Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and running mate Rep. Paul Ryan, on the campaign trail Aug. 12 in Waukesha, Wis., developed their relationship over five years. (Eric Thayer, The New York Times)
It was supposed to be a 15-minute courtesy visit from a Republican with presidential aspirations to a rising star in Congress with big ideas about how to address the nation's fiscal problems.
Mitt Romney, who had just left office as governor of Massachusetts and was moving to the right on issues like abortion, was beginning to immerse himself in federal budget policy. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who on that day in early 2007 had just become the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, was promoting a small-government libertarianism that would later become Republican Party orthodoxy.
Inside the Longworth House Office Building, 15 minutes turned into an hour as the two men traded theories about how to overhaul Medicare, Social Security and the tax code, a pair of policy mavens out-geeking each other over esoterica like border-adjustable taxes.
"We went deep into the weeds," Ryan recalled in an interview.
It was the start of an on-again, off-again five-year courtship that encapsulated their party's gradual adoption of a more conservative stance on fiscal issues, a shift punctuated a week ago by Romney's selection of Ryan as his running mate. His choice of Ryan had clear political overtones for Romney, who despite years of trying to win over the right was still viewed with some suspicion by many conservative leaders.
But to the degree that it was a marriage of political convenience, it came about only after years in which the two Republicans engaged in regular, substantive and previously undisclosed exchanges that by this spring had left Ryan convinced that Romney had come to a similar policy viewpoint. The future No. 2, it turned out, conducted vetting of his own.
Over the past 18 months, with Romney emerging as the Republican Party's presidential nominee, the frequency and intensity of their communication deepened. Romney turned to Ryan for detailed consultations on his economic platform. Ryan made sure his Medicare proposal in the House matched up with what Romney was offering on the campaign trail.
Romney recruited several of Ryan's top aides as campaign advisers, and the candidate's staff asked the congressman to review language in Romney's planned speeches and opinion pieces, people close to both men said.
"A lot of substance was exchanged between them," said Tom Rath, a longtime political adviser to Romney. "Those guys who were traveling with Gov. Romney would say, 'Oh, I know he talked to Ryan about this' or 'Ryan and he were e-mailing about that.'?"
"What I was very surprised by was how much he and Mitt were talking, even prior to Paul endorsing him," said Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., who is close to Ryan.
In the course of those discussions, Ryan said, "I got a very good idea of the kind of reformer he wants to be."
Days before the Republican presidential primary in Wisconsin in April, Ryan said he would back Romney, canceling a family vacation to campaign with him. (Romney held off a final challenge in Wisconsin from Rick Santorum and, from that point, cruised to securing the Republican nomination.)
In the interview, Ryan said there was no agreement by Romney during their talks over the vice presidential slot to adopt the Ryan budget in its entirety as their campaign platform. Romney, while noting that their Medicare approaches are largely the same and expressing general admiration for the budget that Ryan pushed through the House this year, has hedged about elements of the Ryan plan.
"He is the policy leader," Ryan said. "He is the top of the ticket, and I joined it knowing this and being extremely comfortable with it."
Not long ago, their partnership might have seemed unlikely. Romney had been a blue-state governor who championed a state-run health program with an individual mandate and had been willing to increase fees on residents to solve a state budget deficit. Ryan was a Tea Party hero who gave the conservative movement a detailed policy alternative to employ against President Barack Obama's spending and deficit increases and complex health care overhaul.
The story of how they came together offers insight into both how the Republican Party moved in Ryan's direction and how Romney came to embrace a vision of the size and role of government that, with the selection of his running mate, will define his campaign.
But in Ryan, Romney saw shades of himself: a clean-cut numbers guy who favored the cold-eyed truths of actuarial tables over ideology for its own sake ? the kind of person, friends said, he would have recruited at Bain Capital when he was chief executive.
In Romney, Ryan saw, over time, a presidential candidate as steeped in the messy minutia of policy as he was. "A classic executive," Ryan said.
As the large and rowdy field of Republican presidential candidates sought Ryan's counsel last year, he said, Romney quickly emerged as the most invested and engaged in the issues most important to him.
"I met with Rick Perry and Newt ? all of them ? Huntsman," Ryan said. "I would tell my colleagues, 'Romney is the one who understands this stuff.'?"
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