RYAN SEES active role for himself if he’s vice president.
If ticket prevails, aides say, he’ll have key part in economic dealings
CINCINNATI — Rep. Paul Ryan may have largely disappeared from the national spotlight down the campaign homestretch, ceding attention to Mitt Romney. But if the Republican ticket prevails, Ryan plans to come back roaring, establishing an activist vice presidency that he said would look like Dick Cheney’s under President George W. Bush.
Ryan would dedicate most evenings to dinners with senators and House members of both parties, aides said, as he steps into the role Romney promised: architect of a Romney administration’s drive to enact a budget-shrinking government and overhauling programs such as Medicare.
On a grinding schedule in the election’s final hours, rushing to as many as five states in a day, Ryan avoids specifics in his speeches about his duties if elected. Behind the scenes, he speaks at least weekly to the office of Mike Leavitt, the former Utah governor who leads the Romney campaign’s transition team.
The prospect of a deeply engaged vice president was described in interviews with campaign aides, close House colleagues and the few times Ryan has discussed his potential future job. Asked by a reporter last month if he expected the kind of broad responsibility for the economy that Cheney held for national security — as an aide suggested — Ryan said, “I do.”
“A large reason he was chosen was to help Romney govern,” an adviser to the campaign said. “Paul’s going to focus on being a partner.”
Democrats in the Bush years criticized Cheney for usurping for himself a kind of co-presidency.
Ryan and Romney seem to have an effective partnership on the trail; the younger man has been deferential to a fault since he was chosen for the ticket, modifying long-held positions to conform with Romney’s.
That said, Ryan has made clear that he would not be relegated only to attending funerals.
Before Ryan accepted the nomination, aides said, he had extensive conversations about his position with Romney, who assured him he would play a guiding role on fiscal and economic matters. Already seen as an intellectual leader of the Republican Party because of his sweeping House budget proposals, Ryan would wield the clout that comes from being recognized as the party’s most likely next-in-line for the presidency, prominent Republicans said.
“My guess is Paul will be an extraordinarily consequential vice president,” said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a member of the Republican House leadership, who was a visitor to the Ryan family box during the Republican convention in August. “He’s going to play an important role in outlining, shaping and passing the Romney agenda from the day he walks in the door.
“He becomes emissary in chief to the Hill,” Cole said, “especially to House Republicans, who are likely to become the tip of the spear in terms of anything Romney wants to do.”
Whether Ryan would be a wrangler of House conservatives in support of a White House seeking to reach across the aisle, or an agent of the Tea Party who keeps Romney from deviating from the true path, is a subject of much debate.
Romney has promised over the past month to bridge the partisan chasm in Washington, as he has modulated his talk in an appeal to swing voters.
“When I am elected,” he said Friday in Wisconsin, in a speech billed as a closing argument, “I will endeavor to find those good men and women on both sides of the aisle who care more about the country than about the politics.”
Aides to Ryan said that when he was selected, he received congratulatory phone calls from Cheney and Dan Quayle, but that they did not offer him counsel on how to define a role as vice president.
Ryan’s friends and aides said his disarming personality and willingness to listen to opponents had made him well-liked by lawmakers of both parties, and he would continue to build bridges through regular dinner discussions, he told aides. On a return to the House floor for a vote in September, Ryan spent several minutes in friendly conversation with Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip.
“I think Mitt Romney wants to be realistic, but also work in a bipartisan way,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, a Tea Party favorite who is a friend of Ryan’s. “You’re not going to get to the finish line unless you can get the House and the Senate to come together.”
Among Ryan’s advisers on the campaign trail, many of whom come from the office of House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, it is accepted wisdom that one of Obama’s biggest failings was to hold himself apart from lawmakers. Thus, the thinking goes, the president lacked the relationships to build bipartisan support on issues such as health care and debt reduction.
But Democratic lawmakers who have worked with Ryan said that he has no record of compromise. They said his idea of a meeting of the minds was sticking to his guns and convincing opponents that he was right.
“He lives in an ideological bubble,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, a member of the House Budget Committee that Ryan heads. “I’ve been on the Budget Committee two other times. The lack of bipartisanship was striking” under Ryan.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee, said Ryan became a favorite of conservatives because of his passionate advocacy for drastically reducing government.
“He has said if Romney and Ryan prevail, they will have a mandate to enact the Ryan budget or a close version of that budget,” Van Hollen said.
“That’s not a recipe for compromise.”
Ryan rejected the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles budget deficit compromise last year, which included a balance between cuts to government programs and increased revenues through eliminating tax deductions and credits.
He did so, he has explained, because it did not tame the increase in health spending.
Should Romney win the election, it is widely expected that his first major legislative effort will be an attempt at a “grand bargain” that overhauls the tax code, including across-the-board cuts, and an overhaul of entitlement programs.
Republicans have said that they would seek to buy time to put together such a package by postponing the tax increases and automatic spending cuts known as the “fiscal cliff” that go into effect in January.
With Republicans favored to keep their majority in the House, much of the success of a Romney administration’s ambitions will turn on which party controls the Senate. If Democrats’ current three-seat advantage slips to a 50-50 balance, a Vice President Ryan would be in position to cast a tiebreaking vote.
But if Democrats retain a majority, and with it the power to prevent bills from reaching the floor, a President Romney would need to find common ground with at least a handful of Democratic senators.
Then, Ryan’s true mettle is likely to be tested, as he becomes the White House’s emissary to the conservative wing of the House.
“That will be part of Paul’s job — to come in and sell it to people who otherwise will feel let down and disappointed,” said Cole, the congressman from Oklahoma.