Paul Ryan was respectful and wise in last night’s debate, he confirmed that he is a stable, well educated,and a well informed candidate, with the ability to lead. In fact I would feel comfortable if anything happen to Romney, God forbid that Ryan could run our Nation, he is a man who is well versed on all subjects.
Tim Fernholz from National Journal said it best:
One thing I learned from covering Ryan is that he’s a singular communicator for some fairly radical proposals. Here’s how he does it:
He’s got a nose for the big issue. Ryan’s formative years in Washington after college were spent absorbing conservative economic doctrine that convinced him of the importance of a dramatically limited public sector. But as a member and then chairman of the Budget Committee, he had little official responsibility: The committee sets broad spending levels in consultation with party leaders. Nonetheless, he’s famous for his plans to privatize and reduce spending on Medicare, America’s public health insurance plan for seniors. Ryan made entitlements his cause when he realized they were a big driver of government spending, which left the members of his party ostensibly responsible for overseeing the programs rather miffed.
He knows a bipartisan deal sounds nice. Ryan has frequently praised a debt-reduction plan released by the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission in 2010, and dinged Obama for not accepting its recommendations outright. He doesn’t always mention that as a member of the commission, he voted against the plan because it increased taxes as well as cutting spending. Although he has collaborated with Democrats such as former budget Director Alice Rivlin and former Sen. Ron Wyden of Washington on health care reform plans, he doesn’t always mention that both collaborators have decried Romney’s plans.
He manages expectations. The Martyrology of Paul Ryan is long and varied; he is well versed in clearing ground ahead of proposals that cut social spending on the poor and seniors. ”We are we are giving them a political weapon to go against us,” he said after introducing one budget plan. “But they will have to lie and demagogue to make it a weapon.” Democrats cut his plan to ribbons in the press, but Ryan got courage points for handing them the knife. I’m not sure why the media likes this.
He loves numbers.* Despite regular panic about American students’ math scores, don’t let anyone tell you this is a country that doesn’t love its math (it’s not the same as being numerate). Ryan’s main reputation, in an era of democratized economics where anyone with an Internet connection can pore over budget projections, is for engaging in wonky policy debates about the challenges of financing a national insurance system, bolstering his arguments with charts and tables. But he gets dinged by policy experts for failing to fill in all the blanks–in their estimation, his plans are more focused on cutting taxes and public spending than cutting government borrowing. Sometimes, he just runs out of time.
He’s a true believer. Ryan’s greatest strength, though, is that he can frame policy choices in gripping, ideological terms. “It’s really a cultural decision over who we are and what kind of country we want to be,” he said in a 2010 speech. “Do we want to have an opportunity society with a safety net where we are pushing prosperity to its limits, where we are extending the economic growth to more and more people, where we are reclaiming the American idea of incentivizing entrepreneurship, hard work, production, achievement, and growing our economy, or are we going to go down the path of having a cradle-to-grave, European-style social welfare state?” You can guess Ryan’s preference.
Loading ...
