Competence

Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has stepped into the leadership void left by the President and his party, both of whom seem to be uninterested in fulfilling their duty of offering a budget, and has proposed a serious financial plan for next year and thereafter. He's already taking a lot of flak from the same people who refused to advance a proposal themselves, but an ad he's put out makes clear why we have to severely reduce the amount of money that government spends, especially on entitlements:

The conventional wisdom in Washington is that the abdication of leadership on this issue by the White House is in fact a political ploy. The objective, it's being said, is to draw the Republicans in to offering a plan and then to savage it in the media so as to discredit the GOP for 2012.

I hope this isn't what they're thinking. To be so corrupted by politics as to toy with our children's future just to get some short term political advantage would be unconscionable. Unfortunately, the only other alternative is that the leadership vacuum is due to the fact that the Democrats simply don't have anything they can plausibly say about spending, which is on the trajectory it is because they, with a kick start from the Bush administration, have put it there.

If we're going to save our future and that of our children, we need to put the economy in the hands of competent adults who know what they're talking about and are willing to lead, and shunt to the side those who just think that the role of a politician is to hand out goodies to every interest group that puts its hand out. Since the President either won't or can't, Congressman Ryan is trying to fill that role.