Paul Ryan--An Excellent Choice

I am watching Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell introduce Mitt Romney and his Vice Presidential nominee, Paul Ryan. I think Mitt Romney has made an inspired choice, one I wasn't sure that he would make.  The choice has shaken the race up, it will raise the discourse (hopefully), but I'm not sure it is going to swing many votes in the direction of the ticket.  That's OK, because there won't have to be many swinging to make things happen.  If swinging votes had been the primary consideration, they should have picked Condi Rice.

The speech is now over--the choice was a good one.  Paul Ryan was superb in his approach, and hit all the right notes.

Here's why the choice of Ryan is important--currently, the President is trying to make the race about Romney--his time at Bain, his rich guy-ness, etc. He simply can't talk about issues and performance.  I hear all this talk about how Ryan's choice has the Dems "salivating" because of his leadership on issues such as the budget, debt, the economy and Medicare.  Bring it on.  IF they have the guts to turn this into an issues election, they will lose, badly.  Their only hope is to focus on tearing down Romney personally--and the pick of the Republican Party's number one idea man is going to make it far more difficult for them to pull off.

The other reason this is an inspired choice is this--the specificity many have been clamoring for can now begin to come forward...likely with water carried by Ryan.  No one understands what needs to be done better than Paul Ryan, and Romney has largely associated himself with Ryan's approach.

The choice of Paul Ryan was the choice of a man who is confident that he is going to win, and the choice of a man who is serious about governing seriously when that happens.  Condi Rice would have been the choice of a man concerned about being elected, and less so about how he will govern.  I'm onboard.  I hope you are too.

AFTERWARD:  I did not know that the USS WISCONSIN backdrop was going to be used for this announcement--I made some suggestions upward into the campaign that it might not be a good backdrop for what was going to be a "sequestration" defense spending speech. I could not have been more wrong on either account--it came off very well.