Making The Grade
Mitt Romney recently gave President Barack Obama and F on foreign policy. This from the guy who said he would not go in to Pakistan to get bin Laden, the very place bin Laden was hiding and the very place he was killed.
Apparently he thinks the President that went against his advice is a failure.
Romney's judgment on foreign policy likely will not be a much-discussed issue in this campaign focused on the economy, but it should be.
He has no experience in this area and his judgment is bad.
Romney thinks Russia is our biggest foe. Romney thinks we should continue and scale up the war in Afghanistan. Romney opposed the idea of going after bin Laden and others in Pakistan. Romney thinks the President that has killed numerous al Qaeda leaders is a failure.
This past Memorial Day weekend was a show of the strength of this Administration on foreign policy -- it will be nearly impossible for Romney and whomever he selects to be his Vice President to stand on the same stage as the Obama Administration.
The Administration bookended the weekend with two major stories and Mitt Romney reminded us how small he is in comparison to the Presidency.
Vice President Joe Biden gave a moving speech and captured the raw emotional struggles our military families go through. Biden was able to connect because of the personal tragedy he and his family have experienced and as the parent of a son who was deployed overseas.
The Obama's and Biden's have made our military families a priority.
Monday saw the story of the "Obama kill list", or targets of drone strikes, which I wrote about previously. A reminder that Obama has been forceful and successful in dealing with al Qaeda.
Romney preferred to spend his Memorial Day weekend in close proximity to his San Diego home, future home of his car elevator.
He chose the occasion to engage in fear mongering, offering a dark view of the world and offering a false choice: one, to follow the "pathway of Europe" and "shrink our military smaller and smaller to pay for our social needs" or, two, "to commit to preserve America as the strongest military in the world, second to none, with no comparable power anywhere in the world."
The second is also known as the path America is on.
Romney's F grade is standard fare from the campaign to get to "fifty point one percent" that Romney is running. It is more red meat for a base that is distrustful of him and not very excited by him.
His version of hope is that he hopes 50.1 percent of the American public doesn't like Obama enough to vote for him.
However, Romney's words call into question his judgment to be an effective Commander-in-Chief. He better hope the election doesn't hinge on that.
About Bill Buck
Bill Buck is a Democratic strategist and President of the Buck Communications Group, a media relations and new media strategies consulting business based in Washington, DC. The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CBS Local.
