Traditionally, going all the way back to Lyndon Johnson, the vice president has been in charge of space stuff, but there is nothing in either the Constitution or any law about it, it’s just a tradition born of historical accident. And in fact, it’s not the case as often as it is. Johnson and Agnew were heavily involved, Ford and Nelson Rockefeller not so much, Mondale was only to the extent that he tried to kill the Shuttle program, and succeeded in reducing the fleet size (a foolish decision, given that the marginal cost of the additional orbiters would have been little at the time, and we’d have had a more robust program in the wake of the two losses). George H. W. Bush didn’t play much of a role, Quayle did. Gore was heavily involved, Cheney not so much. As far as I know, Biden has not been involved at all, leaving things to Holdren. So it’s not clear whether or not it matters whether or not Ryan will guide civil space policy as a veep. Unusually for a pick, he will likely be heavily involved in the formulation of budget policy overall, and will unlikely have time to deal with issues at the level of a couple billion bucks. On the other hand, I’ve had more than one person tell me that he is (or at least was when young) a devotee of Ayn Rand, and he will be receptive to more individualistic and competitive commercial approaches to space than a typical Republican politician might be.

Anyway, all that said, Jeff Foust did the same thing I did — tried to read tea leaves from his record on what he’d do, and as he says, the dossier is pretty thin. I am encouraged by the fact that he voted against the 2010 NASA authorization bill, which was pretty awful, but I’d like to know why. I would hope it was because (among other things) he recognized the pork that was SLS/MPCV. Anyway, given Romney’s clear complete indifference to the topic, he might be a better person to approach on it than the presidential candidate himself. But I don’t expect this to be a significant campaign issue, even in Florida or Ohio.