You know the tenor of a Presidential campaign has reached a new low when the week’s news is dominated by whether the White House knew about a TV ad produced by a PAC supporting President Obama that blamed Mitt Romney for the cancer death of a former steelworker’s wife.
No wonder one recent poll found that more than 40 percent of American voters are going to cast their ballot for the lesser of the two evils.
The politics of personal destruction may indeed determine the outcome of an election, but it isn’t healthy for the country. What this Presidential campaign could use is an adult conversation.
And, with Romney’s choice of Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, we just might get one. Ryan is a smart, serious, profoundly likable man who knows his stuff about issues.
Washington’s way is to craft sound bites and master banalities on controversial issues, but Ryan has taken the road less traveled.
Instead, the 42-year-old Republican, who sleeps in his Congressional office, has immersed himself in complex budget issues and produced bold and thoughtful ideas on how to fix the country’s worsening budget crisis.
On Medicare, Ryan proposes allowing future enrollees to purchase coverage using a government subsidy or stay in the current plan.
Ryan would fix Social Security by offering workers the chance to invest one-third of their contribution in private accounts and raising the retirement age.
Ryan’s tax plan creates two brackets–10 percent and 25 percent. Taxpayers would have the option of filing under the new, simplified system or the current tax code.
Naturally, Ryan’s ideas, particularly on Medicare and Social Security, invite exaggerated caricatures from the left. One infamous TV ad featured a Ryan lookalike throwing grandma off a cliff.
No doubt there is a lot more where that came from. But Ryan should be up to the task. Anyone who doubts Ryan’s ability to defend his ideas should watch the video of the Congressman explaining how the numbers in the Affordable Health Care Act don’t add up.
And with Medicare and Social Security steaming toward fiscal meltdown, serious adults know we need to make difficult decisions.
The Washington Post said of Romney’s choice of Ryan, “it offers the chance to transform what has been a dismally substance-free campaign into a serious clash of ideas.”
Isn’t that what this election should be about? As Ryan said in a speech Sunday in High Point, NC, “The very idea of what this country stands for is on the line.”
With the Ryan pick, the gauntlet has been thrown down. Let’s have the debate.