Minnesota Lawyer

Here’s the weird thing about Paul Ryan being named to the Republican presidential ticket: It’s all part of Barack Obama’s campaign plan — a plan that’s working better than his strategists could have hoped. It could also backfire more disastrously than they have ever imagined.

Last week, I wrote about the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center’s effort to run the numbers on Mitt Romney’s base-broadening, rate-lowering tax reform plan. The numbers, as you may have guessed, didn’t add up. And that’s not just a problem for Romney. It’s a problem for anyone committed to the idea of tax reform.

I can describe Mitt Romney’s tax policy promises in two words: mathematically impossible.

Last week, a friend put the U.S. presidential race in depressingly clear terms: This election is a choice between a Democratic president who voters don’t think is able to solve our economic problems and a Republican candidate who voters think is committed to the same doctrines and institutions that helped produce them.

Republicans think they’ve got a winning hand arguing that President Barack Obama will raise taxes. And Democrats think they’ve got a winning hand arguing that President Obama will — raise taxes.

Forget what President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney say they want to do next year. The better question might be: How do they intend to get any of it done?

If the U.S. is growing at 3.5 percent a year while China is growing at 8.5 percent a year, enabling China’s economy to surpass the U.S. in a decade or so, does that mean the U.S. is in decline?