RYAN? – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  There is a major push on among some influential conservatives and conservative publications for Mitt Romney to name the young congressman from Wisconsin, Paul Ryan, as his choice for vice president. 

Ryan is reported to be on Romney's very short list of prospects, along with Senator Rob Portman of Ohio and former Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota.  There is still some talk, however, of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida (my choice), and several others. 

The Politico reports the Ryan push:

The Weekly Standard brass and Rich Lowry have made the case over the past week for Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's vice president, and now The Wall Street Journal's editorial page joins the movement:

The case for Mr. Ryan is that he best exemplifies the nature and stakes of this election. More than any other politician, the House Budget Chairman has defined those stakes well as a generational choice about the role of government and whether America will once again become a growth economy or sink into interest-group dominated decline.

Against the advice of every Beltway bedwetter, he has put entitlement reform at the center of the public agenda — before it becomes a crisis that requires savage cuts. And he has done so as part of a larger vision that stresses tax reform for faster growth, spending restraint to prevent a Greek-like budget fate, and a Jack Kemp-like belief in opportunity for all. He represents the GOP's new generation of reformers that includes such Governors as Louisiana's Bobby Jindal and New Jersey's Chris Christie. …

Personalities aside, the larger strategic point is that Mr. Romney's best chance for victory is to make this a big election over big issues. Mr. Obama and the Democrats want to make this a small election over small things — Mitt's taxes, his wealth, Bain Capital. As the past two months have shown, Mr. Romney will lose that kind of election.

To win, Mr. Romney and the Republicans have to rise above those smaller issues and cast the choice as one about the overall direction and future of the country. Americans tell pollsters they are anxious and unhappy precisely because they instinctively know the country is troubled in ways it hasn't been since the 1970s. They know the economy is growing too slowly to raise middle-class incomes, while the government is growing too fast to be affordable.

There's a lot of overlap between the various arguments for Romney choosing Ryan, with this last point as the biggest connecting theme: that Romney has to run a bigger campaign about bigger ideas than he has so far, and choosing Ryan would be the shortest route to that destination.

COMMENT:  There are positives and negatives here.  You've just read the positive argument.  Add to that what the choice of Ryan would do for Romney's image, which right now is too staid and unexciting – the image of a man who hasn't made his case.  Romney's numbers simply don't change much.  Ryan would be a jolt to the system.

These are the negatives that Romney must also consider about Ryan:  He is young and young-looking, not a man you would quickly say is qualified to be president, should the need arise.  While he comes from Wisconsin, a swing state, he is not politically powerful there, and is unlikely to have much effect on whether the state can tilt to Romney, which I think is unlikely.  He is a congressman, not a senator.   Members of the House get little respect on national tickets.  The last one was Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to be named a vice-presidential candidate by a major party, who ran with Fritz Mondale in 1984.  Before that, if memory serves me, you'd have to go back to Barry Goldwater's choice of Congressman Bill Miller of New York, in 1964. 

More important, Ryan is a juicy target for Democrats.  His economic proposals last year, especially reform of Medicare and Social Security, were intensely controversial.  Democrats run scare campaigns, and it will be easy to run a scare campaign against Paul Ryan among senior citizens.  "Want to see your Medicare disappear?  Paul Ryan does."

Ryan would be an exciting, but hazardous choice.  He'd have to be presented correctly, with precision.  Attacks against him would have to be anticipated and pre-empted from the first second.  He'd have to be pushed as the savior of Social Security and Medicare, not their destroyers. 

I'm agnostic on this.  Convince me.

August 9,  2012