Profile in "courage"

What does courage look like in an elected official? A couple
things come to mind:

• Honesty:
  speaking the truth even when it's unpleasant or inconvenient

• Principled
  confrontation: refusing to shrink from a serious and forthright debate when the
  real-world stakes are high

• Moral
  clarity: risking re-election and advancement in favor of doing what's right

Pundits have been praising Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin
Republican who chairs the House budget committee, for the courage displayed in
his 2012 budget proposal. But their definition of "courage"
must be different from mine:

• Ryan's
  budget rhetoric is misleading. He would privatize Medicare and convert Medicaid
  to a block grant, a lump sum of federal money given to the states to
  administer. But he would also make cuts to both programs--and as Ezra Klein explains, it's the cuts, not the reforms, that
  would save money. Yet Ryan suggests otherwise. After all, privatization
  and state control perform far better in polls than reduced health coverage for
  poor people and retirees.

• His
  math is fuzzy. It relies on some implausible optimism about the
  plan's effects over time. For example, even if you believe that lower tax rates
  for rich people and corporations will somehow lead to more revenue, it's absurd to expect this to add up to $100 billion in
  the first year. But that's what Ryan's budget assumes, based on a combination
  of faith in business and unspecified savings from reducing tax breaks.
  The Congressional Budget Office--the nonpartisan budget umpire--doesn't share all of Ryan's number-crunching optimism.

• Ryan's
  math, however, does give him the rhetorical space to engage in not a forthright
  debate but a sneaky proxy one: in the name of taking on the deficit, Ryan exploits it in order to shrink the government
  (specifically, those parts of the government that help low-income Americans). Like the separate effort to cut social
  spending this year--which is about to
  force
  a government shutdown--Ryan offers conservative red meat dressed up as courageous
  serious-mindedness about the deficit.

• Ryan
  also offers few details as to how a lot of what he
  proposes would be accomplished. The plan may be confrontational, but it isn't
  serious policy. It's an ideological broadside--in Ryan's own words, "it's a cause."

• I
  don't think Ryan's risking much here, though his party might
  be. His budget won't become law in its current form, but that was a
  foregone conclusion. His congressional district (in which I grew up) is
  unlikely to punish him for this, and his alleged courage will only cement his
  status as a rising star.

I think Ryan's plan is immoral. I imagine he sees things
differently. But even assuming he believes his plan is the right and just thing
to do, where's the courage in framing it in such misleading ways?

If Ryan believes seniors should have to pay more for their health
care, he should say so. If he believes that spending cuts ought to primarily
target programs that help low-income people, he should explain why. In a time
of staggering inequality and rising deficits, if Ryan thinks rich folks are due
for a major tax cut, he ought to make this case directly--and without the fuzzy
math.

Until he does, people should stop saying his budget plan is
courageous. It's certainly aggressive, but that's not the same thing--and the
fact that pundits blur the two speaks of deep problems in our public life.