Lexington
Proposing Vice-President Ryan
The new Republican vice-presidential pick is everything Mitt Romney isn’t
Aug 18th 2012 | from the print edition
THE media has dubbed it a “bromance”, but “infratuation” might have been a better term. Mitt Romney can barely find the words to express his admiration for Paul Ryan. He is “an extraordinary guy”, “an intellectual leader”, “a man of tremendous character”, “a shining exception” to the pettiness of Washington. Since Mr Romney chose Mr Ryan as his running mate, the pair have laughed together, cried together, hugged, clowned and frowned together in front of the cameras. Mr Romney once joked that Mr Ryan was not, as one might think from their intimate rapport, one of his sons. According to Politico, a newspaper and website for Washington types, Mr Romney “sees a bit of himself” in his vice-presidential pick.
If so, Mr Romney should get his eyes examined: beyond the checked shirts and gelled hair, the two have little in common. Mr Ryan is much more consistent in his political philosophy, much more forthright in his views, much more down-to-earth, much more charismatic and above all, much more daring politically. Lexington is not a psychologist, but he cannot help thinking that Mr Ryan is more the politician that Mr Romney would like to be than the one he is. As inspiring as all those attributes sound, however, there are reasons why few politicians display them. Mr Ryan is far more controversial than Mr Romney. Left and right alike see him as an outspoken ideologue, with all the promise and pitfalls that entails.
The praise Mr Romney heaps on Mr Ryan is largely deserved: he is something of a prodigy. He was the second-youngest member of Congress when he joined the House of Representatives in 1999, at the age of 28. He has held the same seat in south-east Wisconsin with ease for the past 14 years, even though it leans Democratic at the presidential level.
In part, that is thanks to Mr Ryan’s regular-guy appeal. His enthusiasm for hunting, rock music and the local sports teams seems wholly genuine. He proposed to his wife on a fishing trip. He still lives not just in the town where he grew up, but on the same block. It is all a far cry from Mr Romney’s car lifts and Swiss bank accounts.
Mr Ryan is no Everyman among Republican congressmen, however. Most of his colleagues are reluctant to embrace reform of expensive but popular federal programmes like Medicare and Social Security, for fear of frightening the elderly voters who keep them in office; Mr Ryan has consistently and noisily advocated it. During the administration of George W. Bush, he pushed a plan to allow workers to divert a share of their payroll taxes into private pension schemes. More recently, he suggested that the government give those over 65 a fixed subsidy to spend on private health insurance, rather than paying for their care directly. Most radically of all, his budget blueprint involves deep cuts in (non-military) spending to reduce the deficit. The sums set aside for food stamps, health care for the poor, education, transportation and much else would atrophy.
Mr Ryan speaks with conviction about the imperative of reining in the deficit, but the underlying premise of his ideas is not so much fiscal rectitude as small government. In keeping with the Republican orthodoxy, he eschews all talk of tax increases. He helped to scupper the bipartisan budget-balancing plan of the Bowles-Simpson commission, which would have raised revenue by eliminating tax loopholes. He wants to use the proceeds from closing loopholes to lower tax rates.
As Mr Ryan has risen through the ranks in Congress he has found himself in a position to advance his ideas. It helps that conservative think-tanks and commentators have served as cheerleaders for his proposals, and that the two other members of a trio of self-styled “young guns”, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy, now occupy the number two and three slots in the party’s House leadership. In 2005 George W. Bush adopted a watered-down version of Mr Ryan’s overhaul of social security. More recently, thanks to his status first as the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee and then as its chairman, he has been able to put a series of fiscal plans to a vote, winning the support of the vast majority of Republican congressmen.
Dangerous stuff
The results have been mixed. Democrats have accused Mr Ryan and his supporters of plotting to privatise social security, end Medicare as we know it and slash assistance for the neediest Americans to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. One memorable attack ad showed an unsuspecting granny being tipped from her wheelchair over the edge of a cliff. Mr Bush’s social-security scheme proved so unpopular that it never went to a vote in Congress (Mr Ryan’s latest budget also gives up on the idea). Last year a Democrat won a previously safe Republican seat in New York in a by-election by harping on about Mr Ryan’s plans for Medicare.
Many Republicans have reached the conclusion that Mr Ryan is an electoral liability. Newt Gingrich, a former Republican speaker of the House who is not known for fuzzy centrism, dismissed his budget proposal for 2012 as “right-wing social engineering”. Republican candidates in marginal seats at the coming election are trying to disavow his budgets even as they welcome his selection as Mr Romney’s running mate. Mr Ryan, though, insists that Americans understand that the government cannot afford these entitlements in their current form in the long run. They are delighted, he says, when politicians have the honesty to admit as much and propose remedies. Mr Romney would doubtless like to be seen as a fearless truth-teller too. But for good or for ill, the reality is that he has got as far as he has in politics more by hedging, ducking and weaving.
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