Okay, it’s probably a couple months too early. That hardly prevents the American fourth estate from prognosticating about Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney’s choice of running mate. The American media were bound to go after his Vice Presidential choice like vultures to fresh road kill. Just think of what they did to Sarah Palin four years ago.
Representative Paul Ryan from Wisconsin might be a few degrees smarter than Mrs. Palin but he is also a poster boy for America’s extremist right wing Tea Party Republicans. Romney was supposed to be concerned that the Tea Party nuts did not trust him. The choice of Paul Ryan is Romney’s way of showing them that he will toe the line.
From the first flub when Romney introduced him as the next President, Ryan was on the attack against Obama Care. He is promising the right wing that he has the fix for Medicare—denying it funding seems to be his solution. That is the economic solution he has relied on for the past eleven years in the House of Representatives.
Ryan draws his economic smarts from Ayn Rand’s Objectivism and his character from her novel Atlas Shrugged. His favourite economist was Milton Friedman of the Chicago School. Ryan is one of those young political idealists who steep themselves in right-wing radicalism and then never grow up.
Romney and Ryan share one crucial characteristic and that is a serious lack of foreign affairs experience. Since Romney’s gaffs in London and Poland this summer, it has been obvious that he needed a running mate with some foreign experience. Ryan is not the answer to that weakness.
This all adds up to Obama being the odds-on favourite in the early betting. He is the incumbent, he is at ease with heads of state, he has successfully negotiated more than one budget with an obdurate congress, he is trusted as commander-in-chief and he has got Medicare off the ground even if it is not really flying.
Romney and Ryan have a hill to climb. Romney has to count on Ryan to keep the crazies of the right wing in line while he works to convince Americans capable of thinking that he just might have something concrete to offer. Just what he has to offer is a good question. There are only a few months left for surprises.
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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