Even his adversaries agree that Rep. Paul Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future is a big idea: The plan reforms Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and the income tax. It effectively deals with the long-term fiscal crisis. The Obama budget, by contrast, projects record deficits and rising public debt long into the future.

Obama says the Republicans are always on the sidelines, but on a major issue — preventing the fiscal reckoning that could lead to high interest rates, inflation, low growth, economy-strangling austerity plans, or all of the above — Obama and the Democrats have little to say. To date, the president’s attempt to address the entitlement problem has been restricted to his health care bill, which relied on rosy assumptions and left the “tough choices” to future Congresses and Independent Medicare Advisory Boards. And the health reform is unlikely to pass in any case. Entitlement commissions? Nonstarters. Spending freezes? They’re trivial. We’re back at square one.