1. Good news from the USA TODAY: Christie will be the keynote speaker. Whatever Romney says, the combo of Christie and Ryan will guarantee a convention bounce. I’m also relieved for the sign that fat guys–or normally semi-unfit guys– still have a place at the Republican table.
2. Bad news from the USA TODAY: A study show that people regard Ryan as the worst VP pick since Quayle, with the fair/poor camp outnumbering the positive one. This, of course, is a telling reminder that the case for Ryan has to be made, and it won’t be easy.
3. My judgment: The Ryan choice improves Romney’s otherwise faltering chances for winning the election. But it also makes an Obama landslide not impossible. The campaign will now turn on the case for Ryan or, better, Romney’s appropriation of what’s best about Ryan.
4. Pete and Yuval and the other experts are right to focus on the most recent Ryan plan, which spends as much on Medicare as Obama and doesn’t force anyone into a DEFINED BENEFITS Medicare plan. But will that be enough? The Democratic rejoinder is that that plan doesn’t represent what Ryan really wants to do, and what the Republicans would do if they held all the elected power of government. Ryan really is a DEFINED BENEFITS guy and a big-time welfare-state truncator, and he’s been for a tax scheme that would reduce Romney’s tax bill to virtually nothing.
5. So Ryan has to be presented as the only realistic “ideas guy,” the one facing up to the debt/demographic crisis. But it has to also be implicitly conceded that he’s too libertarian, and that Romney, the more authentic mend it/don’t end it guy when it comes to to our entitlement/health-care system, will be in charge.
6. Reforming and, to tell the truth, trimming entitlements has to be presented as an unfortunate necessity, and not as a new birth of freedom. And that necessity can’t be presented as caused by Americans’ degrading dependency on the “soft despotism” described by Tocqueville. That causal linkage, in fact, is pretty tenuous or even semi-incredible. But I’ve talked about that before. Some “West-Coast Staussians” are thrilled with Ryan because they think he’s bought into and understands well the Founders good/Progressives evil narrative. Talking about natural/God-given rights I’m all for, but I’m not for a campaign that suggests that we need to go back to a time before anyone named Roosevelt.
7. The choice of Ryan has been most favorably received by those who think or say there’s no contradiction at all between an individualistic/Lockean interpretation of the wisdom of our Founding and Catholic social thought. So Ryan actually makes sense when he’s says, more or less, that he’s a Randian except for the atheistic parts. He’s a Thomist in terms of “epistemology,” which means that he believes that we’re, by nature, all about both economic liberty and the truth about the personal, relational God. Ryan has shown he’s not a Randian deep-down, of course, by his devotion to the life issues (Rand despised Reagan for his social conservatism) and his exemplary personal life. Still, it’s naive to say there’s no problem at all here in terms of convincing voters that he’s not radically hostile to the minimalist welfare state they’d rather conserve to the extent possible, that he really identifies with the plight of the increasingly contingent and disordered life of the working man and woman.
8. So it would surely be a mistake for Obama to dump Biden. It’s true that the VP stands out this year, and maybe not so much in a good way. Romney, Ryan, Obama are all serious and articulate men of extraordinary personal discipline both physical and moral. No one denies they’ve lived exemplary personal lives. They, I’ve been told, are probably the three most attractive and fit national candidates ever. They could do commercials together after their political lives are over modeling anything from tuxes to cycling gear. Biden (or Christie!) won’t be asked to join them. Biden is pretty close to the opposite of a poster boy for rigorous personal discipline.
9. But the case against Romney and Ryan will be: How can these guys who’ve never really worked for a living (or served their country in the military) undermine the dignity of ordinary working stiffs by callously messing with their safety nets? Biden, it seems to me, could actually make that case against Ryan with some effectiveness. “They look like bosses, like the guys who lay us off,” to almost quote the periodically hefty Huckabee. Biden also has all that foreign-policy experience (of which the hawkish Republicans have none at all) going for him, as well as the admirable military service of his son Beau. (None of the actual candidates have military experience!) Everyone, I know, will think I’ve overmade this case. Still, there’s some truth to the observation that Biden might be the most anti-elitist candidate, the Democrats’ link to “the regular guy” who or might or might not end up being okay or better with Ryan. (Again, the case for Ryan etc. has to be made. It’s not self-evident. So maybe Pete, to begin with, is right about using all that Romney money to run longer-than-usual commercials.)
Please remember that I’m all for Romney-Ryan, and this post is tough (not that tough) love.
August 14th, 2012 | 10:10 am
Obama-Ryan?
August 14th, 2012 | 10:11 am
[...] I Still Don't Know About RyanFirst Things (blog)Pete and Yuval and the other experts are right to focus on the most recent Ryan plan, which spends as much on Medicare as Obama and doesn't force anyone into a DEFINED BENEFITS Medicare plan. But will that be enough? The Democratic rejoinder is …and more » [...]
August 14th, 2012 | 10:26 am
Mr.Lawler,
You may want to fix your very last sentence, unless you really meant that you’d like to see that compromised ticket and wish the US would usher in the one party state Paul Krugman dreams about…
August 14th, 2012 | 10:29 am
If Romney can say Ryan will be the next president of the United States, I can say that Obama-Ryan ismy dream team. Certainly if we stay with candidates as models, that would be the best combo. Thanks for catching that.
August 14th, 2012 | 10:36 am
Your point 3 really scares me. If the election “turns” on making a case that your Vice-Presidential candidate won’t go around pushing old ladies in traffic to save the gov’t money, you are facing some really bleak odds of winning.
I was really hoping that the Romney campaign could shine media attention on Obama for a while…say a week or two even…but with Ryan, that isn’t likely to happen.
And I don’t see in anyway how a Ryan-centric campaign could be close.
August 14th, 2012 | 10:41 am
1. I’m on record many times as saying Christie was the best choice.
2. Where I am there’s no political action and the only comments you hear are about how Obama is ruining the country, so I’m not the one to judge how Ryan will play.
3. Wasting time worrying about the VP pick is silly.
4. There is no possible way an “Obama landslide” happens, short of some truly horrific Mitt scandal coming to light.
August 14th, 2012 | 11:05 am
The Obama/Biden campaign need only drive home two issues covered in the Ryan plan.
First, they should remind seniors, the fastest growing and most reliable voting group, that were the Ryan plan followed, allowing the young to opt out will quickly bring about the collapse of Medicare. And the president should stay on that message at every stop he makes.
Second, they should remind us that the vast majority don’t receive capital gains, dividends or interest payments of any consequence. That leaves the middle class, us, to pay much more in taxes. And, of course, there is no larger voting demographic than the middle class.
This should be a landslide! (but probably won’t be)
August 14th, 2012 | 11:25 am
Daniel: You’re totally right that the Obama strategy is nothing but Turbo Tax Timmy’s line: “We don’t have a plan. We just know we don’t like your plan.”
Not sure it’s going to work this time, but the Dems are nothing if not consistent…
August 14th, 2012 | 12:17 pm
Obviously I would have preferred Christie and more generally the two governor strategy. But Ryan is better than the Portman or even Pawlenty route.
August 14th, 2012 | 12:38 pm
“First, they should remind seniors, the fastest growing and most reliable voting group, that were the Ryan plan followed, allowing the young to opt out will quickly bring about the collapse of Medicare.” This makes no sense. The “young” aren’t on Medicare, so they can’t “opt” out of it. There is also no provision for the young to “opt” out of the Medicare payroll tax. You might as well say the Ryan plan allows the young to “opt” out of gravity causing a supernova that somehow only burns the old.
Medicare spending under the most recent Ryan budget grows at precisely the same rate as under President Obama’s. Under the plan, older, sicker seniors would receive higher premium support and plans that disproportionately enrolled healthier Medicare recipients would pay a fee, while those that enrolled more high risk recipients would receive an incentive payment.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/294039/itimesi-and-ryan-budget-yuval-levin
Go with the anti-gravity supernova idea.
August 14th, 2012 | 1:37 pm
As a physicist, I can assure you that even if all the young people opt out of gravity, the worst that would happen is that they would all die from being exposed to extra-atmospheric conditions…seniors would be left alone…
August 14th, 2012 | 3:24 pm
Really? Are those of us who live as self-employed entrepreneurs vastly different than regular working stiffs? We’re squarely middle class, but have no devotion to the safety net. All we feel is the crushing weight of self-employment taxes that we carry alone…and think, for that amount of money we could send several poor children to private schools of their choice. Ryan resonates with us because economic liberty is our daily bread.
August 14th, 2012 | 3:27 pm
Jy, you’re not using MSNBC logic. If Romney can kill the wife of a steelworker who had health insurance for years after he was laid off, then Romney can allow young people to keep the atmosphere as they go (along with an infinite supply of food and videogames) even as Paul Ryan personally jams each old person into a wheelchair (yes, even the ambulatory old people) and personally rolls them into the exploding sun, one at a time.
August 14th, 2012 | 3:46 pm
Of course the Ryan plan intends to allow people to opt out of Medicare. That’s what vouchers are all about. Just like with school vouchers, it would allow people to take their Medicare tax payments out of Medicare and use it to pay for private plans. The lack of payments going into Medicare would quickly kill the program. Paul Ryan used to proudly talk of this, but has backed off of these kinds of comments after putting out his latest, same plan.
August 14th, 2012 | 4:18 pm
[...] Lawler has some very useful thoughts below on the pros and cons of picking Ryan. Picking Ryan meant that Obama’s Mediscare campaign (which was coming anyway since Romney [...]
August 14th, 2012 | 4:30 pm
“Of course the Ryan plan intends to allow people to opt out of Medicare. That’s what vouchers are all about. Just like with school vouchers, it would allow people to take their Medicare tax payments out of Medicare”
No it wouldn’t. the Medicare “tax payments” come from younger workers who are paying into the system. Seniors who choose FFS Medicare get the same premium support as seniors who choose another option that provides the exact same services. If another option provided the eaxt same services at a lower price, then presumably more seniors would pick the cheaper option for the same service. In places where Medicare FFS was the best option (and those places would likely exist) seniors would choose that option. I don’t see how more seniors getting equal or better health care at a lower cost to the government “kills” Medicare if we think of Medicare as a health insurance program. If we are just interested in giving old people the fewest options at the highest price, then let’s just count on centralized spending cuts to do the job.
I don’t know what you are worried about. In another thread you argued that Medicare would likely be the lowest and most efficient bidder. It is possible you are right. In that case (the worst case scenario), we are exactly where we are if we adopt Obama’s plan. And like I told you, there is good reason to think we will get better results from competitive bidding than the Obama-like worst case scenario.
http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/313243/new-estimate-potential-impact-competitive-bidding-medicare-expenditures-reihan-salam
August 14th, 2012 | 5:29 pm
As someone who respects you a great deal, I am disappointed by your statements that Paul Ryan is a “Randian without the atheistic parts” who is “radically hostile to the minimalist welfare state that [voters] would like to conserve to the extent possible.”
I’ve never heard of a Randian who wanted to stabilize government spending at 19% of GDP for the next 30 years as Ryan’s current plan does. Nor do I think increasing total Medicare spending every year and preserving Medicare completely intact for everyone over 55 constitutes an attack on an already “minimalist” welfare state.
In every speech, talk, or interview I’ve heard him give, Paul Ryan has not come across as a libertarian crusader out to repeal every social program passed in the last 100 years. Rather, he soberly and consistently makes the case that our entitlement programs are unsustainable in their current form and that we have to trim them back to preserve them for future generations.
Maybe Ryan’s current plan is indeed “not really what he really wants to do.” Maybe he wants to eliminate the welfare state instead of bringing it back into balance with the rest of society. No politician, President Obama especially (public option, anyone?), gets to do what they really want to or say exactly why they want to do it, though.
Whatever his true beliefs, Ryan has put together a substantial but achievable reform plan for our nation’s entitlement system and framed it in a way that makes sense to everyone who actually hears him speak. The “image issues” that Ryan faces are not the result of his own actions or words but of his opponents’ relentless and often hysterical attempts to smear him as a slash-and-burn anti-government radical.
The real Paul Ryan is a good man and a good Catholic whom I would trust to help run our country. If the voters reject the Romney ticket because of him (which they very well might, I admit), it will be because the other side successfully slandered him, not because he really is too radical to be vice president.
August 15th, 2012 | 8:47 am
Oh man, I never took that class on MSNBC logic…to busy with Aristotelian logic…
August 15th, 2012 | 5:56 pm
Good.
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