Ryan 2012...or 2016! Or whenever he gets around to it!

We're nearing the end of the most over-hyped week of the year in the world of politics: the week of the State of the Union.  I really don't enjoy the SOTU, regardless of who is President.  The incessant applause, standing and sitting, and whooping and hollering are just too much for me to take.  A 20 minute speech turns into an hour, and inevitably someone from the opposing party is caught taking a cat-nap by cameras because, let's face it, the speech is generally dreadfully boring.

The positive change for this year is that Nancy Pelosi is not Speaker anymore, so we didn't have to see her smug nipped and tucked face through the entire speech.  Plus, Joe Biden was still back there, genuinely smiling, and that's always entertaining.  John Boehner replaced Nancy on the President's left, likely on the verge of tears.

The first half of the speech was all about spending investment.  On necessities like high speed rail.  Because that's what we desperately need when we're running a national debt of >$14 trillion.  Then he shifted his focus to one of fiscal responsibility and called for discretionary spending freezes for the next 5 years.  That sounds good until you realize that freeze is on extremely heightened levels of spending. 

I did, however, like several of the ideas he mentioned, including tort reform (which he was so adamantly against during the healthcare debates last year), cutting the corporate tax rate and simplifying the tax code.  He even briefly mentioned entitlement reform, but gave no specifics, so it means little. 

"We do big things" was the theme of the rah-rah speech finale.  I love a good American pep rally, but coming from a guy who has continually apologized for our country to foreign nations all over the world, it was difficult for me to get on his bandwagon.

All in all, it was essentially what I was expecting: more spending plus a shift to the center.  I predict that the President will continue on the centrist course he's recently taken, which will get him re-elected, and then after the 2012 elections we will veer sharply back to the left.  Hopefully, at that time, the Senate will be Republican controlled, and checks and balances will be restored, the way it should be.

I was very happy with the Republicans' choice for the SOTU rebuttal: Paul Ryan.  I really, really like Paul.  And not just because he's cute.  He has proven to be very smart, and has a good understanding of economics and finance, which I believe to be the most important thing for our leaders right now as we dig out of this hole that we're in.  While his Roadmap for America never gained traction, I don't think it's because there aren't good concepts in it.  Ryan's response allowed him to be exposed to people that might not normally follow politics.  His speech was somewhat vague, but overall it had the right message.

I am hoping that Ryan will consider a Presidential run at some point, preferably before he's been in Washington so long that he's a stodgy old insider like the last Republican candidate.