President Obama is creaming Mitt Romney in one increasingly important arena—the digital campaign.

The Obama team, admittedly with a four-year head start, is far more engaged in social media, says a new report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Obama has 27 million Facebook likes to 2.9 million for Romney. The president has 18 million Twitter followers; the former Massachusetts governor has 787,000. And Obama videos have been viewed 207 million times on YouTube, compared to 15 million for Romney.

Obama is engaged in more careful targeting than in 2008. Users can sign up for 18 different groups, from Native Americans to Jewish Americans.

We have learned, in the three short days since Paul Ryan was catapulted into the national spotlight, that he skins and butchers animals to make his own Polish sausage (courtesy of The New York Times). That he is “pretty low-maintenance” (as his wife, Janna, tells People). That he is “kind of hot” (thank you, Politico), and that the second–most popular search term for Ryan is “shirtless” (fun fact from The Washington Post). Not to mention he’s a former altar boy and a fitness buff.

In short, a rather wonkish congressman known primarily for his budget-slashing prowess is in the full flower of a media honeymoon. At the moment, he looks like a stellar pick who has accomplished the daunting task of loosening up Mitt Romney.

But watch out: Romney’s choice may look very different in the coming weeks.

It would be too much to say that Rupert Murdoch pushed Paul Ryan onto the Republican presidential ticket. But he certainly gave the conservative congressman a strong nudge.

The media mogul used a combination of private persuasion, newspaper crusading, and Twitter talk to urge Mitt Romney’s campaign to shake things up. And soon after Romney unveiled his running mate on Saturday morning, Murdoch posted a 140-character message of approval:

“Thank God! Now we might have a real election on the great issues of the day. Paul Ryan almost perfect choice.”

Mitt Romney unveiled Paul Ryan as his running mate on Saturday morning as a moral Catholic and bipartisan lawmaker who would help the country avoid a “fiscal catastrophe.”

After Romney’s rousing introduction in Norfolk, Ryan trotted down from a flag-bedecked aircraft carrier, tieless in a dark suit and white shirt, denounced President Obama’s “record of failure” and declared himself part of “America’s comeback team.” Romney got so carried away that he introduced Ryan as “the next president of the United States,” bounding back a moment later to say he had left out the “vice.”

If there was any doubt that the choice of the seven-term Wisconsin congressman would instantly transform the campaign, it vanished as the two men appeared before an enthusiastic crowd in Norfolk. The Romney team concluded that if Ryan’s divisive budget-slashing plan was going to be a major factor in the election—the Republican nominee had already endorsed it—the best course would be to have its author passionately defend it.

Mitt Romney is playing to his right by naming Paul Ryan as his running mate, instantly transforming the election into a debate over the Wisconsin congressman’s divisive budget-slashing plan.

Based on a report from NBC confirmed by other news organizations, Romney will introduce the Wisconsin congressman as his vice-presidential pick in Norfolk on Saturday morning.

In a single stroke, Romney energizes the right wing of his party by picking the man who many Republicans revere as the intellectual leader of the party’s drive to shrink government. But he also hands President Obama and the Democrats a titanic target with a paper trail, given Ryan’s budget-slashing plan, approved by the House, that would turn Medicare into a voucher program.

With moderators about to be announced for the fall debates, there’s a good chance that Gwen Ifill will again get the nod.

 “Moderating debates is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” the host of PBS’s Washington Week telle me in a video interview. “I’ve written books, I’ve covered White Houses, I’ve interviewed royalty. But sitting on that stage is hard for reasons that have nothing to do with just the fact that 67 million people are watching your back.”

Ifill, who has moderated the last two vice-presidential debates, says that “you had to stick to time cues, you had to find a way to think of questions where you might get an honest answer, maybe, that’s not just the rote for both of the candidates. And you have to listen to their answers, just in case they say something like ‘I killed my wife.’ You want to know!”

Mike Huckabee has mounted his share of political crusades, but never on behalf of the Spicy Chicken Sandwich Deluxe.

The former presidential candidate—who famously shed 100 pounds and wrote a book about it—has dived into the political war over Chick-fil-A, which has been battered, so to speak, over the antigay views of its president, Dan Cathy. Huckabee orchestrated a Chick-fil Appreciation Day on Wednesday that the chain says led to “record-breaking” business.

“I felt the attacks on Dan Cathy were unfortunate, intolerant, and hypocritical,” Huckabee tells The Daily Beast.

As the House was in the process of impeaching Bill Clinton in the final days of 1998, I was somewhat surprised to see him posing for pictures with members of the Fourth Estate.

He easily could have blown off his appearance at the annual Christmas party. From the White House perspective, the gathering was populated by those who had been torturing Clinton all year over the Monica Lewinsky affair. It was the era of the stained blue dress and “depends on the meaning of is.” And yet the president of the United States, who would soon be tried in the Senate for high crimes and misdemeanors, showed up and acted like it was a normal social gathering.

The magnitude of Clinton’s comeback since that self-inflicted disaster is evident in Monday’s news that President Obama is giving him a prime speaking slot at the Democratic convention. Clinton is in effect bumping Joe Biden on that Wednesday night in Charlotte, with the vice president introducing Obama the following night. Other than the man accepting the nomination, he will be the unquestioned star of the extravaganza.

When Mitt Romney declared, during a Republican primary debate in Tampa, that he would pressure illegal immigrants to “self-deport” back to their home countries, John McCain was downright disturbed. Worried that his former rival was grievously wounding himself with Hispanic voters, the Arizona senator staged an intervention. He and fellow senator Lindsey Graham placed a joint call to Romney in January, urging him to tone down his rhetoric. Romney listened politely, sources say, and did not use the phrase again.

It was a rare instance of Romney taking counsel from the man who beat him in the last campaign—and who has been relegated to a behind-the-scenes role in this one. Four years after his own presidential bid, McCain’s luster as a Republican Party spokesman appears to have dimmed: a number of proposed campaign trips on Romney’s behalf have quietly evaporated, and there has been no offer of a speaking slot at the GOP convention. “He’s chomping at the bit to do something,” a McCain aide confides.

Romney, to be sure, has been willing to use McCain when it suits him. The candidate’s strategists have asked him to do fundraising events in places like Annapolis, Md., and Pensacola, Fla., where he is popular among military families. But such events take place far from the television cameras. “If you’re the Republican nominee, the campaign is about the future,” says Steve Schmidt, who oversaw McCain’s 2008 effort. “John McCain is very much a figure of the immediate past.”

There is a curious omission in Mitt Romney’s speech to the VFW today.

He warns against the dire consequences of the massive Pentagon budget cutbacks scheduled to take effect at the end of the year. And that’s an absolutely legitimate issue, prompting concern in both parties.

But here’s the rub that Romney neglects, at least based on excerpts released by the campaign: The Republicans agreed to these cuts. The GOP-controlled House went along as part of a bipartisan deal last summer to prevent the government from sliding into default.

Chris Wallace brushes off the fact that President Obama keeps taking digs at Fox News.

“Do I think we’re his favorite channel? No,” the host of Fox News Sunday says in a video interview with The Daily Beast. “I think it also helps rally his base to say there are some people out there—I don’t think it’s completely accurate, particularly in our news coverage--but [that] he thinks are hypercritical of him. Some people may be upset about it. I’m not, we’re big boys. We dish it out, we can take it.”

Asked if he agreed with a Fox Executive Vice President Michael Clemente that Obama’s conduct “lowers the office,” Wallace said simply: “No.”

Rupert Murdoch’s grip on his global media empire just got significantly looser.

In giving up his director’s seat in several key units of his British and American companies, Murdoch is sending an unmistakable signal of disengagement—and perhaps foreshadowing a sale of his beloved newspapers.

On paper, at least, he is still the unquestioned master and controlling authority of News Corp. and News International. And yes, according to a Saturday report in the Telegraph, the Murdoch conglomerate is playing down the moves as “nothing more than a corporate housecleaning exercise prior to the company split.”

Mitt Romney’s top strategist unleashed a strikingly personal attack on Barack Obama on Thursday, saying the president had reduced himself to “another politician who’s bullying an opponent.”

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Stuart Stevens responded to weeks of sustained criticism of Romney’s finances and business record by trying to turn the tables on the Democratic campaign. It was the latest sign of a more aggressive posture by a GOP team that has been decidedly on the defensive.

“Obama had something very special,” Stevens said. “He seemed above politics, and that made it difficult to attack him.

Mitt Romney’s insistence on shielding his tax returns has become so untenable that he can’t even make the sale to National Review.

Hours after Romney told the conservative magazine that he is “simply not enthusiastic” about giving Barack Obama’s oppo researchers “hundreds or thousands of more pages to pick through, distort, and lie about,” its website scolded him in an editorial.

His stance looks “unsustainable,” the website said, and “in all likelihood, he won’t be able to maintain a position that looks secretive and is a departure from campaign conventions. The only question is whether he releases more returns now, or later.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic Party chairman, says Mitt Romney’s campaign says Mitt Romney’s campaign is deliberately questioning whether President Obama is less than fully American.

In a video interview with The Daily Beast, the Florida congresswoman said that John Sununu, a top Romney surrogate, was “sending dog-whistle messages to the extremists” with his recent attack on the president. Sununu told reporters on a conference call that Obama should “learn how to be an American.”

“I think that choice of words was deliberate,” Wasserman Schultz told me. “It was the reaction of a campaign that feels like a cornered animal, that is desperate and flailing, to hit back in any direction.