Ryan is Clueless on Foreign Policy

One thing is certain: Paul Ryan, the newly crowned Republican vice presidential nominee and best – as well as last – card in the hand held by Mitt Romney in the White House poker game, has no clue about foreign policy. No clue whatsoever. Nor has he ever claimed any expertise in that not totally unimportant field. That’s why it would have been better for him to keep his mouth shut. Instead, this alert politician announced how he would deal with China: China treats the United States like a doormat, he says, and that can’t be allowed to continue.

The only thing Ryan omitted was how he would do that. That forgetfulness is the rule rather than the exception for the 42-year-old congressman. He’s a truly talented showman, promising a lot and hatching grandiose plans that are far removed from the reality of ever being realized.

A lot has been reported over the past few days concerning the “conservative revolution” Romney and Ryan have planned for the United States. The fact is, however, the title is all we know about how the revolution would look. This latest announcement only confirms the fact that this is about all we may ever know. The reason is Romney’s fear that he may lose the election on Nov 6 because of his running mate’s radical views. That may be because Ryan’s plans are scaring off even some conservative voters rather than attracting those whose breath quickens with joy at the very sight of this eloquent father and family man from Wisconsin.

Ryan asks the right questions, you have to give him that. And he has courage. He asks whether the ailing U.S. healthcare system consisting of Medicaid for the poor and Medicare for the elderly can be paid for in the future. He asks whether it’s possible to get the burgeoning debt under control by continuing on as we have in the past. The answer to both questions is a resounding no.

But Ryan’s solution, which he pompously captions the “Path to Prosperity” is, at best, only a theoretical solution to getting a handle on both problems. In the real world, it wouldn’t work. The extensive privatization of Medicare would require enormous increases in patient contributions because only a cap on government contributions would result in any cost savings. Every retiree, current and future, could easily run the numbers for themselves and carefully calculate whether he or she would want to vote for the radical Romney-Ryan solution.

Ryan’s vision of a withdrawal of government from the private business sector and society in general is also more an idealistic concept of neoliberalism than it is a practical and realizable policy. Government debt has to be reduced. That means taxes must go up, something Ryan opposes as a conservative. The level of national debt would also be reduced if defense expenditures were reduced. But that’s another taboo the otherwise courageous Ryan is unwilling to take on. His plan reads like the first chapter of a textbook teaching how to get rid of a welfare state: Successful reduction of the national debt is impossible without getting rid of the social safety net.

Such a prospect would be most acceptable to those voters already safely in the Romney-Ryan camp. Undecided voters might – just having a look at the healthcare policy – be more inclined to run in the opposite direction. The lead partner in this Republican duo seems to have meanwhile grasped that notion. The decision to choose Ryan precipitated a debate as to just how much government involvement future Americans wanted in their lives. It was also a decision that propelled Romney into the headlines. But it wasn’t an early indicator of who would win the election.

Nothing else explains Romney’s behavior in recent days. He must almost be scared to death because he is barely touching Ryan’s plans with his own fingers. He mutters that the younger man’s plans may be good, but he is the one running for president and he has his own ideas. The problem is that Romney keeps on forgetting to tell us exactly what those ideas are.

The influential conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer recently predicted a rosy future for Paul Ryan, writing that he could very well represent the face of the future Republican Party. Perhaps. But right now, it’s much more likely that Paul Ryan will share the same fate as Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz. Remember him? He was the father of a tax plan so simple that one could file his or her taxes using a form that would fit on the back of a beer coaster. That was a while back, and you never even hear Merz’s name mentioned these days.