A Gift from Romney to Obama

The choice of Paul D. Ryan as vice president is a strategic error of the highest order for Mitt Romney … another one. In associating himself with the young guard of the House of Representatives, Romney believes he is allying himself with the most fundamentalist of the conservatives. In reality, by this choice, he is giving Barack Obama weapons to use against him.

First, a word about Paul D. Ryan: With his great smile and his impeccable hair, he seems like someone who would make a good son or son-in-law. He sees himself as a paragon of budgetary rigor (we’ll come back to this). But, as pointed out by Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker, he is first of all someone who voted without batting an eye for all the programs of the younger Bush, programs which led, by the end of Bush’s terms in office, to an additional deficit of $5 trillion. He voted for all the Bush tax cuts, supported the two wars and supported the bank bailout — the famous Troubled Asset Relief Program. “In all,” notes Lizza, “five trillion dollars was added to the national debt.” Not bad for a staunch proponent of budgetary moderation.

Above all, however, the choice of Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin is an excellent opportunity for Barack Obama. Until now, the debate has revolved — half-heartedly — around the economic performance of the White House, a topic worth its weight in gold to Romney at a time when the economy hasn’t managed to recover from an unemployment rate of 8 percent. In choosing Ryan, Romney has turned the debate completely around. From now on, the campaign will play out according to what type of society Americans want. For example, do they want drastic cuts to the Medicare program, which helps the elderly pay their medical bills? Do they want the privatization of Social Security, something that Ryan already sold to the younger Bush but which the latter had to abandon in face of the tempest stirred up by the idea? As of this Friday, members of Obama’s cabinet have advanced the central argument of the presidential election, which opens in three months: Do Americans want to vote an extremist into the White House — a president who will cut programs for the poorest citizens, all while making enormous gifts to the rich by reducing their taxes?

The choice of Ryan, the disciple of the right’s most conservative theoretician, Ayn Rand, is a windfall for Obama on another level. Though in 2008, he won only 47 percent of voters over age 60, and 66 percent of those under 30, polls indicate that the U.S.’s 44th president can’t count so much on the enthusiasm of young people in the future. Romney’s decision to run with Paul Ryan, who has become an enemy of seniors since his project to drastically reduce Medicare, will certainly attract an important percentage of American seniors to Obama. His team has, for that matter, staged a particularly vigorous television campaign in Florida — a swing state — to continue to gain points there. The campaign is still long, but on the day following the announcement of the choice of Paul D. Ryan, the polls continue to put Obama ahead of Romney still with 60 percent of the vote and a majority of the Electoral College.