Ryan Is Not What They Say

The interpretation from Europe and other parts of the world regarding the running mate that Romney has selected for the Republican ticket reveals a thick veil of ignorance.

They say that Romney has winked at the gluttonous sectors of Republicanism, opting for someone who incarnates the reactionary values of a party that has been running to the right in moral questions (they call them “social” there). In this way, Ryan would be the link to the Evangelistic Right and the religious base of a united conservatism — sonorously — in the “tea party.”

In reality, this has little to do with the election that Romney has made. Rather, Ryan has planted ideas where an ideological wasteland had been, “breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land,” as in T. S. Eliot’s poem. Whether these ideas are shared or not, they are now the protagonists of the campaign.

It is true that Obama’s rival wants to tickle the spirit of his own party. In the United States, no candidate can win if he does not fire up his party: The high level of abstention and the elections hotly contested in terms of the popular vote require it. Obama destroyed McCain four years ago because he sparked the fervor of his voting base, and his rival never succeeded to do the same on his side. The defeat of Kerry by President Bush is explained in part by similar motives.

However, there have been many ways to motivate the Republican troupes and certainly, Ryan was not one of these, if what they were trying to do was agitate the religious cloth. Not by trajectory nor charisma. No, Ryan’s contribution has a very distinct feeling: His figure is practically exclusively related to the discussion about the size of the state in a country where this topic, in contrast to other places, is not limited to intellectual circles. Instead, the topic bustles in the street. Unlike any other society, a large part of the American society has a visceral lack of trust in fiscal excesses. It is true that a sector of the “tea party” has become very motivated since Ryan has joined the ticket. Their reason, however, is that the gigantic growth of the U.S. government and the belief that this will become worse in the years ahead constitute an existential threat. The “tea party” always had two faces: One looked at the excessive state with hatred; the other looked with no less ill will at the supposed moral-deterioration of society. Ryan is embedded in the eyes of the first face.

In Europe, the public is not overly shocked by a fiscal deficit equivalent to 8 percent of the size of the economy. In the United States, however, where an opening in the 2012 budget exceeded $1 billion for the fourth consecutive year, it is the end of the world. In Europe, people would not lose sleep over the idea that the state accumulated a debt of almost $16 billion, which is to say that each citizen towed an individual debt of more than $50,000 because of the government. For the ordinary American citizen, the effect of this is terrifying. Every American that pays taxes can personalize this discussion, a discussion that sounds abstract in other countries, and therefore convert what the state costs into a personal drama.

If anyone has stuck out in recent years in the United States for trying to translate this terror of the nation’s citizens into a concrete action against the size of the State, it was Ryan. He did it from Congress, employing an intellectual capacity rarely found in politicians. Because of this — and not because of what he thinks about abortion or gay marriage or prayer in schools — Romney made him his running mate. It is also not because of “avant la lettre” radicalism that Romney chose him, but rather because Ryan had planted radical solutions to an evil that was radical before Ryan became involved.

Romney’s decision is risky, of course. Ryan is vulnerable to the classic attack against a completely falcon-like budget — that he wants to throw the old and poor to the dogs. Although his intellectual weapon is potent, there is still no evidence that he has what they call charm. But observers that try to tell the rest of the world about Romney’s bet would do well to find out who Ryan is. Or, to be more exact, what Ryan is.