TPM's Evan McMorris-Santoro told his Twitter followers a good joke yesterday. "Remember that time a prez candidate said he wanted a VP who didn't have a vision for the country?" Yes. It's a little bit sad, though, that Mitt Romney's desire for a visionary veep has convinced everyone that Pawlenty and Portman are off the list, and Ryan's on. Imagine being Tim Pawlenty, and having your name become the political answer to the state school you throw into your college applications, just in case the good ones turn you down.

Jonathan Chait finds a better way to make the argument I made on The Last Word yesterday.

Ryan gets too little credit for his political skills. He has won consistently in a moderate district. He has managed to build a reputation among the national press corps as a thoughtful, compromise-friendly moderate while hewing to the right wing of his party. The major argument of my profile of Ryan from last spring is that his public persona is a giant scam; but pulling off a scam like that is the mark of a skillful pol.

Daniel Foster sings a requiem for CNN.

CNN still hasn’t learned from the big domestic narratives that drove the rises of Fox News (e.g., Lewinsky) and MSNBC (e.g., the 2004 election) and that sustain them now that “war fatigue” has fully taken hold. It isn’t that CNN isn’t reporting on, say, the presidential election. It’s that it isn’t adding anything and frequently resorts to gaffe obsession or holding the stopwatch as talking heads from competing campaigns regurgitate talking points.

Mike Allen scoops Barack Obama's convention plans.

The most innovative — and harshest — element of the preliminary program is a nightly “social contrast” in which two people describe their personal experience with a hot-button issue — one person lauding the president’s actions, the other taking Romney to task. “Each paired-testimonial should have an ‘unexpected’ participant,” the documents say.

If you like to know about things before they happen, Allen's got the story of the day. Politically correct gay marriage recognition!