WASHINGTON--

The last days of the 2012 presidential election are a study in contrasts. Barack Obama has chosen to end his final campaign with an appeal both sour and small--Big Bird, binders and Romnesia. It is little wonder that Mitt Romney's personal favorability rating now exceeds the president's. Obama's closing message is remarkable for its aggression, mocking tone, and sheer triviality.

The Romney campaign is ending larger than it has been. Romney has used his final weeks to position himself--his critics would say reposition himself--as a moderate conservative, dedicated to bipartisan progress. Obama attacks Romney as a chameleon for refusing to be a caricature. Romney--admittedly a bit late--sets out a centrist governing philosophy. Both candidates, revealingly, are mainly talking about Romney.

Paul Ryan's recent speech at Cleveland State University was an important part of the Romney campaign's "go large" strategy--a presentation on political philosophy amid the normal stump speeches. Following a Republican primary season heavy on Tea Party rhetoric and a GOP convention light on substance, Ryan outlined a conservative vision of the common good.

Those who expect Ryan to sound like Ayn Rand--an embarrassing past flirtation--got something very different. Ryan quoted Abraham Lincoln on social mobility--"an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life." Ryan identified with his old mentor Jack Kemp: "When he spoke of progress, he meant progress for everyone." And without quoting him, Ryan embraced Pope John Paul II's emphasis on the importance of healthy civic and religious institutions.

It is a combination--Lincoln, Kemp, and Catholic social thought--that must have set Rand a-spinning.

At the same time, Ryan managed to probe one of Obama's sore spots--the fact that he presides over the highest poverty rates in a generation. This state of affairs is enough to embarrass any self-respecting Democrat, so Obama avoids the topic. Ryan reintroduced it. He also correctly diagnosed America's main social challenge--stalled mobility.

"There is something wrong in our country," argued Ryan, "when 40 percent of children born to parents in the lowest fifth of earners never know anything better. The question before us today--and it demands a serious answer--is how we get the engines of upward mobility turned back on."