Sometimes new jobs will throw a different light on people. For a political career going back decades, Idaho’s Jim Risch has been involved with state issues, and the international scene just hasn’t been part of what we’ve seen from him, publicly anyway. There wasn’t much call.

Now, Risch is in the U.S. Senate and a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which might not have seemed the most obvious choice. But he seems to be settling in, and his interchange at a committee meeting with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair shows a grasp of Middle East subtleties and comfort with international politics many Idahoans might not have suspected. (Risch’s appearance comes toward the end of this C-SPAN program.)

A hat tip on this to Nathaniel Hoffman of the Boise Weekly, who was in Washington for the meeting (and appears himself, briefly, at the end of the clip), and has a few more comments on Risch’s time in D.C.