Third, I don’t think it will doom the campaign or anything like that, but it is worth noting that this is a shockingly inexperienced ticket, especially when it comes to national security and foreign policy. Dan Drezner wrote about Ryan and foreign policy back in the spring, and it’s worth looking at, but there really isn’t much there, I don’t think. Governors almost always pick someone with serious foreign policy or national security credentials, and one would think that would be particularly true with the nation still at war. The only ticket I can think of that was similarly lacking in foreign policy credentials would be Carter-Mondale in 1976, but at least both of them had military service in their backgrounds.

The bottom line about virtually all vice-presidential picks is that they seem far more important to the campaign when they’re made than they turn out to be. That’s probably true for this one, too. But if it does end up having a significant effect in November, it’s almost certainly going to be on the downside, and that’s more likely with Ryan than it would have been with most of the other reported finalists.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/ryan-a-high-risk-low-reward-pick/2012/08/11/03af8e34-e378-11e1-89f7-76e23a982d06_blog.htm