Robert Shrum: How Obama Will Cash In on Paul Ryan: Medicare, Taxes, Education & More

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How Obama Will Cash In on Paul Ryan: Medicare, Taxes, Education & More
by Robert Shrum
Aug 13, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

Romney’s choice of running mate accelerates the move away from the 2012 election as a straight-line referendum on the economy. Now it is unmistakably and irretrievably a decision about the future, says Robert Shrum.


Never pick a man with a plan—at least not Paul Ryan’s kind of plan.

After every quadrennial vice-presidential audition, another cautionary guideline emerges. A spectacular example: post–Sarah Palin, any potential choice will be tested for minimum passable competence in foreign policy.

Ryan is an articulate, informed, self-proclaimed purveyor of “bold” ideas that also happen to be very bad, both substantively and politically. By the time the Obama campaign finishes with him, his specter, like hers, will become a red flag—in his case, a warning against selecting anyone who doesn’t conceal or soften his enmity to economic and social justice, but explicitly repudiates the safety net and basic protections for the middle class.

Mitt Romney put Ryan on the ticket. But the Democrats will put him through a thorough examination. More than any other vice-presidential nominee ever, he will be a front-and-center target. Romney, who so resembles T.S. Eliot’s “hollow {man} ... headpiece filled with straw,” will dissolve into the image and ideology of his running mate. Soon they will look like the Ryan-Romney ticket. Need proof? Check out Bob Schieffer’s 60 Minutes interview with the two last night. Ryan already seemed to be talking down to Romney.

Barack Obama’s strategists and ad makers will dig deep into Ryan’s budget plan to write a new and powerful chapter in their preferred narrative for the 2012 election. Bain, the Swiss bank accounts, and the offshore tax havens won’t go away; they will be with us until Election Day. But the ascension of Ryan invites and compels an evolution in the Obama approach. The campaign will build on Romney’s grasping and heedless financial manipulations by focusing on the Ryan policies that would so lavishly comfort the comfortable and so painfully punish mainstream America.


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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/13/how-obama-will-cash-in-on-paul-ryan-medicare-taxes-education-more.html