While I may question the political wisdom of Mitt Romney choosing Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, making the selection public relatively early is a smart move. One of the most valuable assets any political campaign has is the candidate’s time, which is inherently limited. Picking a running mate early is as close a campaign can get to doubling this limited resource.

Dang, you can always tell when the Romney campaign is feeling really stressed — and nowadays, that seems to be all the time: They try (and usually fail) to ramp up the running-mate speculation. So it is with their pick of Paul Ryan.