A report from Politico says that President Barack Obama most feared that Tim Pawlenty would be Romney's choice for vice president. They may be right, but in this (as in so many other things) Obama got that wrong. It is Paul Ryan who he should have understood was his worst nightmare, as he and Vice Presidednt Joe Biden are about to discover.
As chairman of the House Budget Committee, Ryan has a deep familiarity with the federal budget and can brilliantly marshall the facts in terms so clear and concise that anyone can understand what he's saying, and which most voters will find reasonable and persuasive.
Ryan is far too principled and too smart to speak in sound bites or resort to "spin" in order to explain his beliefs. That's why he's so popular and keeps winning re-election.
Biden and Obama, on the other hand, are proven professional bloviators. Like many an old-school politician, they shape hot air into words and sentences that have little or no precise meaning, punctuate them with applause lines or an irrelevant conclusion and think they've said something substantive. In debate or at a press conference Ryan won't even have to attack them. They will, without knowing it, self-destruct in any side-by-side comparison.
The Democratic left is about to be mugged by reality. Romney and Ryan are going to show the world that facts and the truth matter, and when they win in November the nation will be spared four more years of irresponsible budgets at home and weak-kneed foreign policy abroad.
MARK ALESSE
Kittery Point, Maine
