“The Mantle of Leadership Has Shifted: Romney, Ryan Govern in All but Name,” Joel B. Pollak writes at Big Government:

In choosing Ryan, what Romney showed above all was courage–or, more precisely, the absence of fear. Eighty years ago, a great Democratic president comforted the nation by telling it that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” That comfort and confidence is what Romney and Ryan now offer Americans, while Obama ducks questions, Biden hurls bombs, and Democrat surrogates find the old weapons no longer work.

There was a telling moment, shortly after he was chosen, when Paul Ryan faced reporters on the campaign plane and said simply: “We’re going to win this campaign.” It was not bluster; it was simple self-assurance.

There is a long way to go on this campaign trail, and Romney and Ryan will have to fight for every vote. But now they will be tested not as candidates, but as leaders of the nation. That is what they have already won.

Read the whole thing.

I think it was Orrin Judd who compared Romney picking Paul Ryan as similar to GWB picking Dick Cheney as his running mate in 2000 — clearly, Bush’s emphasis was on governing after the election, not in hiring a Spiro Agnew-style hatchet man, nor a veep like Quayle or Biden obviously chosen because he wouldn’t show-up the top of the ticket.

But while even the Professor writes today, “Is it me, or is there a 2010 vibe out there?” he’d be the first to say, “great first week guys — don’t get cocky.” November is still a long way away.

Related: And in-between now and November, expect plenty of what NBC calls “Trench Warfare.” This from the network that called for a moratorium on such violent rhetoric in January 0f 2011, before declaring the “Niggerization” of the election yesterday.  And as the first commenter to the article at Hot Air notes, “media having trouble defending Obama’s smear tactics, so they claim both sides are doing it.”