Novak: McCain and Rep. Ryan’s Roadmap

Interesting report from Robert Novak on John McCain’s reaction to Rep. Ryan’s ambitious legislative agenda, "Roadmap for America’s Future":

…on May 29, the Republican presidential candidate might not have realized that he had just come face to face with an opportunity and a test. Ryan showed him his plan to reform the economy. McCain expressed interest and said he would turn it over to his campaign’s economists. That was truly ominous. If the Kemp-Roth tax cut had been handed over to economists three decades ago, it probably would have died in its crib and aborted the national and Republican revival…

It is hardly likely the Republican leadership will embrace Ryan’s daring agenda if it cannot even bring itself to temporarily forgo pork-barrel spending by passing a moratorium on earmarks. But Ryan represents a younger breed of reform Republicans who now have junior leadership positions.

…After what is expected to be another bad GOP defeat in the 2008 congressional elections, Ryan, [Kevin] McCarthy and [Eric] Cantor could constitute the party’s new House leadership… a campaign based on Barack Obama’s shortcomings may not be enough on Election Day. While Ryan says the people are more than ready for his strong medicine, McCain has not yet agreed.

The curmudgeonly Novak has some good insights here: John McCain is very unlikely to derail Barack Obama’s momentum, barring more innovative and substantive economic planks in his platform; the GOP is in a sorry state, and is essentially without leadership; and yet it has a small core of solid up and comers who stand ready to tackle some of the most challenging and important policy issues facing this country. 

Our current prediction is that we’ll see some historic rhyming in coming years: political markets indicate that the Democrats will win the White House and remain in solid control of Congress, and all indications are that economic policies overall will take a turn for the worse in such a scenario. That creates a strong possibility that either: (1) the GOP will be given control of one or both houses of Congress while Obama is President (the Clinton outcome), or (2) President Obama will not win reelection (the Carter outcome). It’s not clear which politician is capable of playing Reagan’s role in the latter scenario. At the moment, Rep. Ryan appears to be the only possibility. But whether he could garner the necessary party support (and whether he would be interested, for that matter) is unclear at this point.