A bold and stark choice

The Post’s View

By Editorial Board

THE BEST THING about Mitt Romney’s choice of Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan to be his running mate is that it offers the chance to transform what has been a dismally substance-free campaign into a serious clash of ideas. The energetic, likable House Budget Committee chairman has made himself into the party’s leading thinker on the fiscal and budgetary matters that will confront the next president. We have differed sharply with Mr. Ryan’s policy proposals, which would cut far too deeply into an already fraying social safety net and raise too little revenue to support the needs of an aging society. But Mr. Ryan has demonstrated a willingness to tackle third-rail issues from Social Security (he has been a leading proponent of instituting voluntary private accounts, raising the retirement age and reducing benefits for better-off seniors) to Medicare (he would transform it, most recently in a plan worked out with Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, into a voucher-like system under which seniors would purchase coverage on their own).

That has made Mr. Ryan an influential player in the Washington debate and makes him a welcome addition to the 2012 race. The 42-year-old Mr. Ryan has been something of a one-man idea factory: On taxes, he has proposed letting taxpayers choose between the existing system and a new one that would have just two rates, 10 percent and 25 percent, and would eliminate taxes entirely on investment income; in a move that seems guaranteed to drain money from the Treasury, taxpayers would be able to choose between that and the existing system. On health care, he has endorsed doing away with the tax-free treatment of employer-sponsored health insurance and replacing it with a refundable credit. There are major flaws and omissions in Mr. Ryan’s cornucopia of proposals. Yet his selection puts useful pressure on both Mr. Romney and President Obama to be more specific about their own approaches to entitlement spending, tax reform and other budgetary issues about which they would prefer to speak, if at all, in vague generalities.