The Presidential Election Gives Choices but No Direction

The Republican vice presidential choice is a polarizing figure because of his proposed budget. For voters, the hot debate makes it hard to understand who is for what.

One might say Mitt Romney pulled a John McCain. The Republican candidate was sinking in the polls and his campaign needed a shot in the arm. He fell back on a failed strategy that his predecessor relied upon in 2008: He chose a running mate that motivated the Republican base but polarized the rest of the nation. Populist Sarah Palin attracted some conservative voters with her anti-intellectualism, but made a fool of herself because she could hardly answer questions intelligently. Paul Ryan is no Palin. The smart young shooting star doesn’t have any problems with syntax. His problem is that he divides the nation with his ideas.

In choosing the congressman as his running mate, Romney also gave his seal of approval to Ryan’s budget plan, a plan backed by the House of Representatives that will supposedly give American voters a clear choice between two alternatives. For Republicans, it’s a choice between Obama’s profligate spending and Ryan’s disciplined national budget. For Democrats, it’s a choice between social equality and unscrupulous neoliberalism. Anyone torn between the two philosophies has to make a November decision on which worldview seems best and what will have to be sacrificed in order to balance the budget.

If only it were that simple. The campaign lines drawn by both sides are not only roughly drawn, they actually disguise the real issues. The Democrats demonize the wrong part of the Ryan Plan. The Republicans are blind to the fact that their whole program isn’t acceptable. Meanwhile, Romney continues to avoid taking a definite position on anything.

The Democrats pounce on that part of the Ryan Plan most easily exploited: the effects of the transformation on senior citizens. Ryan wants to partially privatize the current healthcare program because costs for seniors represent a ticking time bomb in the budget. Budget experts consider this plan to be generally reasonable. Variations of it are included in the analysis of healthcare plans proposed by both parties. But that means nothing in the election campaign. Democrats find it too tempting to put a scare into retirees in states like Florida. In one particularly tasteless Democratic television spot, a grandmother in a wheelchair is pushed off the edge of a cliff. No mention that Ryan’s reforms would affect only future generations that would have time to prepare for the conversion — whereas a number of Medicare cuts already in Obama’s plan will take effect as early as next year.

Ryan’s Medicare plan may not be perfect, especially since he can give no satisfactory answer as to how retirees would be protected from the dramatically increasing costs in the health sector. But he is one of the few politicians who has the courage to touch that hot potato at all. Whoever wishes to put the U.S. budget on solid ground for the long term will have to address the Social Security program as well. Ryan’s problem lies in the fact that what he intends to save by cutting social programs, he intends to give out in the form of generous tax cuts for businesses and the wealthiest segment of the population. That only confirms the cliché espoused by the Obama administration that Romney Hood is someone who takes from the poor to give to the rich. Under the Ryan Plan, multimillionaire Mitt Romney would pay virtually no taxes whatsoever because capital gains taxes would be eliminated.

The Ryan Plan would widen the gap between rich and poor in the United States and his goal of reducing the deficit would only be reached after many years and many more victims. Reforming the social system alone would not be enough to cover the costs of the tax giveaways to the wealthy. Government outlays for education, infrastructure and the poor would have to be cut mercilessly. Obama’s bilateral deficit commission came up with a more equitable way of burden sharing composed of one-third cuts and reforms in social programs, one-third by reducing outlays,and one-third by increasing taxes. Increases, mind you. Ryan played a key role in Congress to ensure that plan didn’t become law.

The greatest confusion of all is being caused by Mitt Romney himself. It has always been easier to nail Jell-o to the wall than to get Romney to take a firm position on anything. Now Romney wants us to believe that choosing Paul Ryan for vice president doesn’t mean he endorses Paul Ryan’s budget. Ryan has already said he would not cut the U.S. defense budget, the perennial darling of American conservatives. Romney is already on record as saying he would massively increase military spending. He’s less radical about tax cuts than his running mate: Romney wouldn’t cut his own capital gains taxes, just those in households earning less than $200,000 a year.

He dances most delicately around the subject of Medicare. He praises Ryan’s plan in speeches but then says his own plan would differ from Ryan’s yet retain its goals. What Romney’s actual plan would do is kept hidden from the American people, allowing his opponents to beat him up with Ryan’s plan. So much tactical maneuvering doesn’t help prospective voters very much.