What Does the Ryan Pick Mean?

Democrats seem to be just as pleased by the pick as conservatives. As Ryan Lizza points out in his profile of Ryan in the New Yorker, he brings a solid policy base to a GOP side in which concrete policy proposals have been conspicuously lacking. Even the White House embraced Ryan's budget plan as indicative of the wider Republican philosophy, so that they'd actually have something to critique. In response to the budget, Obama said pointedly, "I believe it paints a vision of our future that’s deeply pessimistic. There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And I don’t think there’s anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill."

The takeaway line from Lizza's essay about the rising star was pretty simple: "To envisage what Republicans would do if they win in November, the person to understand is not necessarily Romney, who has been a policy cipher all his public life. The person to understand is Paul Ryan." Indeed, this a pick which brings not only a second, possibly more endearing face to the Romney product but actually much of the substance. Ryan is being relied upon to inject not only Palinesque energy but a sense that there's some specificity to be found among all of Romney's vague, moist — and above all, emotive — rhetoric.

Although both sides of the spectrum are rejoicing, John Dickerson is probably right to say that the Democrats shouldn't be:

Perhaps Romney can take a vision graft from Ryan. He'll have to, because voters won't be lured by Ryan's ideas unless the man at the top of the ticket makes the case for them. But for all of the talk of a new emphasis on policy specifics, this is still going to be a campaign deeply connected to American values. When Ryan spoke on Saturday, he talked about the threat Obama poses to the American way of life. Underneath every policy debate will be the argument that when tough choices have to be made about the federal government, you're going to want candidates who share your values when they're doing the awful math of scarcity.

The Romney choice represents a significant adaptation from the plan that the campaign had been running before, which relied mostly on keeping the campaign focused on Barack Obama's record. By picking Ryan, who comes with a very detailed set of ideas and proposals, Romney has embraced the view that he needs to run a campaign that offers bright alternatives to Obama's vision. Even the Romney bus sends this message. It has been redesigned on the outside to read "The Romney Plan."

For the first time, it seems as though a vote for Mitt Romney won't simply be a vote against Obama.