The Christian Science Monitor's comparison of the Paul Ryan and Obama deficit plans nails things with a single sentence: "As Obama himself noted today, this fiscal confrontation represents a profound disagreement about the nature of government."

There’s more to it than that. But that one sentence says more about the differences between the philosophies of the two than anything we can put together. Maybe Paul Ryan should run for president in 2012. Because, clearly, Obama’s giving him more attention than any other member of Congress now, and he’s clearly looking at an ideological fight that the American people should answer to. What direction do we want for our country in the long term: Paul Ryan’s or Obama’s? Or is it somewhere in-between? That’s the real question here. By giving it so much attention — and such a tough rebuttal — that’s effectively what Obama just did. By putting the Ryan plan on a pedestal, then knocking it over, he raised Paul Ryan’s stature even further. Unlike any of the fights with Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann or Donald Trump, this is about actual real non-trivial stuff. If we were the GOP, we’d be poking at Paul Ryan to convince him to run, stat.