Friedman: Deciphering Paul Ryan's worldview

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.

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."

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."

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.