The New York Post is reporting that Dan Senor is eyeing a run as a Republican against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. That is, by my lights, terrific news. A decision like this is obviously personal, but I hope Senor moves ahead.

By way of background: I first met Dan during my time in the Bush administration. In fact, I recall quite well a conversation we had in my office about Iraq in, I think, 2005 — about the mistakes that had been made and the need for a new strategy, which much later became known as the surge. My sense was that we needed a fundamental shift in approach, that the “light footprint” strategy was failing. Dan was able to make a detailed and sophisticated case for why a new strategy was vital to success in Iraq. And he had a lot of praise for a fellow by the name of David Petraeus.

If Dan does jump into the race, the people of New York will discover what many of us already know: Dan is a tremendously knowledgeable figure on a range of foreign policy and economic issues. (A graduate of Harvard Business School, Senor is an investment professional and a founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private investment equity firm; and he wrote Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle.)

Dan is bright and energetic, principled and agreeable, and, I think, quite good on television. He would make an excellent candidate — and an even better senator.

In that chamber he would be to foreign policy what Rep. Paul Ryan (another friend and former colleague of mine) is to economic issues: a respected public spokesman and a “go-to” guy.

Both Dan and Paul are the kind of people the GOP needs as it makes its way back to power and restores its reputation as (to use a phrase coined by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan) the “party of ideas.”