WSJ: My, What a Smart Pick

Last week, the Wall Street Journal called on Mitt Romney to pick Paul Ryan for his vice presidential runningmate. Now who's crowing about the pick? Why, the Wall Street Journal. The Journal isn't taking credit for the pick, but its editors do view it as a sign of Romney's seriousness at reforming government and his "governing potential." "In choosing the 42-year-old, Mr. Romney has embraced the GOP's reform wing and made it more likely that the election debate will be as substantial as America's current problems," the paper crows.

The Journal also thinks that Ryan is the ideal pick for serious ideas and countering "the same old easy demagoguery." Not everyone is so overjoyed with Ryan, of course. Paul Krugman calls the Romney/Ryan ticket "Galt/Gekko" (as in the Ayn Rand hero and Wall Street villain). Ryan "is, in fact, a big fraud, who doesn’t care at all about fiscal responsibility, and whose policy proposals are sloppy as well as dishonest," writes Krugman in his blog at the New York Times. "Of course, this means that he’ll fit in to the Romney campaign just fine." (More Paul Ryan stories.)