To cleanse the palate I give you the ultimate Romney video. Even here, in an act of pure self-effacing silliness, he’s stiff and too formal — but also sweet and endearing. And he’s no stranger to charity, needless to say.

Now we have ice-bucket video of the last Republican president and the next one. Oh yeah:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) dodged questions about his 2016 plans Wednesday but said he would be a big backer of Mitt Romney if he were to make another run for the White House.

“I’d drive his bus if he asked me to,” Ryan, who ran alongside Romney for vice president in 2012, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Ryan said that he believed that a lot of voters now had “buyer’s remorse” about giving Obama a second term.

“A lot of the things [Romney] said in the campaign, projections he made … were true,” he said.

Is America ready to get back on the bus? Er, not really:

His favorable rating, a measure of his personal popularity, is also negative at 36/44, which may be an artifact of partisanship from the 2012 election or evidence that a lot of Americans don’t find a guy they remember for his comments about “the 47 percent” so sweet and endearing after all. Interestingly, Paul Ryan went out of his way in his new book to disclaim the “makers” and “takers” rhetoric he himself has used in the past. If you’re looking for tea leaves that he’s running, whether next year or down the line, there you go.

As of Wednesday, when Bush’s video appeared, the Ice Bucket challenge had raised a little more than $30 million in donations. By Thursday, it was $41.8 million. Today it’s $53.3 million. They’re doing $10 million a day. Has any charity ever raised money like that, not including relief funds after a major disaster? It’s mind-boggling. Exit question: Mitt Romney for Treasury and HHS secretary? The dream is alive, my friends.