Republican presidential hopefuls are quickly picking wings in the party's foreign-policy divide, and Bobby Jindal on Monday came down forcefully on the muscular side.

The Louisiana governor delivered a detailed argument for higher levels of defense spending during a policy speech in Washington, blaming President Obama for squandering America's prestige on the world stage.

Once a GOP wunderkind, Jindal has been overshadowed in recent years by the likes of Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, and Rand Paul. He didn't help his cause with a shaky national debut responding to Obama's State of the Union address in 2009, which drew unfavorable comparisons to a sitcom character and cast Jindal as unready for prime time. But as the 43-year-old finishes his second and final term in the statehouse, he is trying to raise his stock as he weighs a run for the party's presidential nomination.

To that end, Jindal checked off a key box for a governor on Monday by outlining his views on foreign policy. Aligning himself alongside the interventionist Rubio rather than the more inward-focused Paul, he called for maintaining defense spending at 4 percent of the GDP, which would mark a sharp reversal from the budgets that Obama has outlined.