One new theme the Romney camp has been testing is that the violence in the Middle East can be blamed on weakness in President Obama's foreign policy, as evidenced by the totally false allegation that our President has a pattern of "apologizing" for America. Arch-conservative George Will Rejects Notion That Muslim Unrest May Not Have Occurred Under Romney, on ABC's This Week:
Conservative commentator George Will on Sunday rejected the idea laid out by an advisor to Mitt Romney that if the Republican candidate had been president, the riots that occurred in much of the Arab world last week -- including attacks in Libya that killed four Americans -- may not have occurred.
George Will responds to Jack Tapper asking him about this preposterous quote from Romney's top foreign policy advisor, Richard Williamson, discussing the eruption of violence in the Middle east:
... "[t]here's a pretty compelling story that if you had a President Romney, you'd be in a different situation."
"Is there?" Tapper asked Will.
“No,” Will told Tapper. “The great superstition of American politics concerns presidential power, and during a presidential year that reaches an apogee and it becomes national narcissism. Everything that happens anywhere in the world, we caused or we could cure with a tweak of presidential rhetoric.”
George Will was equally dismissive to White House Press Secretary Jim Carney's assertion that "the riots weren't about U.S. policy, but an anti-Islam video."
"Actually, they're about neither," Will said. "If the video hadn't been the pretext, another one would have been found."
He added: “There are sectarian tribal civil wars raging across the region that we neither understand nor can measurably mitigate."
The Middle East has been roiling in numerous complicated conflicts for thousands of years, and for someone like Mitt Romney, who shows absolutely no evidence of foreign policy credibility, experience, knowledge, or intelligence, to try to oversimplify this vast web of systemic complexity, and to try to blame these several eons long problems on President Obama is more evidence of Mitt Romney's desperation, and lack of fitness, judgement, and character to be president.
Despite the absurdity we may see in any foreign policy claims coming from Mitt Romney who can not even go to the Olympics without infuriating Prime Minister Cameron, London Mayor Boris Johnson, and the people of the Great Britain, one of our closest allies, Democrats still benefit from undercutting false Republican memes that might infect independents, and marginal Republicans.
George Will's refutation of the "infinite magic wand powers" of the Office of the Presidency works just as well on complex, long-term domestic, and economic challenges.
Mitt Romney"s Strategic Incompetence: Do We Really Want to Take This Risk?
We now need to call on foreign and domestic scholars and policy analysts, as well as professionals in intelligence, and military communities to consider the national security implications of electing someone with no understanding or competence in foreign policy, and a complete lack of any evidence of long-term strategic planning or vision. Elsewhere, I've written:
David Axelrod presciently diagnosed Mitt Romney's compulsive behavior pattern of sacrificing his own long-term strategic best interest, in favor of unnecessary, or even counter-productive short-term tactical gains, six months ago in the Republican primary debate, after Romney swerved hard to the right of Santorum and Gingrich with his "self-deportation" comments antagonizing Hispanic voters when it was already clear Santorum and Gingrich were on their way down. Now, we read articles of Team Romney trying desperately, and implausibly, to express great support for of the Hispanic community now that Team Romney realizes they can not win key western battleground states, and Florida without them.
Mitt Romney now flip-flops dally over relatively simple campaign tactics like a poor fish dropped on hot pavement.
Mitt Romney does not have the judgement, long-term vision, or strategic capacity to be our the Presidency. We need to swat down these pathetic right-wing memes that eons long turmoil in the Middle East implies President Obama's foreign policy has failed, and Mitt Romney would somehow "magically" be able to do better.