The unspoken Democratic answer to all of the above questions is yet more taxes, coupled with price controls on health care. Democrats don’t want to be frank about it for political reasons. They cover for their own substantive vacuity with evasions and crude attacks on Ryan’s proposal as a budgetary death panel. Such is the lot of the adult in the room.

Paul Ryan is Washington’s answer to those Republican grown-ups out in the states, Govs. Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Chris Christie of New Jersey. They all drench themselves in the details of policy, are unafraid to speak hard truths, and — in their own ways, in keeping with their different personalities — relish the art of public persuasion. No wonder the three of them are so often mentioned wistfully as (unlikely) potential presidential candidates.