Frank Bruni's "Heroes, Until They've Arrived": He's Not Referring to Obama

Texas Governor Rick Perry shot himself in the foot after taking aim at Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and speculation now abounds whether 41-year-old Congressman Paul Ryan will declare his readiness to run for president, given the fallow field of existing Republican candidates. Scuttlebutt has it that Ryan's wife, Jana, supports this endeavor (see: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/big-names-encourage-paul-ryan-run_590322.html). What about Ryan?

In a New York Times op-ed entitled "Heroes, Until They've Arrived" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/opinion/bruni-heroes-until-theyve-arrived.html?ref=opinion), Frank Bruni, not quite 37-years-old, who formerly served as the Times chief restaurant critic, takes aim at three young Republicans, whose names have recently arisen as viable presidential candidates -- Chris Christie, Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio. Bruni levels seething criticism at Ryan:

"As for Ryan, he’s the face of a proposed Medicare retrenchment that met widespread public protest, forgotten only because the debt-ceiling showdown stole the stage. It would be remembered in a general election, and he’d have to campaign as the blue-eyed Grinch Who Stole Grandma’s Boniva.

In the primaries, he’d have to explain a record that challenges his Immaculate Fiscal Conservative image. Before the 2010 midterms brought a stringent new orthodoxy, he voted for the auto bailout. He voted for TARP. That’s now Tea Party anathema and was precisely the cudgel Perry used to flatten Kay Bailey Hutchison in his 2010 re-election race."

So Ryan voted for the successful auto bailout that allowed thousands of US workers to keep their jobs? Sounds good to me.

Ryan also voted for The Troubled Asset Relief Program, which kept significant US employers afloat, and although originally expected to cost $300 billion, is now estimated to carry a price tag of less than $25 billion. This is a problem?

Of course, these positions could cost Ryan Tea Party support, but they make him that much more palatable to middle of the road Americans, and cast him as a person capable of substituting reason for impermeable conservative orthodoxy.

By all means, Ryan should declare his candidacy, and should he win the nomination, he should select Rubio as his vice presidential candidate. This intriguing possibility should keep Obama's mind occupied as he goes golfing in, oops, I meant governs from Martha's Vineyard, while Washington and the rest of the country are consumed by the flames of economic stagnation and unemployment.