Paul Ryan as Vice President

FDR’s Vice President John Nance Garner allegedly said, “The office of the vice president isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit.”

And John Adams, the first vice president, said, “As vice president, I am nothing; but I could be everything.” In the uniquely American system of choosing our chief executive, we also choose his potential successor and in American history 14 VPs have become president.

So, when Mitt Romney announced that he would choose Paul Ryan, the representative from Wisconsin, as his running mate, the speculation began as to whether he would energize or hurt the Republican’s chances of winning the White House in 2012.

Paul Ryan on the Republican ticket guarantees that this election will have a true, eloquent, conservative spokesman explaining to the American people what a disaster another Obama term will mean. His youth, charisma, policy explanations, budgetary genius and squeaky-clean background guarantee a new energized look at his plan that will save America from the financial Armageddon that awaits us if Obama is re-elected.

When Romney and Ryan are inaugurated in January of 2013, the United States will finally have a vice president capable of assuming the duties and powers of the president

Paul Ryan is an energizer, that’s for sure, but whether positive or negative, we are yet to see.

We’re now assured that taxation, debt and entitlement issues will be discussed. That is good. His reliance on trickle-down economics and an un-fettered marketplace is not. Nor is his unwillingness to say what he would cut in his “shrink the government” approach, or how those that were “shrunk” in the process might fare in his brave new world.

Paul Ryan is a front man. His role is to provide likable, wonkish credibility to a set of ideologically based economic positions that disproportionally benefit the most fortunate in our society. The “haves” would have more and the “have-lesses” would have less.
Additionally, his positions on social issues have been more extreme than mainstream. He seems un-assuming and non-threatening, and that’s his job, but his policies certainly are not without sting.

Paul Ryan is 42 and has been in Congress since he was 28. He has been active with the Koch brothers and their organizations. He has no apparent foreign policy credentials.

He is more likely to divide us than bring us together, and I shudder to think of him facing Vladimir Putin. A heartbeat from the presidency is not where he belongs.