Let me say at the outset that that nothing would please me more than the idea of House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., beating President Obama with an intelligent, ideas-focused presidential campaign, and winning a mandate to implement genuine entitlement reform. But unfortunately, I can’t help but consider the obstacles to Ryan’s candidacy. The most obvious is his youth and lack of executive experience. While Obama overcame these problems to win, he had a number of advantages over Ryan (such as an adoring media, his vote against the Iraq war, the excitement generated by the prospect of electing the first black president, and the fact that he was a Senator rather than a member of the House). Jim Antle makes a number of additional strong points about why Ryan would be taking a big risk by running. But I’d offer an additional question: would Ryan be able to put together a broad enough coalition to win the nomination? This brings me to the Bill Bradley reference in the headline.

Bradley was a very popular candidate among liberals, received high-profile endorsements, and was able to raise money in his 2000 primary fight against Al Gore. But the problem was, he wasn’t able to expand his constituency far beyond educated and affluent white voters. He came respectably close to Gore in New Hampshire, but he was ultimately swamped because of his inability to expand his appeal to working class voters, blacks and other important groups within the Democratic electorate. And I wonder if Ryan wouldn’t run into a similar problem in a Republican primary.