. She strove to provide a moral foundation for liberty, in contrast to those who conceded the nobility of communist ideals and defended capitalism only as a necessary evil. 
 While Rand was not the first to articulate a morality of individualism and rational self-interest, she had a unique ability to dramatize those ideas. Instead of dry economic reasoning, she offered a bold romantic vision, asserting that material achievement has spiritual value. 
 Many of Rand's arguments remain highly relevant. People who speak of redistributing wealth still tend to forget that there can be no wealth without production. Too often, "compassionate" social policies not only punish the productive but create perverse incentives that ultimately harm the beneficiaries of compassion. 
 Unfortunately, Rand's hyper-individualism also disregards major aspects of human existence: the role of family and community in shaping accomplishment; the reality of weakness and dependency as near-inevitable for part of most lives. In Rand's world, the weak and helpless are nearly always to blame for their plight. (That's one obvious reason her writings often appeal to teens, who think they're invincible.) 
 While Rand grudgingly acknowledged charity as a minor virtue, in her fiction even private charitable activities are usually derided, especially when directed at such undeserving recipients as "a pregnant slut." When other free market champions, such as economist Friedrich A. Hayek, allowed the government a role in alleviating poverty and its effects, Rand excoriated them for ideological impurity. 
 Like many intellectual constructs, Rand's philosophy suffers from the flaw of ignoring practical realities. In the heyday of her "Objectivist" movement, Rand brushed off charges that her heroes were unrealistic by asking, "Am I impossible?" Yet on her way to success, she accepted far more help from family and even charity than she would admit. 
 Rand is best appreciated as a visionary whose insights coexist with other important truths. Ryan has publicly renounced his erstwhile guru's atheism to embrace pro-life social conservatism -- to the regret of those of us who hoped Randian beliefs would inject the conservative movement with more secularism and respect for personal freedom. But does he recognize Rand's blind spots when it comes to wealth, poverty, and social obligations? The answer may determine his ability to offer a conservative vision that can work.<a href="/topics//Cathy_Young">Cathy Young</a> is a regular contributor to <a href="/topics//Reason_Magazine">Reason magazine</a> and the website RealClearPolitics.

Columnists

Cathy Young

OPYOU14

Young: Does Paul Ryan accept Ayn Rand's shortcomings?

150151163

<a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">President Barack Obama</a> may run as much against Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan -- architect of the House <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> budget plan -- as against Mitt <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Romney</a>. Last week, <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a> declared that the budget proposal, which would slash $5.3 trillion in federal spending over the next decade, would pit rich against poor in what amounted to "social Darwinism." 
 As the campaign spotlight lingers on Ryan, it's worth pointing out that the <a href="/topics//House_Budget_Committee">House Budget Committee</a> chairman isn't a one-trick pony. Sure, he's styled himself as an intellectual leader on fiscal policy. But he has a distinct worldview as well. 
 Here are some of the components of the other Ryan plan. 
 -- AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM: In a June 2011 foreign policy speech at the <a href="/topics//Alexander_Hamilton">Alexander Hamilton</a> Society, Ryan rejected isolationism and argued that "America is the greatest force for human freedom the world has ever seen," warning that "a world without U.S. leadership will be a more chaotic place." 
 A firm believer in American exceptionalism, he agrees with columnist <a href="/topics//Charles_Krauthammer">Charles Krauthammer</a> that American decline "is a choice." The country's fiscal policy and foreign policy "are on a collision course," he explains, "and if we fail to put our budget on a sustainable path, then we are choosing decline as a world power." 
 -- CHINA: Ryan appears to be less hardline and hawkish about <a href="/topics//China">China</a> than Romney, who has pledged to designate <a href="/topics//Beijing">Beijing</a> as a currency manipulator on his first day in office. True, Ryan has shuddered at the idea of a world led by <a href="/topics//China">China</a> and Russia and criticized <a href="/topics//China">China</a>'s restrictions on freedom of expression, "coercive population controls," and "unsound economic policies." But he's also argued that "we stand to <a href="/topics//Benefit_(designer)">benefit</a> from a world in which <a href="/topics//China">China</a> and other rising powers are integrated into the global order with increased incentives to further liberalize their political and economic institutions." 
 -- EMERGING ECONOMIES: Ryan wants to forge better relations with the world's emerging economies -- particularly "the rising democratic powers of <a href="/topics//India">India</a> and Brazil, which share many of our core principles and interests." America, he says, "must be willing to listen and accommodate their legitimate concerns as we preserve the framework of the international system and solidify our leadership within it." More generally, he charges the <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a> administration with taking America's "allies for granted" and wants to revitalize those relationships. 
 -- ARAB SPRING: Ryan has greeted the uprisings in the <a href="/topics//Middle_East">Middle East</a> with the same mixture of praise and trepidation that several <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> presidential candidates have displayed this year. "We are seeing long-repressed populations give voice to the fundamental desire for liberty," he's observed, while adding ominously that in these societies "the most organized factions often lack tolerance and reject pluralism." 
 It's too soon, he says, "to tell whether these revolutions will result in governments that respect the rights of their citizens, or if one form of autocracy will be supplanted by another." <a href="/topics//Saudi_Arabia">Saudi Arabia</a>: Ryan cites America's alliance with the Saudis as an example of when its interests run up against its ideals, and when "American policy should be tempered by a healthy humility about the extent of our power to control events in other regions." There are "voices in the Kingdom calling for reform," he notes. "We should help our allies effect a transition that fulfills the aspirations of their people." 
 -- IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN: Ryan believes that America's "ability to affect events is strongest in <a href="/topics//Iraq">Iraq</a> and <a href="/topics//Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>," and that the United States can't cut and run from the battle against "global terrorism" in these countries. Ryan was an early supporter of the surge in <a href="/topics//Iraq">Iraq</a>. "This whole thing is a big gamble," he said in 2007. "But it's probably the best gamble to take before throwing in the towel and allowing sectarian genocide to take over." His estimate that America could save roughly $1 trillion over the next decade by winding down the wars was later adopted by congressional <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a> and the White House. 
 -- DEFENSE SPENDING: Ryan's 99-page "Path to Prosperity" plan, released last month, provoked an outcry in calling for boosting military spending while slashing the international affairs budget -- funding for entities such as the State Department and USAID -- by nearly $5 billion. When Ryan said "we don't think the generals are giving us their true advice" in reference to the military budget, he was quick to walk back his comments. "I really misspoke," he explained. 
 In the wake of Ryan's foreign policy address last year, Matthew Yglesias argued in the American Prospect that Ryan seemed to subscribe to "more or less the liberal internationalist vision that's already at the core" of the <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a> administration's approach. The New Republic's Jonathan Chait mocked Ryan's "Norquistian-Churchillian foreign policy." The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin wrote that Ryan was one of the few politicians who could draw a connection between "conservative economic principles and American foreign policy and values." Ryan's worldview, in other words, appears to be a bit of a Rorschach test. And in a general election where appealing solely to the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> base just won't cut it, that might be exactly what Romney needs. 
 Writer Uri Friedman is an associate editor at Foreign Policy magazine.

OPFRIE14

Friedman: Deciphering Paul Ryan's worldview

So much for <a href="/topics//David_Petraeus">David Petraeus</a>. Mitt <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Romney</a>'s choice of Wisconsin Rep. <a href="/topics//Paul_Ryan">Paul Ryan</a> as his running mate is a bold choice: Ryan's hardline economic views will excite the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> base but could alienate moderates and swing voters. But whatever impact the pick has on Romney's campaign, one thing is clear: The <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">GOP</a> ticket is not running on foreign-policy this year. With the exception of a fairly rote 2011 speech at the <a href="/topics//Alexander_Hamilton">Alexander Hamilton</a> society and a budget plan that would gut the government's diplomacy and development funding, Ryan has little record on foreign policy issues.
This makes this year's GOP ticket something fairly unprecedented in modern presidential politics: a pair in which neither the VP nor the presidential nominee has any substantial foreign-policy experience on their resume.
Romney's obviously not the first former governor or candidate without significant national security experience to run for president. But generally speaking, his predecessors have picked running mates that compensate for this lack of experience.
Freshman Sen. <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Barack Obama</a> chose the veteran <a href="/topics//Senate_Foreign_Relations_Committee">Senate Foreign Relations Committee</a> chairman <a href="/topics//Joe_Biden">Joe Biden</a>. <a href="/topics//George_W._Bush">George W. Bush</a> picked <a href="/topics//Dick_Cheney">Dick Cheney</a>, a former secretary of defense. <a href="/topics//Bill_Clinton">Bill Clinton</a>'s pick, <a href="/topics//Al_Gore">Al Gore</a>, had sat on the House intelligence committee and had been active on arms control issues. Mike Dukakis' running mate, <a href="/topics//Lloyd_Bentsen">Lloyd Bentsen</a>, had been involved in <a href="/topics//Latin_America">Latin America</a> policy during the Carter administration. <a href="/topics//Ronald_Reagan">Ronald Reagan</a> chose former ambassador and CIA chief George H.W. Bush. Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter's vice president, had been active on Vietnam and intelligence issues in congress.
New York Gov. Thomas Dewey and California Gov. (later Supreme Court justice) Earl Warren had little foreign policy experience to speak of when they ran in 1948, though both had been involved in wartime planning efforts.
With this pick, Romney seems to be wagering that foreign policy will not be a major issue in the campaign. We'll see if he's right.
Writer Joshua E. Keating is an associate editor at Foreign Policy magazine.

OPKEAT14

Keating: This is not a foreign policy election

<a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Mitt Romney</a>, who does not seem the gambling type, took, for him, an uncharacteristic political risk in choosing Wisconsin Rep. <a href="/topics//Paul_Ryan">Paul Ryan</a> as his running mate. 
 Ryan, 42, but looking younger, is little known outside of Washington. What he is known for -- turning Medicare into a voucher system and adding individual accounts to Social Security -- is not particularly popular with older voters, a vital electoral demographic. 
 Even though their party is solidly in control of the U.S. House, <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republicans</a> hope to capitalize on anti-Washington sentiment this fall. But by no stretch of the imagination can Ryan be considered an outsider. He came to the Capitol fresh out of college and has been there ever since, first as a staffer, then as a member of <a href="/topics//U.S._Congress">Congress</a>. 
 House members, because of their comparative obscurity, are not usually anyone's first choice for the second spot on the ticket. The last House member to fill Ryan's role was <a href="/topics//Geraldine_Ferraro">Geraldine Ferraro</a>, a <a href="/topics//New_York_(state)">New York</a> <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrat</a>, and she and <a href="/topics//Walter_Mondale">Walter Mondale</a> went down to a crushing defeat. You have to go back to 1932 to find a House member who successfully made the transition: <a href="/topics//Franklin_D._Roosevelt">Franklin D. Roosevelt</a>'s vice president, <a href="/topics//John_Nance_Garner">John Nance Garner</a>. 
 Romney could have gone with the two safer choices among his finalists: <a href="/topics//Ohio">Ohio</a> Sen. <a href="/topics//Rob_Portman">Rob Portman</a>, who could help deliver that key swing state, and former <a href="/topics//Minnesota">Minnesota</a> Gov. <a href="/topics//Tim_Pawlenty">Tim Pawlenty</a>, an indefatigable campaigner and a veteran of two unsuccessful runs for the presidency. 
 Ryan's appeal to women voters, independents and wavering <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a> is likely to be weak, but that's not the role Romney apparently has in mind for him. The choice of Ryan was to reassure and fire up the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> right, which has been openly skeptical of the former <a href="/topics//Massachusetts">Massachusetts</a> governor who enacted the prototype for Obamacare. 
 The right was ecstatic at the choice, and Ryan got a full-throated endorsement from the tea party types. He brings something else to the table: He could turn out to be a prodigious fundraiser. His selection brought in $3.5 million the day it was announced, and the Romney campaign quickly organized 10 high-dollar fund-raisers for Ryan during the next two weeks. 
 As he contemplated running for president in his last year in the <a href="/topics//Massachusetts">Massachusetts</a> statehouse, Romney began reversing or discarding long-held positions -- pro-choice being one of them -- in preparation for seeking the nomination in an increasingly conservative <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">GOP</a>. 
 His choice of Paul Ryan completes that migration to the right. 
 Dale McFeatters is a senior writer for the Scripps Howard News Service.

News

OPMCFE14

McFeatters: Paul Ryan pushes Mitt Romney firmly to the right

Introducing his running mate against the backdrop of <a href="/topics//University_of_Miami">the U</a>SS Wisconsin on Saturday, <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Mitt Romney</a> flubbed his easiest line. "Join me in welcoming the next president of the United States!" he declared. There is no way to avoid reading this as a Freudian slip.
Romney's chief problem as a candidate has been his substantive vacuity, his failure to stand for anything beyond flexibility itself. In choosing <a href="/topics//Paul_Ryan">Paul Ryan</a>, he opted to outsource the content of his campaign to his opposite: a principled, conservative idea man. Ryan is now the head of the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> ticket, Romney the body.
Given the options he had left himself, this was probably the best choice Romney could make. Ryan stands for a clear proposition - the radical scaling back of the federal government's social commitments -- and through his pick, Romney now represents that as well. Usually, a vice presidential candidate scrambles to fall into line with the top of the ticket. In this case, it is Romney who will, not for the first time, have to adjust his views.
Instead of attacking <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">President Barack Obama</a> for cutting Medicare, Romney must now charge him with not cutting it enough -- though he may try, absurdly, do both.
Curiously, both conservatives and liberals profess to be pleased with the choice, the former because Ryan represents their beliefs and the latter because he has offers clear positions they can challenge. Though both cannot be right about the political impact of the selection, the campaign itself will <a href="/topics//Benefit_(designer)">benefit</a> from Romney's choice. Ryan's presence on the ticket makes this a better and more interesting election. It forces the debate the country needs to have about entitlement spending and ensures that the remaining months will be more than an argument about whose negative ads are more disgusting.
It is hard to see it, however, as improving Republican chances. Until now, Romney has been a poor candidate running a clumsy campaign and pointed toward losing a winnable race. Ryan changes that narrative, but only by reframing the election the way <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a>'s team wishes to, as a choice between two visions of the social contract as opposed to a referendum on Obama's economic performance.
Instead of teasing out the implications of Romney's tax cuts, Obama can now directly challenge Ryan's stated positions in favor of privatizing Social Security and turning Medicare into a voucher program. Florida, a must-win state for Romney, just moved closer to Obama's column.
A valid critique of the plan Ryan developed as chairman of the House budget committee is that while it may be a useful document to start a conversation, it is utterly unrealistic as a matter of policy. The original version would reduce federal "discretionary" spending to 3 percent of GDP by 2050 -- far less than the U.S. now spends on defense alone. This is a preposterous target, a symptom of the Republican refusal to acknowledge that federal government has legitimate, vital functions and that fiscal balance can't be attained without higher taxes.
Another fair criticism for Ryan, somewhat at odds with the first, is that while he may be a devotee of <a href="/topics//Ayn_Rand">Ayn Rand</a>, he has voted more like a Republican hack than a revolutionary. In <a href="/topics//U.S._Congress">Congress</a>, he has sought federal funds for his Wisconsin district and supported the most egregious Bush spending programs, such as the Medicare prescription drug plan. While positioning himself as a deficit hawk, Ryan failed to <a href="/topics//Embrace_(musician)">embrace</a> the report of the Simpson-Bowles commission, on which he sat.
Yet Ryan is neither the heartless ideologue nor the humbug liberal critics have made him out to be. He is, rather, a conviction politician who has moved his party far more than it has moved him. Getting the House to pass his budget this year -- thus putting it the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">GOP</a> on record in favor of ending Medicare as an entitlement -- was a stunning accomplishment. It puts an end to the Republican attempt to have it both ways, calling for less government in theory while voting for more in practice. It puts the onus on <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a> to say how else they would restrain a program that is growing to consume the entire federal budget.
 In their efforts to portray him as simply a factotum for the rich, Ryan's opponents frequently ignore what he has to say. For instance, Ryan budget was widely criticized for finding savings from the elimination of tax deductions without naming any to eliminate.
But when I questioned Ryan about this at a breakfast with journalists a few months ago, his answer was both clear and sensible: He would means-test all tax deductions, including the big ones for mortgage-interest and charitable contributions. This is a sound way to extract more taxes from the wealthy without raising marginal rates. If he didn't spell it out in his budget outline, it is because he has yet to develop a consensus around the idea inside the Republican caucus.
 In the event of a Republican victory, Ryan would be as dominant a figure on economic policy as <a href="/topics//Dick_Cheney">Dick Cheney</a> was on foreign policy under <a href="/topics//George_W._Bush">George W. Bush</a>. He understands the hard choices ahead and has a coherent view of how to make them. His selection represents a big step in the direction of conservative honesty -- and probably, for that reason, toward Republican defeat.
Writer <a href="/topics//Jacob_Weisberg">Jacob Weisberg</a> is chairman and editor-in-chief of the Slate Group and author of "The Bush Tragedy." He wrote this for slate.com.

OPWEIS14

Weisberg: Ryan is head of the ticket, Romney the body

Mitt <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Romney</a>'s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, is a self-styled disciple of the late Jack Kemp, the buoyant conservative <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> who played a major role in shaping the political agenda in the last quarter of the 20th century.
The relationship was real. Ryan worked for Kemp as a speechwriter and at his research group; Kemp's granddaughter was an intern in his protégé's congressional office.
Like his mentor, Ryan is passionate, exuberant, intellectually stimulating and devoid of the petty meanness that afflicts conservatives such as <a href="/topics//Newt_Gingrich">Newt Gingrich</a> (and some liberals, too).
Cutting marginal tax rates to create an entrepreneurial society of opportunity is as central to Ryan's philosophy as it was to Kemp's.
Although they were more than a generation apart in age, there were personal similarities. Both are family men and outdoorsmen: Kemp was a skier; Ryan is a hunter and fisherman. Both loved professional football, Kemp as a star quarterback, Ryan as an avid fan of the <a href="/topics//Green_Bay_Packers">Green Bay Packers</a>.
The differences between them are equally interesting and instructive.
Kemp, for all his talent and charm, could be maddeningly undisciplined. This trait surfaced when he was the Republican vice presidential candidate in 1996, much to the consternation of the man who picked him, <a href="/topics//Bob_Dole">Bob Dole</a>.
That's not a worry for Romney. His 42-year-old running mate is disciplined, careful and always prepared. There is little danger of Ryan getting distracted or going off message in his debate with Vice President <a href="/topics//Joe_Biden">Joe Biden</a>.
At the same time, Ryan lacks his mentor's inclusiveness and empathy. Kemp was at a home in the barrio or the ghetto, where he sought to share his entrepreneurial American dream. That isn't Ryan's world. Black or Hispanic leaders would have been in Kemp's rolodex and on a first-name basis with the ex-congressman from New York and secretary of Housing and Urban Development. With Ryan, these constituencies have a correct and distant relationship.
Until he died in 2009, Kemp was a committed champion for more immigration, which he believed was at the center of the American experience; and he advocated a pathway to citizenship for those in the U.S. illegally. Ryan equivocates, even if his views may not be that different. He ends up between Kemp and Romney, who turned into an immigration-basher in the 2008 and 2012 presidential primaries.
In sync on taxes, their views on spending and the role of government were different. Kemp came to <a href="/topics//U.S._Congress">Congress</a> more than 40 years ago as a traditional small-government Republican; he evolved into a supply-sider who didn't really want to slash government and proudly declared that he didn't "worship at the shrine of the balanced budget." Kemp was one of the few members to serve on a congressional budget committee whose outlook wasn't captured by that experience. That transcends party: The current chairman of the <a href="/topics//Senate_Budget_Committee">Senate Budget Committee</a>, the <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrat</a> <a href="/topics//Kent_Conrad">Kent Conrad</a>, is a genuine deficit hawk.
Ryan, as the current chairman of the <a href="/topics//House_Budget_Committee">House Budget Committee</a>, is defined by his blueprint. Rarely has one House member so dominated an issue. His budget includes huge tax cuts that disproportionately <a href="/topics//Benefit_(designer)">benefit</a> the wealthy and massive budget cutbacks to shrink the size of government.
With his intellectual prowess and personal appeal, Ryan is comfortable with elites. That includes some people who don't share his views, though he doesn't work the other side of the political aisle as well as Kemp did.
It will be revealing, and a mistake, if Romney tries to strike some distance from the Ryan budget. By picking the Wisconsin lawmaker, the presidential candidate is joined at the political hip to that proposal.
Yet the man and his plan aren't as simple as depicted by allies and adversaries. Ryan is a supply-side tax cutter; unlike Kemp, he also wants to radically transform and reduce the role of government. Even his revised budget plan, with less draconian Medicare cuts almost surely would involve significant cutbacks in benefits. And the Medicaid cuts would fall hard on the poor and those with disabilities. Ryan believes this would produce a more vibrant economy and ultimately help the less fortunate.
He's not, however, a huge deficit hawk; in that sense, like Kemp, he doesn't worship at the altar of a balanced budget. The Ryan plan would take three decades to balance the budget; Romney promises to do it in a decade.
Ryan played a critical role in killing the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson deficit-reduction proposal. He was on the panel that recommended narrowing the deficit by $4 trillion, primarily through spending cuts, but also higher taxes. Unlike some other conservatives on the committee, such as Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Ryan voted against Bowles-Simpson; if he had voted for it, the proposal might have come to a vote in Congress.
Don't be surprised if Ryan is attacked by some <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a> as a deficit dove. Kemp would have worn that as a badge of honor; his disciple probably won't.
Writer <a href="/topics//Albert_R._Hunt">Albert R. Hunt</a> is Washington editor at Bloomberg News.

OPHUNT14

Hunt: Paul Ryan diverges from Jack Kemp

What is it with these guy's introducing their vice-presidential choices as "the next president of the United States"? 
 <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Barack Obama</a> did it with <a href="/topics//Joe_Biden">Joe Biden</a> in August 2008. Then, as if he thought it lucky to emulate a candidate who won, <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Mitt Romney</a> re-enacted the gaffe Saturday morning in <a href="/topics//Virginia">Virginia</a>, introducing his own VP pick, Wisconsin Rep. <a href="/topics//Paul_Ryan">Paul Ryan</a>, as the soon-to-be leader of the free world. 
 Maybe by August presumptive nominees realize what a horrible gig the whole presidential race is, and they're ready to hand off the baton to a fresh runner. No such luck, fellas. 
 With Ryan, Romney achieved what he couldn't manage by looking stern and turning his back on his previous <a href="/topics//Embrace_(musician)">embrace</a> of the individual health care mandate, <a href="/topics//Gun_Control">gun laws</a> and abortion: He made his ticket "severely conservative." Ryan is best known as the chair of the <a href="/topics//House_Budget_Committee">House Budget Committee</a> and the author of "Path to Prosperity: A Blueprint for American Renewal," which is severe, and conservative, but also addresses a universe where math and consequences exist. That separates him from most prominent politicians right off the bat. 
 Romney used his pick to motivate a conservative base that's always been queasy about him, rather than to woo independents. It's a wise choice: Independents won't decide based on the running mate, but conservatives may be more motivated to get off the Barcalounger and vote for a ticket that includes the reliably right-<a href="/topics//Wing_(musician)">wing</a> Ryan. 
 Romney also chose not to go with a true "Rock Star <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a>" like <a href="/topics//New_Jersey">New Jersey</a>'s Chris <a href="/topics//Christopher_J._Christie">Christie</a> or Florida's <a href="/topics//Marco_Rubio">Marco Rubio</a> -- also smart. Having Romney head a ticket with Rubio or Christie in the second spot would be like having <a href="/topics//Bruce_Springsteen">Bruce Springsteen</a> open for <a href="/topics//James_Taylor">James Taylor</a>. 
 And Romney dodged the splashy picks that could have backfired like a 1986 Yugo: <a href="/topics//South_Carolina">South Carolina</a> Gov. Nikki Haley, who, honestly, makes Sarah Palin look presidential, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a smart guy who is, unfortunately, best known for a State of the Union rebuttal in 2009 that would have garnered last place at a grade school Optimist Club speaking contest. 
 "Path to Prosperity" is Ryan's strength, and his vulnerability. It includes changing Medicare in a way that would almost certainly leave seniors paying a lot more and, in different renditions, has offered an optional flat tax, a value-added tax, elimination of many deductions and a large tax cut for the highest payers. 
 On Saturday, Ryan made his role clear. He's a better speaker than Romney, and he'll be a relentless attack dog -- a common assignment for running mates -- hammering <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">President Barack Obama</a> with smooth one-liners, and deeper digs. 
 This is the second earliest a vice-presidential candidate has ever been announced (John Kerry's choice of John Edwards was the earliest). The timing is meant to reset a campaign that had begun to revolve around Romney's unseen tax returns and his decade of policy flip-flops as he went from wooing Massachusetts voters to trying to romance the whole nation. 
 There are a lot of <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republicans</a> who wanted Ryan on a national ticket this year, but in the top spot. And in the past few weeks, the drumbeat of the conservative establishment has been pressuring Romney to pick Ryan for the VP slot. The question is whether Romney, having put forth few concrete proposals of his own, will adopt Ryan's "Path to Prosperity" as his de facto campaign platform. 
 If he does, this effort to energize the right <a href="/topics//Wing_(musician)">wing</a> of his party may end up a losing gamble. To win, Romney must still convince undecided moderates that he's the man to lead this nation for the next four years. Signaling approval for the policies that Ryan has, to his credit, honestly and openly championed, may make Romney's path to the White House rockier, rather than smoothing it. 
 Lane Filler is a member of the Newsday editorial board.

Lane Filler

OPFIL12

Filler: Does Paul Ryan have the right stuff for Mitt Romney?

Romney 2012

Anyone who's watched the game "<a href="/topics//Texas">Texas</a> Hold 'Em" knows the term&nbsp;"all in." &nbsp;When you're "all in," you're betting everything you've got on the hand you're holding. 
 <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Mitt Romney</a> just went "all in" on economic conservatism with Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his vice presidential pick. &nbsp;He placed a bet that the American people want bold action on the <a href="/topics//US_National_Debt">national debt</a>, Ryan's signature issue, even if that means making significant sacrifices. 
 There are other candidates who may have added more to the Romney ticket electorally, and who almost certainly would have posed less political risk to him. I argued in this space just last week for <a href="/topics//South_Carolina">South Carolina</a> Gov. <a href="/topics//Nikki_Haley">Nikki Haley</a> as a long-shot pick. But no candidate could have defined the ticket as sharply as <a href="/topics//House_Budget_Committee">House Budget Committee</a> chairman Ryan now does. &nbsp;In that, Romney's selection &nbsp;is a game changer. 
 The former <a href="/topics//Massachusetts">Massachusetts</a> governor just knowingly handed the <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a> team and the <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democratic Party</a> an arsenal of attack fodder. &nbsp;But here's the thing: He did it willingly. That takes audacity. 
 <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Mitt Romney</a> -- and the entire <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">GOP</a> -- knows the hits are coming.&nbsp;Those scoundrel <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republicans</a> want to cut everything, <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a> from coast-to-coast will say from now until Election Day. They'll take food away from our children, the wheelchair out from under grandma, and they'll invest our Social Security dollars in <a href="/topics//Halliburton">Halliburton</a> and <a href="/topics//American_International_Group">AIG</a> -- all to help those greedy millionaires and billionaires. 
 Indeed, the charges are already arriving.&nbsp;Fewer than four hours after the Ryan choice was made public, here's a sampling of what one Democratic House member put out in a fund-raising appeal: 
 1.&nbsp;Paul Ryan wrote the House <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> budget that would end Medicare as we know it, increasing out-of-pocket costs for seniors by over $6,000 annually. 
 2.&nbsp;Paul Ryan's budget would give billionaires and millionaires tax breaks while increasing taxes on the middle class. 
 3. Paul Ryan would gut priorities for the middle class -- like Pell Grant scholarships for nearly 10 million students, clean energy investments that make America less dependent on foreign oil, and even veterans' health care. 
 The Democrats will add to these specious attacks a hundred fold, because they can. Ryan issued an actual, detailed budget plan in March that calls for real cuts and real sacrifices to save the nation from effective bankruptcy. &nbsp;His plan would cut $5 trillion in federal spending during the next decade and lower the federal debt-to-GDP ratio from 100 percent &nbsp;to 200 percent by 2015 to allow businesses, which have to compete with the government for dollars on the credit markets, to grow again. The Democratic-led <a href="/topics//U.S._Senate">Senate</a>, in contrast, hasn't proposed a budget in almost four years. The ruling <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a> have wagered that the American public will punish bold action. Romney-Ryan is taking the exact opposite bet. 
 You can say that Mitt Romney now owns every proposed budget cut Paul Ryan has made, but it would be more accurate to say that&nbsp; Romney has now taken ownership of those proposals, political risks be damned. He is trusting the American public to make a difficult, but informed, decision. As a political professional, I find that titillating. 
 <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">President Barack Obama</a> can now rail against Romney with a specificity he lacked before. And Romney can fire right back, "So what's your plan to save the country, Mr. President?"

opORE12

O'Reilly: Mitt Romney goes all in picking Paul Ryan for VP

JANESVILLE, Wis. -- Mitt <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Romney</a> has made his first presidential-level decision, picking Paul Ryan, the 42-year-old, seven-term Congressman from southern Wisconsin, as his running mate. The choice offers the first real hints about what kind of president <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Romney</a> would be. Here's what we learned: He takes risks, he can adapt and he's willing to campaign on a bold set of ideas rather than generalities. 
 If you're looking for the attributes of presidential leadership, these are all strong qualities. The Ryan pick also tells us less flattering things about Romney: He's willing to discard what were once deeply held views about the necessity of business and executive experience and to cosset the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">GOP</a> base for political reasons at the expense of independents. 
 Thanks to the endless coverage this campaign of gaffes and out-of-context quotes, it had seemed like we were going to have a donut election: fluffy, sugary and with nothing in the middle. The stakes for voters have always been high, but the way the campaign has played out has not matched the claims by both candidates that this is the most important election of a generation. 
 Romney has had plans he could point to, but he wasn't really running on them. Now he's put a greater emphasis on those plans. They are no longer in the background, which means this election will be a clearer choice for voters. It will touch on the central question of how you refashion government in a time of scarcity and when a majority of the public is scared, thinking the country is headed in the wrong direction. 
 The Ryan pick is thrilling. That's a first for Romney's campaign. Throughout the primaries, a segment of conservatives were lukewarm about him. Since then, in countless interviews with activists, strategists and voters, it has been clear that <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republicans</a> are voting more against <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a> than for <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Mitt Romney</a>. Now conservatives have something to vote for. Paul Ryan is a revered figure in conservative circles. He is a conservative evangelist for the free market and lower taxes, and he doesn't apologize. Ryan, along with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walter, is loud and proud -- willing to be specific and controversial despite the political heat. 
 <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Mitt Romney</a> has never been considered in the same mold. Over the last few months, there has been an influential chorus of <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republicans</a> -- joined by Walker -- calling for Romney not only to get specific about conservative solutions but to campaign on them. To run merely as the anti-<a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a> alternative was not enough, argued people like Ryan-backer <a href="/topics//Bill_Kristol">Bill Kristol</a>. Romney had to present a set of alternative ideas and champion them. Others, like <a href="/topics//Indiana">Indiana</a> Gov. <a href="/topics//Mitch_Daniels">Mitch Daniels</a>, argued that only by campaigning with brio could Romney win a mandate for governing. 
 By picking Ryan, Romney has staked his campaign on fundamentally restructuring the government and its relationship to the people who fund it. Ryan has called for the privatization of Social Security and transforming Medicare from a defined <a href="/topics//Benefit_(designer)">benefit</a> plan to a defined contribution plan. The seven-term congressman has pushed these ideas for years, pointing to his continued success in a contested state and in a district that <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Barack Obama</a> won in 2008 as proof that conservatives could be true to their beliefs and survive politically. 
 As a conservative ideas man, Ryan is well ahead of most others in his party not just in his level of specificity but in his willingness to stand behind his ideas. But in 2010, <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> leaders didn't embrace Ryan's "roadmap," knowing that it would be too controversial, particularly the change to Medicare. House Republicans were running against <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a> by arguing that <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a> were destroying Medicare, something that would have been hard to do while also championing the Ryan plan, which would have opened them to the same charge. Those ideas are now so central to the party's chances of winning back the White House that they have won Ryan a spot on the ticket. 
 Ryan is loved by conservatives, but he makes moderate Republicans nervous. "We've switched the campaign from being about jobs and Obama's bad record to one about Paul Ryan's Medicare plans," said one <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> strategist, echoing the sentiment of several I interviewed. The Romney team argues that swing state independent voters will see the new policy focus as a road out of their current economic woes. Some Republican strategists think it's a gift to the Obama campaign. 
 That's because one of the Obama teams' goals has long been to tie Romney to Ryan and his budget proposals. They also wanted this election to be a choice, not a referendum on Obama. When both the campaign and the challenger have the same goals it suggests that one of them really has it very wrong. 
 Ryan is not a complement to Mitt Romney. He's an injection of energy, like <a href="/topics//Sarah_Palin">Sarah Palin</a> was for <a href="/topics//John_McCain">John McCain</a> or <a href="/topics//Jack_Kemp">Jack Kemp</a> was for <a href="/topics//Bob_Dole">Bob Dole</a>. He is telegenic and enjoys sparring with those who doubt him, which are important skills. He's also a possible ambassador to middle class and Rust Belt voters in the way that <a href="/topics//Joe_Biden">Joe Biden</a> has been for president Obama. That might put a state like Wisconsin, which was trending toward Obama, back in play. 
 When Mitt Romney talked about his vice presidential pick before it was announced, he said, in an interview with NBC, that he wanted a candidate who had "a vision for the country that adds something to the political discourse about the direction of the country." Sounds good, but the president is the one who is supposed to have the vision. In this case though, the No. 2 has the vision and instincts that Romney doesn't. It's why so many wanted Ryan to run for president. 
 To be fair, Romney is certainly capable of articulating a vision. That's what he did with his health care plan in <a href="/topics//Massachusetts">Massachusetts</a>. But he is reluctant to boast about those achievements. 
 Perhaps Romney can take a vision graft from Ryan. He'll have to, because voters won't be lured by Ryan's ideas unless the man at the top of the ticket makes the case for them. 
 Romney will now test the proposition at the heart of all of the good advice he was getting from conservatives: Whether specificity kills or whether the country is really hungering for a detailed plan. Until this point, Romney has been almost allergic to specifics. Now he will have to give nuanced, precise and powerful answers. He's going to have to flip a switch, which might not be that easy given how hyper-careful he has been to this point. His aides have long said that Romney loves policy details. 
 He'll get a chance to prove it now. 
 Writer John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent. He wrote this for slate.com.

OPDICK13

Dickerson: Why the Paul Ryan choice is thrilling

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When, in his speech accepting the 1964 <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> presidential nomination, <a href="/topics//Barry_Goldwater,_Jr.">Barry Goldwater</a> said "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" and "moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue," a media wit at the convention supposedly exclaimed, "Good God, Goldwater is going to run as Goldwater." When <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Mitt Romney</a> decided to run with Paul Ryan, many conservatives may have thought, "Thank God, Romney is not going to run as Romney."&nbsp; 
 Not, that is, as the Romney who 12 months ago, warily eyeing <a href="/topics//Iowa_City,_IA">Iowa</a>, refused to say a discouraging word about the ethanol debacle. Rather, he is going to run as the Romney who, less than two weeks before announcing Ryan, told the states -- <a href="/topics//Iowa_City,_IA">Iowa</a> prominent among them -- that he opposes extending the wind energy production tax credit, which expires soon. 
 This may seem a minor matter, as well as an obvious and easy decision for a conservative. The wind tax credit is, after all, industrial policy, the government picking winners and losers in defiance of market signals -- industrial policy always is a refusal to heed the market's rejection of that which the government singles out for favoritism. But ethanol subsidies also are industrial policy. And just a few days after Romney got the wind subsidy right, nearly half of the 11 <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> senators on the Finance Committee got it wrong, voting to extend it. So even before choosing Ryan, Romney was siding with what might, with a nod to <a href="/topics//Howard_Dean">Howard Dean</a>, be called the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> wing of the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican Party</a>. For Romney, conservatism is a second language, but he speaks it with increasing frequency and fluency. 
 Romney embraced Ryan after the sociopathic -- indifferent to the truth -- ad for Barack <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a> that is meretricious about every important particular of the death from cancer of the wife of steelworker Joe Soptic. 
 <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a>'s desperate flailing about to justify four more years has sunk into such unhinged smarminess that Romney may have concluded: There is nothing <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a> won't say about me, because he has nothing to say for himself, so I will chose a running mate whose seriousness about large problems and ideas underscores what the president has become -- silly and small. 
 He on whose behalf the Soptic ad was made used to dispense bromides deploring "the smallness of our politics" and "our preference for scoring cheap political points." <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a>'s campaign of avoidance -- say anything to avoid the subject of the country's condition -- must now reckon with Ryan's mastery of Obama's enormous addition to decades of governmental malpractice. 
 Obama is, by now, nothing if not predictable, so prepare for pieties deploring Ryan's brand of "extremism" that has supplanted responsible conservatism. Goldwater, quoted above, infuriated the sort of people who, regardless of what flavor of conservatism is in fashion, invariably purse their lips and sorrowfully say: "We think conservatism is a valuable thread in our national fabric, etc., but not this kind of conservatism." Goldwater's despisers did not recognize his echo of words by <a href="/topics//Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.">Martin Luther King Jr.</a> 15 months earlier. 
 In his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," King wrote, "You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. ... But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love. ... Was not Amos an extremist for justice. ... Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel. ... Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists." 
 Remember this episode when you hear, ad nauseam, that Ryan is directly, and Romney now is derivatively, an extremist for believing (a) that "ending Medicare as we know it" will be done by arithmetic if it is not done by creative reforms of the sort Ryan proposes, and (b) that the entitlement state's crisis cannot be cured, as Obama suggests, by adding 4.6 points to the tax rate paid by less than 3 percent of Americans. 
 When Ryan said in Norfolk, "We won't replace our Founding principles, we will reapply them," he effectively challenged Obama to say what Obama believes, which is: Madison was an extremist in enunciating the principles of limited government -- the enumeration and separation of powers. And Jefferson was an extremist in asserting that government exists not to grant rights but to "secure" natural rights that pre-exist government. 
 Romney's selection of a running mate was, in method and outcome, presidential. It underscores how little in the last four years merits that adjective. <a href="/topics//Washington_Post_Company">Washington Post</a> columnist George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com.

opwill12

George Will: Paul Ryan is a presidential decision by Mitt Romney

With <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Mitt Romney</a>'s announcement that <a href="/topics//Paul_Ryan">Paul Ryan</a> will be his running mate, we finally can put to rest the narrative of the benighted "boring white guy." 
 BWG, which prompts about 17 million <a href="/topics//Google_Inc.">Google</a> links, is the thing that Romney had to avoid at all costs, according to the Consensus, which consists of 20 or 30 pundits, all of whom seem to hook themselves up to the same dream in which the thought is implanted: "A boring white guy will doom Romney." 
 They scrambled to their keyboards: Romney already has the BWG vote wrapped up, they intoned. He needed to show the electorate that he's willing to be "bold," that he has "vision," that he "gets it." 
 Gets what? That the American electorate is so daft that anyone with a certain skin tone or ethnic background or who isn't boring is a better candidate than one who is: male, Caucasian and doesn't have a clue who the father of <a href="/topics//Snooki">Snooki</a>'s baby -- or, for that matter, who <a href="/topics//Snooki">Snooki</a> -- is? 
 It's difficult to glean who exactly birthed the anti-BWG trope, but my guess would be a self-loathing BWG. Meanwhile, what exactly is a BWG, and why would he be bad for Romney and presumably the country? Did we really need a cool, with-it, popularity contest winner who's all about the buzz? No inference intended. 
 This conversation stemmed from the assumption that a vice presidential pick must be, if not helpful in ensuring votes from his/her home state, at least a symbolic statement about the person running for president. In fact, we know that the VP choice doesn't really matter much. Historically, vice presidential picks are worth a net of about two percentage points in their home states, according to Nate Silver, who interprets American life statistically on the <a href="/topics//New_York_Times_Company">New York Times</a>' FiveThirtyEight blog. 
 Nevertheless, some political analysts had been insisting that Romney should go with someone like Florida Sen. <a href="/topics//Marco_Rubio">Marco Rubio</a> to secure the Sunshine State's Latino vote. Rubio, of course, is of Cuban descent, and is therefore Not White. But he is boring by the media's definition -- a pro-life, red-meat-eating, tea party conservative who makes Romney look like, well, the Fonz. 
 In other words, Rubio, for all his presumed Latino pizzazz, is in reality a boring white-ish guy who speaks excellent Spanish. Even considering his appeal and political talents, his selection would have been viewed as transparent pandering to a demographic whose members for some reason are believed to care only about the status of "undocumented workers" of similar heritage. 
 The other relatively bold, anti-BWG pick would have been a woman, though Condi Rice -- the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">GOP</a>'s straight flush -- declined all overtures. Other <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> women either aren't (yet) quite right or are paying for the sins of <a href="/topics//John_McCain">John McCain</a>. So Palin-averse are <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republicans</a> these days (how's that winky-blinky thingy workin' for ya?) that they'd sooner skip over <a href="/topics//Margaret_Thatcher">Margaret Thatcher</a> than risk the wrong woman. 
 This left Romney with allegedly sensible and safe choices that are deficient in exciting pigmentation and/or demographic sex appeal. Is Ryan too boring and too white? Only if you're a superficial moron, which apparently is how many political strategists and commentators view most Americans. Check-boxing our way to idiocracy is a sad exit for a country where statesmen once roamed and the nation's identity was simply American. Romney-Ryan is a ticket that says the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">GOP</a> is all about the economy. This is where Romney has wanted to keep the conversation -- away from divisive social issues and on jobs. Whether <a href="/topics//U.S._Democratic_Party">Democrats</a> allow him to stay on that message is doubtful given that social issues are the best ammunition the Obama campaign has to pull independents away from Romney. 
 This tactic won't be for naught. The problem with today's <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">GOP</a> isn't that it is the party of boring white guys. The problem is that the party has allowed itself to be defined by a certain faction that insists on purity pledges that preclude the kind of flexibility that shifting circumstances sometimes warrant. Change isn't always good, clearly, but rigidity can be equally damaging and alienating. 
 There are doubtless plenty of "boring" African-Americans, Latinos and even young voters who would vote for Romney and Ryan if the <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> leadership in the next few weeks can present a cogent, comprehensible plan to improve the lives of broad swaths of Americans who have little faith in the future. A nation jumpy with anxiety could stand a little boring for a change -- and maybe even a little hope.<a href="/topics//Kathleen_Parker">Kathleen Parker</a> is a syndicated columnist for The <a href="/topics//Washington_Post_Company">Washington Post</a>.

OPPAR12

Parker: Mitt Romney embraces the boring-white-guy vice president with Paul Ryan

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 If Paul Ryan were a liberal, conservatives would describe him as a creature of Washington who has spent virtually all of his professional life as a congressional aide, a staffer at an ideological think tank, and, finally, as a member of <a href="/topics//U.S._Congress">Congress</a>. In the right's shorthand: he never met a payroll.&nbsp;
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 If they were in a sunny mood, these conservatives would readily concede that Ryan is a nice guy who's fun to talk to. But they'd also insist that he is an impractical ideologue. He holds an almost entirely theoretical view of the world defined by big ideas that never touch the ground and devotes little energy to considering how his proposed budgets might affect the lives of people he's never met.&nbsp;
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 In making Ryan his running mate, Mitt <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Romney</a> guaranteed that this election will be about big principles, but he also underscored a little-noted transformation in American politics: Liberals and conservatives have switched sides on the matter of which camp constitutes the party of theory and which is the party of practice. Americans usually reject the party of theory, which is what conservatism has now become.&nbsp;
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 In the late 1960s and '70s, liberals ran into trouble because they were easily mocked as impractical ideologues with excessive confidence in their own moral righteousness. They were accused of ignoring the law of unintended consequences and of failing to look carefully at who would be helped and who'd be hurt by their grand schemes.&nbsp;
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 Since I'm a liberal, I'd note that these criticisms were not always fair. Many of the liberals' enduring achievements -- from civil rights to environmental laws to Medicare -- grew from the boldness their confidence inspired. But, yes, there was arrogance in liberalism's refusal to take conservatism seriously.&nbsp;
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 Conservatives, in the meantime, gained ground by asking tough and practical questions: Will this program work as promised? Does it bear any connection to how the world really works? And, by the way, who benefits?&nbsp;
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 Now, it is liberals who question conservative master plans and point to the costs of conservative dreams. And in Ryan and his budget proposals, they have been gifted with a the perfect foil.&nbsp;
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 How can Ryan justify his Medicaid cuts when, as the nonpartisan <a href="/topics//Kaiser_Family_Foundation">Kaiser Family Foundation</a> found, they would likely leave 14 million to 19 million poor people without health coverage? How can he justify tax proposals that, as <a href="/topics//The_New_Republic">The New Republic</a>'s Alec MacGillis pointed out, would reduce the rate on <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Mitt Romney</a>'s rather substantial income to less than 1 percent? How can he claim his budgets are anti-deficit measures when, as The <a href="/topics//Washington_Post_Company">Washington Post</a>'s Matt Miller has noted, his tax cuts would add trillions to the debt and we wouldn't be in balance until somewhere around 2030?&nbsp;
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 For Ryan, such questions (and many others arise) are beside the point because his purposes are so much grander. "Only by taking responsibility for oneself, to the greatest extent possible, can one ever be free," he wrote in the introduction to his "A Roadmap for America's Future" in 2010, "and only a free person can make responsible choices -- between right and wrong, saving and spending, giving or taking."&nbsp;
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 This is close to the definition of freedom offered by Ayn <a href="/topics//Ayn_Rand">Rand</a>, Ryan's one-time philosophical hero, in her book, "The Virtue of Selfishness." Ryan didn't quote Rand, but as the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza observed, he did cite a lot of intellectuals, including <a href="/topics//Milton_Friedman">Milton Friedman</a>, <a href="/topics//Adam_Smith_(politician)">Adam Smith</a>, <a href="/topics//Max_Weber">Max Weber</a>, Emile Durkheim, and Georges-Eugene Sorel. Didn't conservatives once dismiss this sort of thing as "a term paper"?&nbsp;
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 None of this takes away from Ryan's charm or seriousness. My one extended experience with him -- seven years ago, I moderated a thoughtful and exceptionally civil discussion about politics between Ryan and his liberal Wisconsin colleague <a href="/topics//Tammy_Baldwin">Tammy Baldwin</a> -- brought home to me why Ryan is so personally popular. He (BEG ITAL)is(END ITAL) great to engage with and really believes what he says. &nbsp;&nbsp;
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 But the issue in this election will be how Americans want to be governed. <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republicans</a> mock <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">President Obama</a> for still thinking like the professor he once was, yet in this race, <a href="/topics//Barack_Obama">Obama</a> -- far more than today's conservative theorists and to the occasional consternation of his more liberal supporters -- is the pragmatist. He's talking about messy trade-offs: between taxes and spending, government and the private sector, dreams and the facts on the ground. In embracing Ryan, <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Romney</a> has tied himself to the world of high conservative ideology. As liberals learned long ago, ideology usually loses. &nbsp;&nbsp;
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op-dionne-0812

Dionne: Paul Ryan and the triumph of theory

So let’s talk about Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand and the meaning of life. 
 Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who chairs the House Budget Committee, was selected by Mitt Romney to fill out the Republican ticket Saturday. He’s an interesting choice, not least because he this record of being brutally honest about the financial challenges deficits and entitlement programs present to our nation, and about one set of measures that could fix them. 
 And he is, like many serious conservatives, somewhat of an Ayn Rand follower, or as the supercool liberals I went to college with tauntingly called it when they spied me with my dog-eared copies of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead,” a Randroid. 
 In a 2005 speech to a group of Randroids called the Atlas Society, Paul said, “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one person, it would be Ayn Rand. And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.” 
 He’s right, and you have to respect Ryan’s honestly in laying out the terms of the debate. 
 Now let’s talk about the meaning of life. 
 Rand, a Russian émigré who believed she had seen the dangers of European-style collectivism firsthand, preached that it lay in the furtherance of individual achievement and creation. She worshipped creators and producers. The hero of “The Fountainhead,” architect Howard Roark, cared not for money, fame or acclaim, and was as proud to be a brilliant construction worker in between architecture gigs as he was to design fabulous buildings. 
 In “Atlas Shrugged,” we got a host of heroes, manufacturers and railroad titans and composers of music and John Galt, the brilliant scientist who convinced the most productive minds in the country to withdraw their efforts and watch society flounder without them. 
 Rand preached that rational self-interest was the only reasonable motivation, and that our increasingly collectivist societies were rotten at the core and would collapse. 
 She believed the geniuses mattered more to the masses than the masses matter to the geniuses. 
 Interestingly, Rand didn’t have much more use for bankers and financiers than your average communist. She considered them manipulators, rather than producers. 
 I’m not a Randroid in adulthood but I understand she was right in a sense. If the meaning of life is the furtherance of the most able humans, the development of the most knowledge, the bridging of the furthest frontiers and the evolution of the best possible species, you’d get that by leaving all resources in the hands of those smart enough and strong enough to seize and create them. Social Darwinism would create the fastest evolution of society and the human race. 
 But is that the purpose we seek? Is it the goal? 
 Barack Obama, and liberals in general, would say “no.” 
 They would argue that the purpose of life is to become more Godly, and in a way secular humanists could get behind, too. To be better to each other, to provide for these least among us, to soften meritocracy and equalize both opportunities and outcomes. They want these things done not just through the choice of charity, but via a set of laws toward not just a flatter playing field but toward a tied ballgame. 
 Our founding fathers were Randroids. They wrote a Constitution that didn’t guarantee outcomes, only the right to pursue outcomes. They envisioned a nation where people had freedom, not guarantees. 
 But as a nation, we’ve moved away from Rand and the founders and toward a collectivism. We are a nation that wants to soften harsh outcomes and guarantee everyone, at the least, food, clothing, shelter, education and health care. 
 It’s this dissonance we feel in interpreting the Constitution. You can no longer see the founders from where we stand, yet we pretend we can, and falsely channel them through the prism of modern America. 
 If we want to pursue the Rand vision, I could design laws to accomplish that. If we want to pursue a collectivist, loving vision, I could design laws to accomplish that too. 
 But we’ve tried to have both. That’s tough to design. Trying to design that is what got us into this maniacal mess of unfunded entitlements and deficits. 
 At best, what Ryan’s VP nomination means is that we could have an honest debate between these two points of view. We could make this presidential race a contest about the real question. 
 It’s not the economy, or how best to fund campaigns, or whether Romney is stiff, or Obama was born here. 
 The question that’s tearing this nation apart is what constitutes a moral society, what rights individuals deserve and what responsibilities we have toward each other. What’s the meaning of life, and the proper goal of our society and species? 
 Now that could be debate worth watching. 
 Picture above: Newly announced <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> vice presidential candidate, Rep. <a href="/topics//Paul_Ryan">Paul Ryan</a> of Wisconsin, addresses the crowd during a campaign event with <a href="/topics//U.S._Republican_Party">Republican</a> presidential candidate, <a href="/topics//Mitt_Romney">Mitt Romney</a>, not shown, in Norfolk, Va. (Aug. 11, 2012)

Filler: Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand and the meaning of life

Mitt Romney just delivered the “severely conservative” ticket he’d been touting since the primaries, with a little help from his friends. 
 Romney's vice presidential choice, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, 42, is best known as the chairman of the House Budget Committee and the author of the “Path to Prosperity: A Blueprint for American Renewal.” 
 Dissecting whether Romney’s bizarre slip in introducing Ryan in Virginia as “the next president of the United States” was a run-of-the-mill gaffe or the bizarre channeling of uber-conservative Ryan-lust will be grist for late-night comedy programs. 
 Romney seems to have calculated that he needed to use the pick to motivate a conservative base that’s always been a bit queasy about him, rather than dedicating the second spot on the ticket to wooing independents. This may be wise, because independents likely won’t decide based on the VP pick, but conservatives may be more motivated to get out and vote for a ticket they feel is more firmly in their corner. 
 Romney also stayed away from using the slot to try to pick up votes in a large swing state. Experts say vice presidential picks generally add about two percentage points for that ticket in their home states, which isn’t much, but in tight races like Florida or Virginia, might matter. 
 And he chose not to pick a true rock-star Republican like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, perhaps fearing they would make him look like their opening act. Ryan is perhaps a semi rock star, most beloved by policy wonks. 
 “Path to Prosperity” is Ryan’s true strength, and his greatest vulnerability. It is far more specific in explaining entitlement and tax issues than anything Romney has put forward. It includes turning Medicare into a voucher program that would likely leave seniors paying a lot more out of pocket, and, in different renditions, has offered an optional flat tax, a value-added tax, elimination of many deductions and a large decrease in rates for the highest payers. 
 Because the plan looks seriously at our nation’s serious entitlement dilemma, Ryan has been painted as heartless and harsh. But he also deserves a lot of credit for refusing to pretend that massive looming financial problems can be fixed with platitudes and tinkering. 
 When he hit the podium Saturday he quickly made his role clear. He’s a better speaker than Romney, and he’s going to use that gift to be a relentless attack dog for the Republican ticket, hammering President Barack Obama with smooth one-liners, and deeper digs, delivered well. 
 This is the second earliest a vice-presidential candidate has ever been announced, according to media reports (John Kerry was the earliest). The timing shows Romney was ready to reset a campaign that had begun to revolve around his unseen tax returns and visible changes in stance over the last 10 years. 
 And at first blush, with Ryan’s good looks, unshakable conservative bona fides and smooth delivery on view, it looks like a pretty solid move. 
 There are, in fact, a lot of Republicans who wanted Ryan on a national ticket this year, but most of them wanted him on top of that ticket. 
 Romney’s botched (but quickly corrected) introduction of Ryan only helped to accentuate that. What this man can bring from the bottom of the ticket is what we’re going to see over the next three months. &nbsp;

Op-Ed: Romney's choice of Ryan cements conservative ticket

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