Mitt Romney's vice-presidential pick, Rep. Paul Ryan, has garnered almost universal plaudits from the right and almost universal boos from the left. Ryan is an outstanding man, an outstanding politician, and an outstanding intellect. He's serious and sharp and has a winning personality.
I think these are some of the reasons the left is deriding the choice. They fear Ryan, or at least they should. The last thing they want is a debate between Ryan and anyone on the Democratic ticket because they know it can only go badly for them. It's not customary for the presidential candidate to debate the other party's vice-presidential candidate, but one wishes that this year it'd happen.
If the economy is to be the major issue in the 2012 election the Obama/Biden ticket is no match for Romney/Ryan. Mr. Obama has had three and a half years to solve our economic woes, and the nation is worse off now than when he took office. He has managed to preside over the worst economy in forty years and has advanced no plan for what he would do to improve it other than tax the rich. This is a purely symbolic gesture which would accomplish nothing in terms of raising revenue and would probably depress it.
Moreover, none of the president's budgets have received even Democratic support in the Senate, and his party hasn't passed a budget in three years. Neither has the president kept his promise to get unemployment below 8%.
President Obama has offered no indication of how he would save entitlements from financial ruin, and in fact his greatest achievement, Obamacare, will cut $710 billion from Medicare over the next ten years. Ryan's plan would also cut Medicare, but by giving people an annual voucher so that they could purchase their own insurance. He would also raise the reimbursement rate for doctors back to previous levels so that the exodus of physicians willing to treat Medicare patients is reversed.
Ryan has worked hard on these issues. He has a vision for what needs to be done to get Americans back to work and to get our debt reduced, and he's skilled at eloquently articulating both. It'll be painful, no doubt, and it will take time, but the Obama alternative of doing nothing other than continuing to spend money we don't have, driving us deeper into debt, while blaming Bush for all our troubles, will ultimately be far worse.
The question that I ponder is whether the American electorate will ultimately prefer competence or charisma, freedom or big government, economic justice or crony capitalism. I guess we'll see on the first Tuesday in November.