Mr. Obama describes an America where the middle class has been squeezed by tax cuts for the wealthy that have left education, research and infrastructure investments under-funded, undermining job creation even as unfettered market forces helped push wealth away from Middle America and toward the top.

Mr. Ryan, ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, describes an America where the middle class finds its aspirations snuffed out by job-killing tax rates and the massive burden of health and Social Security programs that need to be transformed with market forces and eased into the private sector.

Republicans caricature the Obama view as a nanny-state philosophy that strangles growth. Democrats caricature the Ryan view as a Darwinian philosophy in which the social safety net is shredded.

Either way, the words of these two refute the notion that elections don’t offer real choices.