...yesterday at a town hall meeting in Racine, Wisconsin. (You didn't think I was really going, did you?) The "Listening Session," as Ryan's Web site called it, had been moved to the Caesar Chavez Community Center Gymnasium in order to -- like others this week -- "accommodate larger crowds." (The video above is from a Racine newspaper Web site.)
I set out for the "Kringle Capital of the World" (and hometown of Fredric March) just after the markets closed at three o'clock. Mapquest said it would take about an hour and twenty minutes from my house in the northern suburbs of Chicago. The meeting was scheduled to run from 3:45 until five. Could I make it? How bad would the traffic be? And once there, would I be turned away because of the crowds? All I could think of was Bill Murray's famous line from "Stripes":
C'mon, it's Czechoslovakia. We zip in, we pick 'em up, we zip right out again. We're not going to Moscow. It's Czechoslovakia. It's like going into Wisconsin.
So I left the house. I had to go straight from the meeting to a party in Evanston afterward, where I was expected to bring the drinks. Wine? Check. Soda? Check. Let's go!
(There was only one thing I forgot -- the directions to the Community Center in Racine. Not to worry; I never know where I'm going and yet always seem to get there -- and back.)
So I drove up to Racine on a beautiful sunny day in unusually light traffic. So far, so good. I (kind of) remembered where I was going and managed to get off the Interstate at the right exit (Racine). From there I just pointed my car in the general direction of where I wanted to go and hoped for the best. (Kind of like my overall approach to life.) I knew the Center was on Douglas Avenue and figured I'd run into it eventually, which I did. Eureka!
On the way, though, I drove briefly through a "low income" neighborhood (one of the streets was named after Martin Luther King) and all I could think was, how could Representative Ryan really want to cut spending on the most vulnerable of his constituents in order to give tax breaks to the most fortunate? (But this piece is not a hit job.)
Anyway, once on Douglas Avenue it was easy to find the Center. Parking, however, was another story -- the place was obviously packed. It was about 4:20 at this point (Mapquest was spot on!) but I was determined to get a look at the Congressman and the crowd. Would there be a lot of dissent? Rage, even? How would Ryan react? What, exactly, would be the mood in that gym? That's what I was most interested in gauging. So I found a parking spot on a side street and ... ran to the Community Center. (I can only imagine the entertainment value for the residents of that neighborhood in seeing a fat, fifty-two year old bald guy running down the street in order to hear the chairman of the House Budget Committee speak in a hot, crowded gymnasium. Priceless.)
To my surprise, I was able to get into the gym, although not on the actual floor. I was directed by some staffer to the balcony. (Apparently, they can spot an Obama supporter with no trouble at all.)
I found a seat among five hundred or so people and got my first look at the Congressman in person. I couldn't get over how thin he was. And young, and tall, and good-looking. All of the things that I am not. (Did I mention that he had a full head of dark hair?)
But I really wanted to see this guy with my own eyes. Is he, as David Brooks reported, one "of the smartest, most admirable and most genial men in Washington," or the "Flimflam Man," as Paul Krugman called him?
And what I saw, I think, was ... myself. Or, at least, a younger (and much smarter) version of the libertarian I used to be.
My impression is that Paul Ryan is an earnest and sincere young man who really, truly believes in what he is preaching -- the gospel of free markets and laissez-faire capitalism. (Or, what you might call "the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.") He's a libertarian and his budget isn't so much a "budget" as it is a "libertarian manifesto." Ryan wants to shrink the size of government and lower taxes dramatically. It's been said that he wants to take the U. S. back not only to what it was before the Great Society, but to what it was before the New Deal. His plan, in fact, would reduce tax rates back to levels not seen since the days of Herbert Hoover. Wow!
(I would argue that Ryan would really like to transform the U. S. into some libertarian Utopia from an Ayn Rand novel, but first things, first.)
Now I'd heard all of this before and have probably read a lot of the same stuff that informs Ryan. I used to be an avid reader of the Journal myself, and even went through my own Ayn Rand phase when I was a young man. (Unlike Ryan, though, I worked through it.)
As I was listening to the Q. and A. -- I missed Ryan's opening speech in the video above -- I kept wondering, how would his vision of America help those poor people in that neighborhood I drove through to get to this gym? And I know his answer (because I used to give it myself): lowering taxes on small businesses would encourage hiring and lead to economic growth and blah, blah, blah. But would it? Would it really be preferable to have no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Social Security, no food stamps, no universal health care, no safety net at all? (Think about your parents for a minute.)
Would poor people prosper in a libertarian society, or be left to rot? I really don't know the answer.
(And isn't this what the Republicans have been selling us since 1980? As far as I can tell, the rich have just gotten fabulously richer while the middle class and poor have been left behind.)
But the final turning point in my own personal evolution from libertarian to "pragmatist" was TARP. Because during the financial crisis in the fall of '08, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said that, in effect, if we didn't bail out the banking system the U. S. would descend into another Great Depression. And -- suddenly -- there were no atheists in foxholes. I was persuaded, President Bush was persuaded, and, yes, even Paul Ryan was persuaded that the federal government had to come to the rescue. So while it's one thing to talk about laissez-faire capitalism and Ayn Rand and all that, it's quite another to stick to it in a crisis. As President Bush himself said at the time, "I didn't want to be Herbert Hoover."
So Mr. Ryan laid out his vision for America in the Q. and A. to a mostly sympathetic crowd. (My estimate is that only about 10-15% were hostile.) He had a number of applause lines and the overwhelmingly white, tea party-ish crowd ate it up. (I didn't know what to expect coming in, although I was pretty sure it wouldn't be anything like the rage seen at town halls in the summer of '09 -- and it wasn't.) No, the crowd seemed generally supportive. They liked Ryan's talking points: strong dollar, less spending, lower taxes, no more borrowing, balanced budgets, etc., etc., etc. And why wouldn't they? That's how individuals and households manage their own finances.
(I couldn't help hearing Sarah Palin's voice in my own head talking about her "common sense solutions." And there is some wisdom in that. After all, common sense guides us in life: work hard, live within your means, don't drink too much, etc.)
But running a government like the United States and its $13 trillion economy is a lot more complicated. A lot.
And that brings up another thought. There are essentially three kinds of people in this conversation: lay people, like me and the rest of the crowd yesterday; more informed people, like Representative Ryan; and the most informed people, like Krugman and Bruce Bartlett, who said:
...the Ryan plan is a monstrosity. The rich would receive huge tax cuts while the social safety net would be shredded to pay for them. Even as an opening bid to begin budget negotiations with the Democrats, the Ryan plan cannot be taken seriously. It is less of a wish list than a fairy tale utterly disconnected from the real world, backed up by make-believe numbers and unreasonable assumptions. Ryan’s plan isn’t even an act of courage; it’s just pandering to the Tea Party.
And Bartlett is a Republican!
But that's what I'd really like to see. Don't take questions from people like me, get up on a stage with people like Krugman and Bartlett and take questions from them.
Representative Ryan finished at about twenty after five with a few last words about his vision; he was given a standing ovation. (The tea party is alive and well, thank you.)
And my last thought was that here was a younger, white, archconservative version of Barack Obama. This guy is smooth -- and good at what he does. He's going to be around for a while.
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