“I’m sorry,” said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong just days before the election a year ago this week that dealt the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) its worst setback in the five decades since the island city-state became independent.

What I mean is this: Who decides what issues the campaign will focus on, what ideas will dominate the national conversation and, thus, in large measure decide the race?

“I think it would do damage to the economy,” Rep. Paul Ryan replied.

This simple exchange from a conversation I had with Ryan in his office last October captures the uber-debate the country needs to have. That is, once we get done dissecting the deceptions, hypocrisies and regressive priorities in the Wisconsin Republican’s latest blueprint.

The president deserves credit for calling out soaring tuition and unsustainable student debt as huge barriers to upward mobility and a strong middle class. But unfortunately, the remedies he sketched in his State of the Union address and in a speech at the University of Michigan last week are textbook examples of proposals meant to signal the president’s “values” (and win votes) while doing little to address the problem.

First, until this moment, Rep. Paul Ryan’s original Medicare plan had been slated to be the centerpiece of the Democrats’ 2012 campaign, featuring all the predictable cries that the GOP is tossing Grandma off a cliff. By making sufficient adjustments to his plan to be able to draw the cooperation of a Democrat like Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), Ryan has plausibly inoculated his party against a full-frontal Mediscare campaign. Or at least he gives Republicans a credible rebuttal to neutralize it. After all, Wyden got into politics as the founder of the Oregon chapter of the Gray Panthers. The man’s been a champion for seniors for 35 years. If he’s standing with Ryan on Medicare, how evil can Ryan (and the GOP) be?

Republicans were aghast when President Obama’s original proposal to extend and deepen payroll tax cuts for 160 million workers would have been paid for by a surtax on America’s 350,000 top earners.

It’s a clarifying exercise to try to explain complex issues to a 14-year-old. Like my daughter, for instance. If you can do it, you’re probably focused on what matters. If you can’t, you’re probably caught in the weeds.

“It seems clear that taxes have to go up as a share of GDP and spending has to go down. When is that going to happen?”

We were in a seminar room at the Chinese Executive Leadership Academy in Shanghai. It’s kind of an executive MBA center where rising Communist Party leaders come for training. I was there two weeks ago speaking about the future of capitalism. Since China holds more than $1.1 trillion of U.S. debt, the group was keen to learn when they could expect the United States to get its fiscal house in order.

Republican members of this cult believe that the only way in today’s media and political culture to signal you are “strong” on defense is to propose a bigger defense budget than Democrats.

My fellow alienated Americans:

That’s because Mitt Romney has quietly become a much more formidable candidate. If he gets the GOP nod, 2012 may feel like a showdown between the CEO and the professor. Guess who voters will pick with 9 percent unemployment?

Perry: I was not the first to Ponzi. Many have Ponzied, let’s be clear about that. But yes, monstrous lie. Someone has to have the courage. And if that has to be me, well, it is.

Brian Williams: Back live now as Washington and New York scramble to cope with the biggest earthquake in memory. We go to Luke Russert on Capitol Hill for the latest. Luke?

This is why Republicans (who voted for the Paul Ryan plan that would add $5 trillion in red ink over the next decade) decided it was vital to not lift the debt ceiling to accommodate their own budget’s outsized debt?

Brian Williams: Good afternoon. We interrupt regular programming for this breaking news out of Washington — a remarkable turn of events in the showdown over the debt ceiling. President Obama is expected in the White House press room at any moment to announce a breakthrough deal under which Republicans have agreed to raise the debt ceiling through 2014, in exchange for Bo Obama, the president’s dog, being delivered as a hostage to the Tea Party caucus of the House Republican conference. NBC’s Chuck Todd is at the White House. Chuck, markets have already rallied on rumors of the deal. What can you tell us?

And is there any difference nowadays?

Seeing how narrow the boundaries of debate have become on the biggest issues facing the country makes the question unavoidable.

No, I’m not saying the old “Mediscare” won’t work to bludgeon the GOP in 2012 — just as the GOP found it worked to dice up Democrats in 2010 — but a little intellectual honesty is in order if liberal goals are ultimately to be achieved. Democrats elated at the coup in New York’s 26th Congressional District and at the sight of top Republicans scurrying to distance themselves from Ryan’s plan should thus use what I call “responsible demagoguery” on Medicare: harsh politics that leave sound policy intact.

As a man I’m hardly qualified to approach this subject with the disinterested inquiry it demands, but attention must be paid. The revelation that Arnold Schwarzennegger fathered a 10-year-old child with a household staffer (who still worked for the family until a few months ago — poor Maria!), plus IMF chief and “caviar socialist” Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s alleged sexual assault of a young hotel maid, are just the latest reminders that there’s something seriously wrong with at least a few members of my gender.

There’s even hypocrisy-as-usual.

But then — at rare moments — there is political behavior that can only be dubbed Super-Duper Hypocrisy So Brazen They Must Really Think We’re Idiots.