So. Paul Ryan. For people who can’t bear the Romney campaign so far — with all the kowtowing to Sheldon Adelson and Bibi Netanyahu — it’s a good choice. First, Ryan is obviously smart. Second, (though haven’t parsed the record yet) he has no reputation as a big tub-thumper on waging wars in the Middle East; indeed, serious concern about America’s fiscal state almost precludes support for an excessively hawkish foreign policy. It strikes me more generally that the more energy one devotes to learning something truly complicated (like the American budget) the less prone one is to believing ridiculous things about American exceptionalism, our destiny to remake the Middle East through war, stuff like that.

If one twins this with Romney’s recent choice of Robert Zoellick as the campaign’s foreign policy honcho, that makes for two very good days for sanity in the Republican party.