GEORGE WILL: Ryan Pick Underscores How Obama Has Become “Silly and Small.”

Romney embraced Ryan after the sociopathic — indifferent to the truth — ad for Barack Obama that is meretricious about every important particular of the death from cancer of the wife of steelworker Joe Soptic. Obama’s desperate flailing about to justify four more years has sunk into such unhinged smarminess that Romney may have concluded: There is nothing Obama won’t say about me, because he has nothing to say for himself, so I will chose a running mate whose seriousness about large problems and ideas underscores what the president has become — silly and small. . . . Romney’s selection of a running mate was, in method and outcome, presidential. It underscores how little in the last four years merits that adjective.

Indeed. Related: Robert Samuelson: “The selection of Paul Ryan — chairman of the House Budget Committee — as Mitt Romney’s vice presidential candidate has the potential to turn this dreary presidential campaign into a meaningful debate over the size and role of the federal government.”