If you believe the buzz among political pundits this week, Mitt Romney may have not just picked up a primary win and endorsement from Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) in Wisconsin. He may have found a running mate. The Washington Post's Philip Rucker notes that Ryan, in what smacked of a VP tryout, appeared by Romney's "side at every turn" in Wisconsin, while the Washington Examiner's Charlie Spiering highlights a recent speech in which Ryan sounds very much like a vice presidential candidate -- conjuring up memories of "flipping burgers at McDonalds" and "waiting tables to pay back my student loans" in a paean to the American dream.     

Other political analysts are arguing that whether or not Romney puts Ryan on the ticket, President Obama may run as much against the Wisconsin congressman -- the architect of the House Republican budget plan -- as against Romney. On Tuesday, Obama declared that the budget proposal, which would slash $5.3 trillion in federal spending over the next decade, would pit rich against poor in what amounted to "social Darwinism."   

As the campaign spotlight lingers on Ryan, it's worth pointing out that the House Budget Committee chairman isn't a one-trick pony. Sure, he's styled himself as an intellectual leader on fiscal policy. But he has a distinct worldview as well. Here are some of the components of the other Ryan plan.

• American exceptionalism: In a June 2011 foreign policy speech at the Alexander Hamilton Society, Ryan rejected isolationism and argued that "America is the greatest force for human freedom the world has ever seen," warning that "a world without U.S. leadership will be a more chaotic place." A firm believer in American exceptionalism, he agrees with columnist Charles Krauthammer that American decline "is a choice." The country's fiscal policy and foreign policy "are on a collision course," he explains, "and if we fail to put our budget on a sustainable path, then we are choosing decline as a world power."

• China: Ryan appears to be less hardline and hawkish about China than Romney, who has pledged to designate Beijing as a currency manipulator on his first day in office. True, Ryan has shuddered at the idea of a world led by China and Russia and criticized China's restrictions on freedom of expression, "coercive population controls," and "unsound economic policies." But he's also argued that "we stand to benefit from a world in which China and other rising powers are integrated into the global order with increased incentives to further liberalize their political and economic institutions." 

• BRICS: Ryan wants to forge better relations with the world's emerging economies -- particularly "the rising democratic powers of India and Brazil, which share many of our core principles and interests." America, he says, "must be willing to listen and accommodate their legitimate concerns as we preserve the framework of the international system and solidify our leadership within it." More generally, he charges the Obama administration with taking America's "allies for granted" and wants to revitalize those relationships. 

• Arab Spring: Ryan has greeted the uprisings in the Middle East with the same mixture of praise and trepidation that several Republican presidential candidates have displayed this year. "We are seeing long-repressed populations give voice to the fundamental desire for liberty," he's observed, while adding ominously that in these societies "the most organized factions often lack tolerance and reject pluralism." It's too soon, he says, "to tell whether these revolutions will result in governments that respect the rights of their citizens, or if one form of autocracy will be supplanted by another."

• Saudi Arabia: Ryan cites America's alliance with the Saudis as an example of when its interests run up against its ideals, and when "American policy should be tempered by a healthy humility about the extent of our power to control events in other regions." There are "voices in the Kingdom calling for reform," he notes. "We should help our allies effect a transition that fulfills the aspirations of their people."

• Iraq/Afghanistan: Ryan believes that America's "ability to affect events is strongest in Iraq and Afghanistan," and that the United States can't cut and run from the battle against "global terrorism" in these countries. Ryan was an early supporter of the surge in Iraq. "This whole thing is a big gamble," he said in 2007. "But it's probably the best gamble to take before throwing in the towel and allowing sectarian genocide to take over." His estimate that America could save roughly $1 trillion over the next decade by winding down the wars was later adopted by congressional Democrats and the White House.   

• Defense spending: Ryan's 99-page "Path to Prosperity" plan, released last month, provoked an outcry in calling for boosting military spending while slashing the international affairs budget -- funding for entities such as the State Department and USAID -- by nearly $5 billion. When Ryan said "we don't think the generals are giving us their true advice" in reference to the military budget, he was quick to walk back his comments. "I really misspoke," he explained.

In the wake of Ryan's foreign policy address last year, Matthew Yglesias argued in the American Prospect that Ryan seemed to subscribe to "more or less the liberal internationalist vision that's already at the core" of the Obama administration's approach. The New Republic's Jonathan Chait mocked Ryan's "Norquistian-Churchillian foreign policy." The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin wrote that Ryan was one of the few politicians who could draw a connection between "conservative economic principles and American foreign policy and values."

Ryan's worldview, in other words, appears to be a bit of a Rorschach test. And in a general election where appealing solely to the Republican base just won't cut it, that might be exactly what Romney needs.

If a wave of déjà vu washed over you last night as Newt Gingrich outlined his approach to the violence in Syria, there's good reason. The United States should "have our allies covertly helping destroy the Assad regime," the former House speaker argued duringthe Republican presidential debate in Arizona. "There are plenty of Arab-speaking groups that would be quite happy. There are lots of weapons available in the Middle East."

The response echoed one of Gingrich's favorite refrains. In November, for instance, he advocated "maximum covert operations to block and disrupt the Iranian [nuclear] program, including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems, all of it covertly, all of it deniable."

Of course, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have also called for covert action in Iran. But Gingrich wants to apply the tactic far more expansively. In January, he called for clandestine operations to "encourage the Cuban people to feel that the end of the Castro brothers is actually the end of the dictatorship and that the time has come for a transition."

In explaining how he would have handled the Libyan uprising during an appearance on Fox News last spring, Gingrich declared that the United States should have initially "taken a quiet, careful, indirect route that would have gotten rid of Qaddafi but without using American force and without using overt American action."

Just this month, he told Greta Van Susteren that he would alter President Obama's approach to Pakistan by urging Congress to repeal all restrictions on U.S. spying, thereby rebuilding the "American capacity to do genuine intelligence and genuine covert operations."

Gingrich likes to say that his faith in covert operations stems from how U.S. President Ronald Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II confronted the Soviet Union and supported the Polish trade union and opposition movement Solidarity in the 1980s. "They helped organize Solidarity, financed it, got printing equipment and communications gear," Gingrich told Miami's CBS4, in explaining how the Castro regime could be overthrown nonviolently.

All this overt talk about covert action, however, has some people worrying that a President Gingrich would preside over the least-secret secret operations in U.S. history. "What is it about 'covert' that the Republicans don't understand?" the Washington Post's David Ignatius marveled after one debate in which the candidates used the word nine times. If Gingrich really believed he could become president, he "wouldn't put himself in the position of having to deny in office something that he had already admitted he'd do if elected," added Shikha Dalmia at The Daily, flagging America's "inglorious history of covert operations" as a cautionary tale.

To be sure, it's one thing to recommend secret operations on the campaign trail and quite another to blab about them while in office. But Gingrich doesn't exactly have a sterling track record on the governing side, either. In 1995, he spearheaded an effort in Congress to launch a $20 million covert CIA program against Tehran over the objections of CIA and Clinton administration officials, who argued the project would be wasteful and ineffectual.

At the time, the New York Times News Service noted that Gingrich had "made his feelings known so strongly that his desire for a covert operation" had become public, getting picked up by news outlets and Iranian leaders and diminishing the chances that the program would succeed:

Now the CIA finds itself required, against its better judgment, to plan a "secret" mission, with its cover already blown, in a region where U.S. policy has in recent years suffered failures and fiascos.

If Gingrich does indeed become president, he could find himself in a similar bind -- in several dicey regions, no less.

Newt Gingrich has been the target of a lot of mockery for his space policy speech yesterday, during which he pledged to establish a permanent U.S. lunar base by the end of his second term. The idea may seem a bit out of place in a campaign that has been overwhelmingly focused on the more terrestrial concerns of a struggling U.S. economy, but it isn't actually that novel a concept. NASA had plans for the construction of a moon base during the George W. Bush presidency which have since been scrapped. China, Japan, and Russia all have moon base plans at various stages of development. 

But beyond nationalist bravado, pure scientific research, or the fun of space tourism, is there any reason for people to be on the moon? Is there anything we want there? Gingrich himself proposed one idea in a recent presidential debate. Moon mining:

"If you take all the money we've spent at NASA since we landed on the moon and you had applied that money for incentives to the private sector, we would today probably have a permanent station on the moon, three or four permanent stations in space, a new generation of lift vehicles."

Are there really lunar riches waiting to be scooped up? Well, perhaps. But not as many as you might think. 

The prospect of lunar mining has been a tantalizing one since the Apollo 12 mission brought back a type of rock known as KREEP -- an acronym the chemical symbol of potassium, rare earth metalsm and phosphorous. With recent concerns over the supply of rare earth metals, used in various energy-saving technologies, and particularly China's near-monopoly over their supply, some have proposed the moon as an alternative source for these minerals. 

But while the KREEP-rich samples brought back by the Apollo astronauts led researchers to believe that rare earth metals were abundant through the moon, recent gamma-ray spectrometer analysis has indicated that there's far less rare-earth material on the moon than previously though, and that's it's concentrated in specific areas. In other words, prospective moon miners should pick their landing site carefully. 

Others, notably former Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmidt, have suggested mining the moon for Helium-3, an isotope that's relatively common on the lunar surface but extremely rare on earth. Helium is used for a variety of current purposes, including radiation detection and MRIs, but some believe it could also be used for nuclear fusion power. India and Russia have both discussed plans to mine the moon for Helium-3.

Unfortunately, mining HE-3 is not so easy. According to an analysis by the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics, obtaining just one gram of He-3 from the lunar surface would require excavating 150 tons of lunar regolith. The moon also has large amounts of titanium, but this would need to be seperated from a compound also containing iron and oxygen.   

In other words, the upfront costs of lunar mining would be pretty massive and perhaps only ultimately worth it if nuclear fusion using He-3 pans out, which is still a big if. This isn't even getting into the legal difficulties -- the Outer Space Treaty prohibits countries from establishing territorial sovereignty on the moon and there's not mechanism for land titles -- or the environmental concerns. (Yes, it is possible to pollute the moon.)

So while it certainly might be possible to set up a manned lunar facility of some kind -- and recent water discoveries have raised hopes for the feasibility of permanent colonization --  it's probably going to be a while before anyone makes money there.

Let's face it. When Millard Fillmore, the undistinguished, uninspiring 13th president of the United States, comes up in political conversation these days, it's usually as the butt of jokes. "When five of your six candidates could not be elected president if they were running against Millard Fillmore, I think you can presume there will not be much serious issue discussion," New York Times columnist Gail Collins quipped last week in a primer on the upcoming South Carolina primary. If only the rags-to-riches Whig, whose 212th birthday was recently celebrated with much fanfare in his native Western New York, were around to defend his record.

But last night, during the GOP debate in South Carolina, Ron Paul issued a full-throated endorsement of Fillmore's approach to foreign policy, whether he realized it or not. "If another country does to us what we do to others, we aren't going to like it very much," Paul explained in the context of his opposition to war with Iran. "So I would say maybe we ought to consider a Golden Rule in foreign policy," he continued placidly, as he was eaten alive by boos and jeers. "We endlessly bomb these other countries and then we wonder why they get upset with us?" Paul has trotted out this Golden Rule line several times during the campaign, drawing laughter in New Hampshire after asking, "What if the Chinese came into the Gulf of Mexico and took over the Gulf of Mexico? I know we in Texas would be pretty annoyed."

OK, but what does all this have to do with Millard Fillmore? The former president, it turns out, expressed nearly the same sentiments in 1850 during his first State of the Union address, in a formulation of foreign policy that sounds an awful lot like Paul's noninterventionist, empire-shunning worldview (key lines in bold):

Among the acknowledged rights of nations is that which each possesses of establishing that form of government which it may deem most conducive to the happiness and prosperity of its own citizens, of changing that form as circumstances may require, and of managing its internal affairs according to its own will. The people of the United States claim this right for themselves, and they readily concede it to others. Hence it becomes an imperative duty not to interfere in the government or internal policy of other nations; and although we may sympathize with the unfortunate or the oppressed everywhere in their struggles for freedom, our principles forbid us from taking any part in such foreign contests. We make no wars to promote or to prevent successions to thrones, to maintain any theory of a balance of power, or to suppress the actual government which any country chooses to establish for itself. We instigate no revolutions, nor suffer any hostile military expeditions to be fitted out in the United States to invade the territory or provinces of a friendly nation. The great law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and individual application. We should act toward other nations as we wish them to act toward us, and justice and conscience should form the rule of conduct between governments, instead of mere power, self interest, or the desire of aggrandizement. To maintain a strict neutrality in foreign wars, to cultivate friendly relations, to reciprocate every noble and generous act, and to perform punctually and scrupulously every treaty obligation -- these are the duties which we owe to other states, and by the performance of which we best entitle ourselves to like treatment from them; or, if that, in any case, be refused, we can enforce our own rights with justice and a clear conscience.

So, what was Millard Fillmore's foreign policy? While his term in office was dominated by a congressional debate over slavery, Fillmore did adopt a "foreign-policy agenda that emphasized expanding trade while limiting American commitments outside the Western Hemisphere," according to the University of Virginia's Miller Center (Ron Paul claims he's not isolationist because he's a free trader who simply doesn't want the United States to be the "policemen of the world"). Fillmore cultivated closer commercial ties with Japan, (ineffectually) opposed a Bay of Pigs-style invasion of Cuba, and refused to confront oppressive imperial governments in Eastern Europe -- all stances Paul might have taken had he been in Fillmore's shoes (we're not sure where Paul would have come down on securing bird dung from Peru, which Fillmore pursued zealously).

Here's footage of the crowd's hostile reaction to Paul's remarks last night:

Might Paul have pacified the crowd by explaining that, hey, he was only echoing Millard Fillmore? Something tells us he wouldn't have received a standing ovation. But bewildered silence might have done the trick.

The "dangerous" Ron Paul

With the latest polls showing him neck-and-neck with Mitt Romney in Iowa leading up to next week's caucuses, Ron Paul hasn't been toning down his non-traditional foreign policy rhetoric. Paul described sanctions against Iran as an "act of war" in front of a crowd in Iowa, and said Iran would be justified in blocking the Straits of Hormuz if they had no other recourse to respond.

Paul's unexpected poll surge has made him a target. In addition to the ongoing controversy over newsletters published under Paul's name during the 1990s, many of the attacks focus on his isolationist national security views. "One of the people running for president thinks it's O.K. for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I don't," Romney told a crowd this week. Michele Bachman, whose own campaign seems to be fading fast, called Paul's foreign policy beliefs "dangerous." Influential Iowa Representative Steve King also attacked his congressional colleague, saying  "I don't think that the Paul supporters have really stepped back and thought about what would happen if Ron Paul were operating out of the Oval Office and the commander-in-chief of our armed forces." New Hampshire's influential Union Leader newspaper, in endorsing Newt Gingrich this week, blasted Paul for spouting "nonsense" on national security.

Paul's campaign has brushed off the charges of national security naiveté, touting his popularity among veterans and claiming that he has "raised more funds from active military personnel than all other GOP competitors combined."

A late Santorum surge

All but written off just a few weeks ago, the conservative standard-bearer Rick Santorum is enjoying a late surge heading into the caucuses, with one recent poll putting him in third place. "I expect him to have a significantly better caucus night than predictors, the pundits, and the polls, have said over the last month," said Steve King. Santorum's rise is fueled mainly by Iowa's evangelical voters and is significant enough that Rick Perry has begun running ads attacking the former Pennsylvania senator's past support for earmarks.

In a recent radio interview, conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt asked Santorum if President Barack Obama intended for an Islamist front to take power in Egypt. Santorum wouldn't go quite that far but said that "this is a president who doesn't believe the Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist front" and "does not understand what radical Islam is and its threat to the West." He also suggested the possibility of taking action against Iran to "show that we are not going to allow radicals to gain power and to use that power for purposes of spreading their radical jihadist ideology." 

Condi for Veep?

The Gingrich campaign's sagging fortunes don't seem to have discouraged the candidate from daydreaming of filling Cabinet posts and officials in his administration. At a speech in Columbia, South Carolina, Gingrich said he'd love to see former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a vice presidential debate with Joe Biden. "That would be about as great a mismatch of knowledge versus ignorance as we've seen," Gingrich said. Gingrich quickly denied that he was endorsing Rice for vice president, just praising her as a "terrifically smart" person. Gingrich had previously suggested he could nominate John Bolton as his secretary of state.

Gingrich wasn't the only one looking to start the veepstakes early this week. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich suggested that Biden should switch places with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the 2012 race, in order to "stir the passions and enthusiasms of a Democratic base."

Obama on a roll

Still benefiting from this month's fight with Republicans over extending the payroll tax cut, the president's approval ratings (47 percent) are now above his disapproval ratings (45 percent) for the first time since July 2010. But, since World War II, only Harry Truman won reelection with an approval rating below 48 percent.

What to watch for

Iowans will caucus on Tuesday, Jan. 3, in the country's first major primary contest. RealClearPolitics' current poll average for the state has Romney at 21.6 percent, Paul at 21.2 percent, and Santorum and Gingrich tied at 14 percent. The New Hampshire primary -- which Jon Huntsman has chosen to focus on exclusively -- follows just a week later.

The latest from FP

Scott Clement looks at why Republican candidates are still failing to connect with Hispanic voters. 

Uri Friedman surveys the GOP field's selective approach to American exceptionalism, which makes room for Swiss healthcare, Chilean retirement schemes, and a Chinese-style (lack of) welfare state.  

The contributors to FP's Shadow Government blog, are weighing in this week with their assessments of how president Obama has handled foreign policy and national security this year.

The new superPAC AmericanLP is launching the following ad in Iowa and New Hampshire this week:

The ad is brilliant in an evil genius sort of way. Romney, speaking in French in 2002, mouths some platitudes about the upcoming Salt Lake City Winter Olympics while the English subtitles consist of previously stated left-of-center-seeming positions from the Republican.

One might assume that the ad is the handiwork of one of Romney's more conservative opponents since France-bashing is a time-honored tactic to use against effete-seeming liberals. But in fact, AmericanLP founder T.J. Walker is a self-described liberal democrat who says the ad is "payback time for the Republicans and the conservatives who mocked Kerry and even produced ads mocking Kerry, showing Kerry speaking French”:

He said the goal of the ad is to influence conservatives in this cycle to turn against Romney, whom he called the “only sane, rational candidate.”  Walker also said that “The mere fact that we can show him speaking French fluently, we believe, is going to irritate primary voters."

In a follow-up video, Walker says that Fox News has declined to run the ad on the grounds that it's misleading. (For what it's worth, judging by the comments on YouTube, not everyone seems to get that the subtitles are a joke.)

The ad does seem like a bit of a cheap shot. Then again, given Romney's habit of referring to any Democratic policies he doesn't agree with as "European, " he may have been asking for it.

My attention was struck by this tweet today from Newt Gingrich: "My first day in office, I will move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel's chosen place, Jerusalem."

Putting aside the wisdom of that decision, is this symbolic gesture really the best use of the president's first day in office during a time of recession and war? I doubt that would even be the first thing on Benjamin Netanyahu's wish list for the new president.

Not to worry though, Gingrich has other plans for his first day -- and he's even taking suggestions on his website. In addition to the Jerusalem move, Gingrich will sign executive orders to "eliminate the thirty-nine White House "Czar" positions created during the current administration," reinstate the ""Mexico City Policy," to prohibit the funding of international NGOs that provide abortions (which is also what George W. Bush did on his first day) and "Restore conscience clause protections for Healthcare Workers."

These all seem like somewhat niche issues. But still, not a bad day's work.

Here's how the other candidates are planning to spend Jan. 21, 2013:

Michele Bachmann also says she'll use her first 24-hours to move the embassy to Jerusalem. (History suggests this will not happen.)   

Rick Perry's going to repeal Obama's healthcare law on his first day, and he's even picked out the sharpie he's going to do it with. 

Ron Paul says he'd start with foreign policy by "bringing the troops home so they can spend their money here instead of overseas.'

Jon Huntsman's got a busy day planned for himself, with "three immediate steps" on energy policy including clarifying rules to allow offshore drilling and fracking, opening the U.S. fuel network to alternative energy, and eliminating "every subsidy for energy companies."

But no candidate in the race has as ambitious a plan to hit the ground running as Mitt Romney, who has five bills and five executive orders planned for day one,  including eliminating energy regulations, implementing the free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, labeling China a currency manipulator, and giving states waivers to opt out of Obamacare.

In case you don't remember, on Obama's first day, he froze White House salaries, unveiled new ethics rules, appointed George Mitchell as Mideast peace negotiator, and issued an executive order closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. (The last two didn't work out so well.)