This patch of southern Ohio between Cincinnati and Dayton is not the up-for-grabs Ohio you've read so much about. This is decided country, where House Speaker John Boehner is running for re-election unopposed, where "Defeat Obama" and "Romney/Ryan" lawn signs glisten in the chilly drizzle.
At the heart of it is a university whose students, according to a poll by the campus paper, favor Romney by 49 percent to 40 percent, and tend to think, as one senior half-joked, "that Sean Hannity is the news." This is clearly not the place to gauge the last-minute mood swings of a state that many consider decisive.
It is, however, an interesting place to ponder the governing mentality of a Romney/Ryan administration, if that is what voters deliver on Tuesday. Miami University, a pretty grid of red brick, lawns and autumn foliage, is the place where Paul Ryan's view of the world jelled, under the tutelage of an economist he describes as his mentor. I decided to spend my last column before the election peeking through this little window into the Republican id. If Mitt Romney is our next president, many in the party hope Ryan will play the role of chief ideologist. And if Romney loses, Ryan starts the 2016 campaign for his party's nomination near the front of the line.
Ryan's alma mater draws mostly white, upper-middle-class students from Midwest Republican families that are attracted to Miami as a place unlikely to turn their children against them. A well-endowed business school (Ryan majored in economics and political science) and a robust frat culture (Ryan was an enthusiastic Delta Tau Delta) tend to reinforce the conservative values represented by the Republican ticket — with one important asterisk we'll get to later. In 2008, many Miami students veered out of character, thrilled by the historic Obama campaign, but now that enthusiasm has given way to disappointment and to something few of these kids have ever experienced: economic anxiety.
The macroeconomics professor who helped shape Paul Ryan is a voluble, passionate supply-sider and self-described "hard-core libertarian" named William R. Hart, known as Rich. Listening to him, you can imagine that you are hearing what Paul Ryan would say if he were not inhibited by the demands of electoral politics. Hart is the opposite of politic — to the point of regularly, publicly denouncing Miami University for what he regards as declining academic rigor and coddling of students, all in the university's pursuit of "money, money, money." Hart is not a coddler. He proudly reports that of the 112 students who took his latest Principles of Macroeconomics exam, 56 failed and 27 got D's.
Rich Hart does not speak for Paul Ryan, but he spent many hours talking to Ryan, his eager student, and regards the candidate as a good friend and kindred spirit. What they share is an enduring and astringent kind of Republicanism that rests on a reverence for self-reliance, a conviction that government assistance leads to crippling dependency.
Hart sees the election not as a difference of approaches but a clash of philosophies. "Do we want to become a sort of European socialist welfare state?" he asked when we chatted in his office, decorated with Elvis and Nascar memorabilia, with Paul Krugman's economics textbook demoted to a doorstop. "Or do we want to be a free-market capitalist economy where people who are productive get rewarded for working hard and creating wealth? What happens with these European welfare states is, everybody's equally poor. I much prefer a little income inequality."
Hart's policy expectations for a Romney/Ryan regime are familiar from the campaign. They include rolling back environmental regulations that slow development of natural gas and coal. ("Not green energy," he said with disgust. "Fossil fuel energy.") They include entrusting health care for the poor, and as much else as possible, to the mercies of the states; requiring that Medicare compete in a voucher market; cutting marginal tax rates, of course. What is striking, talking to Ryan's mentor, is not the policies but the fervor and the deep suspicion of the other side's motives.
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