Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan: The next team at the wheel. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images Having concluded that the presidential campaign really, really, really needs the vice presidential nominee to look like a vice presidential nominee, Mitt Romney has come up with the perfect man for the job: Paul Ryan. The idea seems to be that this is the kind of Republican voters may already like — conservative, business-minded, blue-state-friendly — who might also be perceived as having something in common with an Obama-vice presidential candidate whose main asset is his likability, and whose main problem is that Republicans seem to think he’s not conservative enough. A few thoughts: 1) The likability thing does not work. Obama is personally likable, but it hasn’t given him anything like a Romney-style landslide. Voters, however, don’t really care. 2) Ryan has been likable in the role of political warrior-for-the-future of the GOP. And it hasn’t won Romney a landslide, either. 3) So much for likability, but perhaps we should worry more about being perceived as out-of-touch from blue states. In which case, you should keep in mind that Paul Ryan does not even live in a state that leans to the left. 4) You might just have a better chance of selling yourself as a right-of-center visionary by putting your stamp on the ticket from the far right. And also, please don’t talk about “entitlements.” The very name is radioactive. 5) Also, don’t talk about Medicare. It’s already in danger of turning away the voters whose views on universal programs are the center of the party’s agenda. 6) Speaking of Medicare, you might just have better luck if the ticket goes straight to Medicare as its main proposal: It’s not the best-known, least exciting aspect of the Obama administration. 7) Finally, you can have whatever you want. Just promise that after a campaign that has focused on government spending cuts and smaller government, the nation’s budget is going to be smaller, and it will be. 8) And if that kind of smaller government does seem like a really great thing, be sure to bring it up as often as possible with the very conservative ladies at the very conservative Values Voters Summit. 9) As you know, I’m not in the habit of advising you. All I can say is that this idea looks like a win-win for Mitt Romney. See also: The New Republic, “The Worst of Ryan” by Tim Murphy. As many of you will have noticed, I’ve not blogged here for quite a while. Not just because I’m lazy — though, I am — but because I’ve been busy blogging for The Nation. (And here, I should stress that I’m the opinion editor, which is perhaps a bit like explaining to your mother that you’re the art director.) For many readers, there’s a good chance The Nation is a name that meant something before your time. That was certainly the case with many readers of The New Republic when I was editing its website a couple of years ago. I’ve been in charge of the opinion pages for several years now, and those same readers will be pleased to hear that we have a new design — which just so happens to be much easier on the eye. As to the content, it remains an eclectic mix: At its best, The Nation has been a national liberal voice for many decades, and in the Internet era, we see plenty of readers from red states that are happy to see a voice from the left. Yet we are also aware that we are the magazine of the progressive moment, a moment in which the voices of those who stand on the left have grown louder and louder. And I should stress that that does not mean we’ve lost interest in our conservative friends: On the contrary, some of our most important articles on a range of issues have been written in alliance with them. To that end, I’ve been writing a regular column for the center-left politics site, New York Newsday, in which I highlight an essay, op-ed or column from The Nation‘s website of the week. It’s become a favorite feature, and our friends in the comment box will recall that I have also written for them occasionally. To catch the next installment, come to NewYorkNewsday.com, which also has a companion site for young readers. After six months as managing editor of The New Republic, I’ve returned to my post as senior editor. But I continue to blog for Nieman Journalism Lab, where you’ll find links to the top stories in my posts. And a few other things I want to flag to you, including a new article on a campaign’s use of a Twitter bot in the middle of the 2010 midterm elections. (I was the one in charge of Twitter in 2008, a few weeks after it had become, um, useful. But this is one campaign that apparently likes it.) It’s been a long time since I used a phone that didn’t have a Twitter icon on it — and that was before the service got popular. So perhaps the best way to describe the experience of having a Twitter icon be the first thing you see when you turn on your phone is “euphoric.” On top of that, there was the moment a few weeks ago when I was on a bus and a man reading Twitter on his cell phone looked up and started staring at me in disbelief: He wanted to know who that guy sitting in the front row was. (I’m not sure I got his point.) And there was the moment in April when my young daughter was playing on the lawn and came across her grandma’s iPhone that my mother had left on the table. And grandma was in India, and she was watching what we were watching. And my daughter did not know what Twitter was. But she knew the iPhone was talking, and she knew something was fun. There are also these moments: At a dinner party, at a café, at a party, I will stand and just let Twitter happen, for a moment, for a sentence or so. As one friend wrote me when he discovered I was a Twitter addict, “I think my head will explode.” I wrote back, “