Fear Not.

Personally I'm so confident Tim Pawlenty won't get the GOP primary nod, I will eat my hat if the country chooses to jump on the "T-Paw" bandwagon.

Truth be told, he kind of flew under the radar as governor of Minnesota. Just unexciting enough to be elected, in a state that possibly was seeking an alternative to the excitment and expense of the Bush II regime.

But he was hardly all that popular, or unpopular, up here.

Would he even carry Minnesota?

BONUS: Paul Ryan who?

Seriously, I always thought the D.C. and East Coast analyst people were more enamored with Paul Ryan than Wisconsonites as a whole. Not that we're ignorant here (or smarter), just that ... he is a representative more of the professional, middle-aged family men that are common in Milwaukee and Janesville suburbs. (We saw a lot of those types, junior version, in Madison law school. Who think based on what they've experienced, they know it all and want to extrapolate their "knowledge" to advise all others. Girls might know this as the condescending Boyfriend/Daddy types, who know all the answers and are always trying to "teach" you. Hate that myself. Term I would use for such fellas? Not evil so much as ... limited. By life in the Milwaukee/Janesville corridor and especially suburbs. Nope, what you think might work on paper, very often doesn't work in practice, when you factor in all those real-world incentives/disincentives, and how things out there really work. Yep -- limited, as in: Not knowing what they don't know...)

But that doesn't get you much coverage outside the limited regional (business, in this case) interests. He's not much an ag guy, I don't think. Nor more about tourism, wildlife, or mining interests that are on the agenda in other parts of the state. I don't think his constituency is all that much small-town Wisconsin either, more mid-income manufacturing concerns, with bigger problems.

He was taken more seriously in D.C. than here at home, I think, because men from his mold (youngish 40s, conservative, fresh-faced family man with traditional Christian values) sounding a commonsense warning: "We're spending more than we have -- can we talk about this? Get the issue on the table?" -- are much less common in D.C., where initially he must have been regarded as an exotic creature. (I get the sense D.C. -- the political circles, at least -- is rather sophisticated place, where one rarely straight out says what they're thinking, without considering it from at least two steps down the line... and I don't mean that as a compliment exactly. Crafty, in a negative, fearful way, more like.)

Problem is: just because his ultimate role might have been being a Midwest representative "truthteller" at the time, doesn't mean one has confidence he has all the answers in fixing the problem he's identified. (not to downplay the "discoverer" or "pointer-outer" role, as anyone familiar with basic home maintenance can probably attest.. That is: Finding/diagnosing a problem -- particularly as you get closer and closer to the ultimate of the troubling symptoms is a big part of it: Knowing exactly what's going on/wrong.)

Had we been living in less politically polarizing times, perhaps we might have valued Rep. Ryan's contribution to the national discussion -- his representation of what families, and fiscal conservatives fear -- on that level alone. But because we are not, he was pushed into a Savior role (perhaps to counter the overblown political symbolism of President Obama?) and that's what has the actual learned thinkers in the economics and financial fields up in arms, I think.

They call that the Peter Principle, in business, I think. Moving you up in stock, because you've performed well initially in one role (his addressing a problem), and assuming thus, you have all the answers. (akin to asking the person who investigates and finds the leak* at home, thus to have all the tools and skills needed to fix it.)

Instead of working together, we work against each other. Nobody wins, and the house deteriorates...


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* On second thought, it's not so much he "investigated and found the leak" so much; his role is more in the calling attention to the gushing leak that everyone pretty much knows about (the forthcoming demographic Boomer drain), but in sounding the alarm.

Really, that's important enough sometimes -- to force others to look and admit the reality some prefer not to see until too late/too costly to fix without tearing down too much.

Ryan's real trouble, imho, is not so much that he's an evil man as some might want to paint him, but that in the fixer-upper role he's been given or has assumed, he's in way over his head in terms of expertise and knowing how to fix the durned gush. Which, as all maintenance folks know, is often just as costly in the end than if you had turned the trouble over to those more in the know, and actually followed the advice more experienced help has given.