On August 11, Sen. Paul Ryan was named presumed Republican party nominee for President Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate.
I did appreciate that during his speech that morning Ryan gave the reasons we should elect Romney our president, reciting a list of Romney accomplishments and demonstrated skills, examples of the kinds of things that a President of the United States should be good at.
These were the specific things he cited:
1) “creating jobs” by picking companies to buy while at Bain Capital (I am struck by the fact that this is the same skill required by a successful stockbroker: picking companies to buy. I’m not knocking stockbrokers, and I’m not knocking private equity – both are very valuable — but is picking acquisition targets a skill the President needs to have? No.)
2) balancing the budget in Massachusetts without raising taxes (good! this is a skill that transfers well to the role of POTUS)
3) successfully running the Olympics (is this something in the POTUS job description? No.).
There was a fourth thing, “improving the lives of millions of people,” which is vague enough that that there is no telling what it could refer to, although I suspect it may be a veiled reference to the Romney healthcare plan in Massachusetts, but of course if your name is Paul Ryan, you can’t talk about that in a positive light.
The nice thing about a list containing 3 things is that, like the Holy Trinity, it’s easy to remember, even if a person can make a strong case for only one of those things being relevant.