Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life

Three years after Paul Ryan and Joseph R. Biden debated each other as vice presidential candidates, Washington is anxiously waiting them to make anguishing choices about their futures, whether Mr. Ryan will answer his fractured party’s pleas to serve as speaker and whether Biden can overcome the death of his son to run for president. Mr. Ryan prefers making policy as chair of the Ways and Means Committee to trying to make a dysfunctional House work. He prefers to spend his time raising his young family over raising funds for Republican candidates. Mr. Biden thinks he is the most qualified, but publicly agonizes whether he has the emotional strength and singlemindedness to run for president.

I've been searching for my earlier column which predicted that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders would surge, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush would be in trouble and Ben Carson would show surprising strength in the 2016 Presidential race. I’m not the only one who failed to see this coming. The expert predictions of a “back to the future” Clinton-Bush general election race look far less likely than last spring.