For an ambitious politician, a spot on your party's presidential ticket is fraught with danger. On one hand, you immediately become a national figure, and if you win, you're vice president and you've got a good chance to become president. On the other hand, if you lose, you may wind up the target of contempt from forces within your own party and quickly fade away. Look at the list of recent VP losers: Sarah Palin, John Edwards, Joe Lieberman, Jack Kemp. None of them had any political future after their loss.

And then there's Paul Ryan. You have to give him credit for one thing. Unlike, say, Palin, he didn't let his time on the national stage give him delusions of grandeur. Instead of proclaiming himself the leader of a movement, he went right back to what he was doing before: using the budgeting process to push an extraordinarily radical agenda, all couched in enough numbers and figures to convince naive reporters that he's a Very Serious Fellow, despite the fact that his numbers and figures are about as serious as an episode of The Benny Hill Show. But this act is what got him where he is, and he seems to have concluded, probably wisely, that his best move is to get back on that same track, which might eventually lead him to the White House.

Senate Democrats are set to release a budget this week, the first time they've done so since 2009. As always, it will be a collection of the party's goals and priorities—more a political statement than a plan for governing. Democrats, according to National Journal, will propose new revenue beyond the fiscal-cliff deal as well as new spending on education, infrastructure, and job training.

Paul Ryan might be a familiar pretty face among the wonky set, but for most voters he is an unknown figure, a minor House representative from someplace in the middle of the country whose name they first encountered at the start of the month. His primetime premiere at the GOP convention last night was supposed to be his coming out moment, an occasion to sell voters on the idea that he is a leader they can see leading the country. Instead, Ryan revealed that he cannot escape the conservative think tank culture that spawned him. It is sure to satisfy the rightwingers who filled the convention hall in Tampa, but the vice=presidential candidate offered little of substance or style for those yet to be decided voters.

Jordan Ragusa:

So this campaign of late to make Paul Ryan seem like a moderate, bipartisan guy who works with Democrats is just wrong.  The claim that Ryan “works with Democrats about as often as any Republican” is technically true, but very misleading.  But the important point is that the problem isn’t Paul Ryan, the problem is that the two parties (especially Republicans in the House) are so highly polarized that the average Democrat and Republican hardly ever works with his or her rivals.  Being “typical” in a polarized Congress does not make one a moderate.

House Budget chairman Paul Ryan inhabits two, mutually exclusive spaces in Washington politics. He’s both a crusader for deficit reduction—the recipient of praise and accolades from the Beltway’s collection of deficit hawks—and a pure right-wing ideologue, whose budgets would gut the social safety net, slash taxes on the rich, and load the United States with trillions of dollars in debt. That he’s managed to do this without backlash from the Right or incredulity from the mainstream is a remarkable achievement, and as Jonathan Chait describes for New York Magazine, a product of his studied earnestness and ostentatious love of “wonkery”:

Paul Ryan, the supposed champion of fiscal restraint among right-wing Republicans, has put his colleagues in an awkward bind. His budget includes a host of unpopular provisions, and if implemented, would eviscerate almost every part of the government except defense, health care, and Social Security by 2050 according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Yesterday, all but 10 House Republicans entered their name in the congressional record as supporters of the bill, providing Democrats with ample material for negative campaigning this fall.

If there's one thing Democrats envy about Republicans above all else, it would have to be the Republicans' ability to be unified. This occurs in large ways and small, from congressional votes to language; once a new moniker for something is coined ("death tax," "Obamacare," etc.), everybody on their side uses it. The Democratic party is more ideologically diverse and more unruly, and it just can't muster the same degree of organizational coherence and message discipline.