Democrats have put on a brave face about the announcement nine days ago of U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney’s running mate. But cracks are appearing in that facade.

The Obama team says Ryan is the bogeyman who will “end Medicare as we know it’’ and will strip Social Security recipients of their earnings and dismantle the social service safety net.

But what Team Obama has inadvertently done instead is to focus the public’s attention on just what a fix those programs are in and how spending has crushed the country. Where Obama claims, falsely, that Romney-Ryan will devastate the old and the infirm, the Republican ticket is actually trying to keep the country from going off a fiscal cliff and taking not just the old but our children and grandchildren over with it.

Romney-Ryan offers a choice. Obama-Biden offers nothing but more of the same. Tax the rich (more), spend more (that we don’t have), and turn a high-cost medical system into a higher-cost, socialized priority list.

As the Wall Street Journal noted last week, Paul Ryan joined with Democratic U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden last year with a Medicare reform plan that “explicitly retains Medicare as we know it as a continuing option.’’

“The reform difference is that seniors would for the first time also have a choice of government-funded private insurance options. The Wyden-Ryan belief is that the choices resulting from private competition will be both cheaper and better.’’

You won’t hear any of that from the Obama side and precious little of it in much of the news media. But New Hampshire voters are smart enough to sort through the blather and make one of the most important and informed election decisions of their lives.