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07/26/2012

Mitt-Man, MIA

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    1 hour ago – Mitt-Man, MIA. Very disappointing (for me) first day. Mitt Romney campagn promised and it was reverberated in the national and international media, that my main man, Mitt-Man, is about to break his own record. He has broken many records before. Bravery is not now or never that which could be and would ...

  2. अथ धर्माधर्मांधता, मदांधता ... - वसुधैव कुटुंबकम

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    Jun 22, 2012 – 9 of The Cutest & Shortest Celebrity Men (Did You Know They Were This… (Styleblazer) .... Monitor …. वसुधैव कुटुंबकम – My Dear Gennady Yevstafiev, I am Sid Harth. .... Sid Harth … MIA Dr Jai Maharaj http://www.bing.com/search?q=Dr+Jai+Maharaj+is+a+sad+Monkey&go=&form=QBRE&qs= … .... Jun 2, 2012 – 3 days ago – Ad related to My dear Mitt Romney, I am Sid Harth. …… other countries or terrorist groups to attack U.S. facilities, one source said.

  3. AfPak War, FP and I | वसुधैव कुटुंबकम

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    Jun 23, 2012 – Apr 3, 2012 – Mitt Romney's last act « इदं न मम – My Sister Eileen. mysistereileen.com/?p= ….. FP's new ... इदं न मम: Of Mice and men जॉर्ज मिल्टन व लेंनी समूळ … …… a role in many ….. The Election 2012 ... Jun 14, 2012 – वसुधैव कुटुंबकम – My Dear Gennady Yevstafiev, I am Sid Harth. .... Aug 8, 2010 – Subject: Mohsin Mia, Stick to Writing Novels: Sid Harth … dubbed “AfPak,” a war in the southern part of Afghanistan and the adjoining border …

  4. वसुधैव कुटुंबकम - American Imperialism, the fact and Fiction

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    Jun 21, 2012 – वसुधैव कुटुंबकम – Paul R Pillar's Intelligence and I .... “Any resemblance to the person, persons, personalities, names, places, dates, events, eventualities fake realities, falsehoods, abundance of illustrative commonplace wisdom ... …and I am Sid (Ex CIA, Oops, MIA) Harth@webworldismyoyster.com ...

  5. Stoptalk, Oops, Shoptalk, FPN and MOI | वसुधैव कुटुंबकम

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    Jun 22, 2012 – वसुधैव कुटुंबकम – My Dear Gennady Yevstafiev, I am Sid Harth. .... वसुधैव कुटुंबकम – Barack Obama's Press Leaks, Oops, Release … ..... We did the right thing by giving refuge and medical care to this man who had escaped from a brutal house arrest after an unjust imprisonment. ...... to empower girls and foster greater understanding. The Members of the Council are: Tamika Catchings. Donna de Varona. Julie Foudy. Laura Gentile. Mia Hamm ..... One of Mitt Romney's economic advisors recently wrote in a German publication that your recommendations to Europe and to Germany in particular reveal ignorance of the ...

  6. My Dear Obamanians, Oops, Obamaniacs ... - वसुधैव कुटुंबकम

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    Jun 16, 2012 – वसुधैव कुटुंबकम – My Dear Gennady Yevstafiev, I am Sid Harth. ... 1 day ago – Ad related to @mysistereileen.com Barack Obama Mitt Romney … … Mitt Romney's sometimes .... Then he joked, “Of course, if this guy's worldview was right, the British would still be running India.” Podesta decided to ...

  7. इदं न मम | I take no credit for this | Page 2

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    The powerful men accused of responsibility for these deaths and tens of thousands of others — some said to be directly at their orders, others carried out by ..... वसुधैव कुटुंबकम. www.webworldismyoyster.com/…/my-dear-rajiv-chandrasekar… Jul 3, 2012 – My dear (honorable)Senator Lindsay Graham, Sir I am Sid .... Jul 11, 2012 – Stay Home Mitt-Man and I · My Dear Alistair Lyon, I am Sid Harth. .... Aug 8, 2010 – Subject: Mohsin Mia, Stick to Writing Novels: Sid Harth …. is also aiding and abetting the so called 'Northern Alliance' to combat the southern …

  8. इदं न मम | I take no credit for this | Page 154

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    Jun 23, 2012 – Apr 3, 2012 – Mitt Romney's last act « इदं न मम – My Sister Eileen. mysistereileen.com/?p= ….. FP's new ... इदं न मम: Of Mice and men जॉर्ज मिल्टन व लेंनी समूळ … …… a role in many ….. The Election 2012 ... Jun 14, 2012 – वसुधैव कुटुंबकम – My Dear Gennady Yevstafiev, I am Sid Harth. .... Aug 8, 2010 – Subject: Mohsin Mia, Stick to Writing Novels: Sid Harth … dubbed “AfPak,” a war in the southern part of Afghanistan and the adjoining border …

  9. इदं न मम

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    वसुधैव कुटुंबकम – My Dear Gennady Yevstafiev, I am Sid Harth. www.webworldismyoyster.com/ ... 1 day ago – Ad related to @mysistereileen.com Barack Obama Mitt Romney … … Mitt Romney's .... Then he joked, “Of course, if this guy's worldview was right, the British would still be running India.” Podesta decided to ...

  10. Flopping Aces | Page 5

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    If the man in charge is still complaining about headwinds two years later, it might be time to find another sailor to take the helm. Continue .... Ends Immigration Enforcement Program Following High Court Ruling · वसुधैव कुटुंबकम - US Supreme Court, Illegal Immigration, Immoral States' Laws and I on Say What? April 9 ...

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Mitt-Man, MIA

Very disappointing (for me) first day. Mitt Romney campagn promised and it was reverberated in the national and international media, that my main man, Mitt-Man, is about to break his own record.

He has broken many records before. Bravery is not now or never that which could be and would be kept under cover. Mitt-man could deny public his tax records. His dark side. I understand that. He made money but not paid due taxes. many do that. Not a crime under US tax laws.

However his major foreign policy disclosure in front of foreign people, (to jingoist America) who are not at all interested in his past glories in sports, Oops, management of sports events, like winter Olympics in Utah, USA.

Mitt-Man, where is your promised land, Oops, foreign policy disclosure?

...and I am Sid Harth@webworldismyoyster.com

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"Anglo-Saxon" quote overshadows start of Romney tour

July 25, 2012|Steve Holland | Reuters
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(JAMES…)


LONDON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney began a foreign tour on Wednesday forced to disavow a report that an adviser had accused President Barack Obama of not understanding the shared "Anglo-Saxon heritage" of Britain and the United States.

As Romney arrived in London for a three-day stay, The Daily Telegraph quoted an unnamed Romney campaign adviser who lauded the special relationship between the two countries.

"We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels that the special relationship is special," the Telegraph quoted the adviser as saying, "The White House didn't fully appreciate the shared history we have."

The paper said the adviser's remarks "may prompt accusations of racial insensitivity."

Romney is in London to attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games on Friday, the first leg of a week-long trip that will also take him to Israel and Poland as he seeks to burnish his foreign policy credentials and present himself as a viable alternative to the Democratic incumbent.

Romney, in an NBC News interview, dismissed the comment but said the United States and Britain do enjoy specialties and that he believes Obama recognizes this as well.

"It goes back to our very beginnings -- cultural and historical. But I also believe the president understands that. So I don't agree with whoever that adviser might be, but do agree that we have a very common bond between ourselves and Great Britain," the former Massachusetts governor said.

The Obama re-election campaign, which is trying to portray Romney as a foreign policy novice, leaped on the Anglo-Saxon remark by issuing a statement from Vice President Joe Biden, who accused Romney of "playing politics with international diplomacy."

'DISTURBING START'

"The comments reported this morning are a disturbing start to a trip designed to demonstrate Governor Romney's readiness to represent the United States on the world's stage. Not surprisingly, this is just another feeble attempt by the Romney campaign to score political points at the expense of this critical partnership. This assertion is beneath a presidential campaign," Biden said.

Romney is to meet British Prime Minister David Cameron, Labour Party leader Ed Milliband and other British officials as well as former Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday.

While he is not expected to issue any policy pronouncements, all of the meetings will have carefully orchestrated photo opportunities with the aim of showing American voters images of Romney on the world stage.

Issues from back home, however, were still front and center. In the NBC interview, conducted from the Tower of London, Romney defended his decision not to release more of his tax records beyond the 2010 documents already released and the 2011 papers that are being worked on.

The Obama campaign has made a big issue out of Romney's tax records, suggesting he has something to hide.

Romney expressed ignorance about when a horse owned by his wife, Ann Romney, would be participating in the Olympic sport called dressage. Democrats have used the Romneys' involvement in the sport to call attention to their vast wealth. Ann Romney rides horses to relieve stress and ease symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

"I have to tell you. This is Ann's sport. I'm not even sure which day the sport goes on. She will get the chance to see it, I will not be watching the event. I hope her horse does well," he said.

Obama is trying to head off a strong challenge from Romney in a campaign largely centered on the weak U.S. economy. Romney is taking some risk by spending a week abroad in the heat of a close campaign since any comment he makes could be seen as criticizing the president, which most U.S. politicians are reluctant to do once they leave American shores.

To get around that problem, Romney set the stage for his trip with a scathing speech on American soil on Tuesday, accusing the president of mishandling foreign policy hot spots from the Middle East to China and neglecting U.S. allies.

Romney's visit to London is aimed at recalling the role he played in salvaging the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, a key portion of his resume as a businessman who can fix problems.

That part of his biography has come under fire from the Obama campaign, which insists that at that time he was still nominally in control of Bain Capital, a private equity firm that had shipped some U.S. jobs overseas.

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Mohammad Zargham)

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Mitt Romney meets British officials in London

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Deseret News

Romney and the Olympics: What the SLC Games say about a Mitt Romney presidency

By , Deseret News

Published: Wednesday, July 25 2012 7:23 p.m. MDT

Mitt Romney gestures to the crowd during the opening ceremonies of the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympic Games at Rice-Eccles Stadium Friday, Feb. 8, 2002.

Tom Smart, Deseret News archives

Summary

With Mitt Romney's appearance at the 2012 Summer Games in London this week, voter attention is likely to shift to Romney's time as Utah's Olympic leader and what it says about how he'd run the country if he's elected in November.

“I think Mitt is trying to find that middle ground where he can get elected without compromising his values.”

John Bennion

SALT LAKE CITY — Utahns who remember Mitt Romney as the leader who turned around the troubled 2002 Winter Games might not recognize the Mitt Romney running for president.

But with his appearance at the 2012 Summer Games in London this week, voter attention is likely to shift to Romney's time as Utah's Olympic leader and what it says about how he'd run the country if he's elected in November.

Both supporters and critics of Romney's three years as the CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee say his experiences in Utah offer insights into what he would bring to the White House. 

Utahns say they miss Romney's self-effacing sense of humor, evident with the unveiling of an Olympic pin proclaiming “Mitt happens,” and his joining in a champagne toast to an inclusive rather than a “Mormon" Olympics — with a flute of orange juice. 

Lost in the presidential campaign is the charisma that Romney — the man brought in as the “White Knight” to save the Games — used to win over critics and woo new supporters following revelations that Utah bidders tried to buy the votes of International Olympic Committee members.

Romney the candidate has been criticized for being disconnected from voters because of his privileged background and personal wealth. He’s made clumsy references on the campaign trail to his wife’s pair of Cadillacs and his friendships with NASCAR owners rather than car racing fans. 

Just about everything on Romney's resume, from his prep school antics to his time as the head of Bain Capital, has been attacked first during the hard-fought GOP primary race and now by President Barack Obama's re-election effort.

So just what was Romney's approach as he took over the 2002 Winter Games amid bribery allegations that challenged an Olympic world centered around money and power?

Finding the real Romney

Running for president differs from being at the helm of an Olympics, if for no other reason than, unlike for a partisan candidate, virtually everyone is pulling for the success of the worldwide sporting event, including in Utah where Romney benefited from sharing the state's majority faith. 

“I don’t know. It’s just that politics is a tough business,” said John Bennion, a fellow Mormon who worked with Romney at Bain Consulting in Boston and oversaw ticketing for the Olympics, describing the perceptions of the candidate Romney.

Now a vice president of a Utah-based venture capital firm led by Fraser Bullock, another member of the "Bain mafia" who joined Romney at SLOC, Bennion points to a reason why the campaign makes it difficult to identify perhaps Romney's greatest strength:

"It's all about sound bites," Bennion said, but Romney's expertise is data-driven analysis.

“I think Mitt is trying to find that middle ground where he can get elected without compromising his values,” Bennion said. “That’s just not an environment that’s going to play to Mitt’s strengths, when voters who are nowhere near his intellectual level are going to decide.”

Bullock, who was Romney’s No. 2 at SLOC as chief operating officer of the Olympics, said Romney has had to tone down his personality since throwing his hat in the ring.

“I wish the rest of the world knew Mitt as we did,” Bullock said. “He’s just a blast to be around.”

It’s a sentiment shared by one of Romney’s opponents in the presidential race, former Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson. Anderson, a longtime liberal Democrat, is running as the nominee of his newly formed Justice Party.

Anderson appeared in a campaign commercial for Romney’s successful run for Massachusetts governor after the Olympics and has steadfastly refused to criticize his performance as the Games’ leader.

“I think anybody that was there and was at all intimately involved, either as an observer or a participant, had to be really impressed by the enormity of the task and the way that Mitt sort of swooped in and took it all on,” Anderson said. “I don’t think the Mitt I knew is coming across in this campaign.”

Olympics to White House

Those who knew Romney during his Olympics days said his three years as the chief executive officer of SLOC are telling.

“I always found him very unique because he was a leader and an executive. People focus very much on the management activity and don’t focus on the broader picture,” said Cindy Gillespie, a Washington, D.C., lobbyist who oversaw federal relations for SLOC and later served as a top adviser to Romney during his term as governor of Massachusetts.

Romney, she said, did more than use his executive skills to balance a budget shortfall in the hundreds of millions of dollars. He also got the beleaguered organizers to focus on the Olympians coming to compete, not all the constituencies they’d sought to please.

When organizers cited the commitments and expectations from the world’s Olympics officials, a list that included first-class treatment for IOC members and their families, Gillespie said Romney would stop them.

“Mitt would say, ‘That’s not what I asked. I asked, what are these Olympic Games? Why are we hosting these Olympic Games?,'” Gillespie said. “Whether you agree with our choices or not, Mitt Romney came in with the understanding it’s not just a budgetary exercise.”

The royalty and other world leaders who make up the IOC ended up being housed at the Little America Hotel, not the lavish, newly built Grand America Hotel across the street, and were served hot dogs and chili when they retreated to their private lounges at the Olympic venues. 

“His priority was not the Olympic family,” said Cathy Priestner Allinger, an international sport consultant in Vancouver who served as SLOC’s managing director for sport, the first woman to hold that title at an Olympics. An Olympic medalist in speedskating, Allinger said she’d seen athletes take a back seat to the VIPs during previous Games.

“Mitt got it. He just went, ‘Yeah. It’s simple,’" Allinger said of the choice between providing better food for athletes versus laying out a fancy spread for the IOC members and their guests. “There’s a lot of tradition in the Olympic movement. Mitt is one of the few people I know who took it on. He challenged and wasn’t intimidated by it.”  

Ed Eynon, the Salt Lake Olympic Committee's human resources boss and now a resort developer in the Palm Springs area, remembers Romney deciding to skip the pomp usually associated with a formal ceremony to invite the world to attend the Games, held at the IOC’s Lausanne, Switzerland headquarters in February 2001.

“Mitt sent me. I was it. He sent a video of himself. The IOC was stunned,” Eynon said, since organizing committees usually sent an entourage. Romney also chose to participate in a number of IOC meetings via videoconference, rather than travel to various far-flung corners of the world.

Eynon said that frugality — which extended to Romney’s habit of skipping what he saw as costly cab rides on some of the trips he did make as the Olympics boss — helped free up money for real needs, such as providing Games-time volunteers with better uniforms and hot meals, rather than the T-shirts and sack lunches initially budgeted.

“If he ever got in the White House, that would absolutely mirror what he did in the Games,” Eynon said. “When Mitt says he would cut nonessential things … I would take him at his word.”  

The bigger picture

Randy Dryer, a lawyer who oversaw the development of Olympic venues for the state, said that over time, Romney agreed to invest more money in those facilities to ensure their continued use post-Games.

Spending money on permanent, rather than temporary, needs like lighting at the venues demonstrates Romney's ability to look long-term, Dryer said. "I think he's a bottom-line sort of guy. But it's bigger than the bottom line — how's history going to view him?"

Gillespie said Romney’s ability to focus on what’s important and give up what isn't, no matter how much pressure there may be not to, will win over voters.  

“I think people out there are clamoring for that right now,” she said, suggesting Romney would answer the question of what services the federal government should provide with the same kind of “bigger-picture” leadership.

“Mitt is really good at understanding that. He got all of us at SLOC to see what we were trying to do, why we were trying to do it, and to believe in it again,” Gillespie said. “A lot of what he did focused on all of us having that clarity, that strong sense that what we were doing mattered.”

Former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, who’s heading the planning for Romney’s transition to the White House, said the results of the Olympics speak for themselves.

“Discouragement was replaced by belief. The $400 million deficit was replaced by a $100 million surplus. The 2002 Winter Olympic Games are widely respected as among the best ever put on,” Leavitt said. 

Romney accomplished this, he said, by applying the principles learned at Harvard Business School and put in practice building a personal fortune estimated at $250 million: Start with tearing apart the books and bringing in experts from both the finance and Olympic world.

"I heard Mitt over and over again giving a speech talking about the need to separate 'want-to-haves' from 'need-to-haves.' He set clear priorities, made hard decisions and stuck with them."  

Today, Leavitt said, the “country is disheartened. We have a massive deficit that will only be solved by restoring confidence and making the hard choices between ‘want to have’ and ‘need to have.’"

But former Sen. Bob Bennett, who has long backed a Romney run for the presidency, was less certain his experience running the Olympics would translate to running the country.

“There’s absolutely no similarity at all,” Bennett, a Republican who lost his re-election bid in 2010, said. He recalled a story told about President Jimmy Carter’s decision to bring his liaison with the Georgia Legislature to serve in the same role with Congress.

While the Democratic administration acknowledged that was like moving from a farm league baseball team to playing for the Yankees, others said it was more like showing up on an NBA basketball court swinging a baseball bat and wearing cleats.

“It’s an entirely different game with entirely different rules,” Bennett said. What will count, he said, is advice from people who know Washington, including Leavitt, who served in President George W. Bush’s Cabinet.

Bennett said when he took Romney around the Capitol to meet key members of Congress soon after he was hired, “his competence was just obvious. He was completely on top of the problem. Any questions they might have, he had answers for.”

Romney, though, “is not a natural politician,” Bennett said. “He’s looked a little bit awkward at times. But he’s also demonstrated a capacity to learn,” bringing together a stronger campaign team this election.

Nerd, bully or Bond?

Not everyone associated with the Salt Lake Games is a Romney fan.

“Everyone had this love affair with Mitt,” said Ken Bullock, head of the Utah League of Cities and Towns and a member of the SLOC board who believes he’s been unfairly castigated for raising questions over the years about Romney’s leadership.

Bullock described a meeting where Romney attempted unsuccessfully to talk state and local leaders into letting Olympic organizers skip the promised repayment of $59 million in tax dollars used to build venues.

“We went outside the door and he got quite animated, I guess would be the word,” Bullock said. When they went to a quieter place to talk about the issue, Romney asked why there was continued friction between them.

“He said he and Teddy Kennedy get along just fine, why can’t we,” Bullock said, a reference to Romney’s opponent in the 1994 Massachusetts Senate race.

“I said, ‘We can,’" Bullock recalled. “That's when he said, ‘You don’t want me as an enemy.'”

Bullock said that was just one of several similar encounters with Romney, although he declined to detail any others. “I took it for what it was,” he said. “Did I lose sleep over it? No. When you’re in a pressure situation, sometimes you say things you don’t mean. … I don’t know if he meant it or not.”  

Bullock and others who suggest Romney exploited his time in Utah for political gain say the Olympics were never in real jeopardy despite the scandal and the criminal investigations it sparked.

Three Democrats who had held public office in Utah held a press conference during last February's 10-year anniversary celebration of the 2002 Winter Games to claim Romney took too much credit for its success.

Former Salt Lake City Councilwoman Sydney Fonnesbeck said then that Romney treated Utahns arrogantly, suggesting "we couldn't possibly do it ourselves. He had to come in to save us and ride in on his white horse."

Even Romney's supporters in Utah acknowledge that he could seem somewhat aloof at times, a different image than what the Olympic leader publicly portrayed with the help of a New York-based public relations firm.

"He sometimes forgets personal connectivity with people around him," said Utah automobile dealer Bob Garff, the former SLOC chairman. "When he has time and when he wants to, he relates very well to people one-on-one. As a general rule, he doesn't have time." 

Garff said Romney "didn't reach out and didn't understand some of the local players who had given a lot to the Olympics," but declined to be specific about perceived slights other than to say he felt "personally sad" for the original team behind the bid, Tom Welch and Dave Johnson.

Romney had little to do with either Welch or Johnson; he was careful to keep his distance while the pair was the focus of a federal criminal investigation into the bid scandal. They were acquitted when the case finally went to trial in 2003.

Garff said his own relationship with Romney was favorable. Still, Garff made it clear the candidate has moved on. "If he were to come into town, I doubt he'd call me but we do have a good relationship." 

Eynon, whose SLOC office was separated from Romney's by a glass wall, said the Olympic leader could engage in team-building activities like reading a scene from "Romeo and Juliet" and telling jokes. But he was naturally shy.

"I always saw him as a good-looking nerd," Eynon said. "My sense was, this was a shy guy who was polished when he needed to be." 

There were few instances that Eynon ever recalled Romney losing his temper, including his well-publicized exchange with a volunteer over a traffic snarl in a venue parking lot that may or may not have included some objectionable language. 

For the most part, Eynon said, Romney had the "Kennedyesque" looks of a leader, but his reality was more like the classmate who sat "in the front row with pens in his pocket." 

Romney, he said, confided that he "envisions himself as James Bond," often asking himself in situations what the fictional British spy would do. "I think that's about being cool under pressure," Eynon said, "being suave and debonair."

New details about the preparations for Salt Lake's Olympics are expected to surface sometime in August, when the University of Utah's Marriott Library makes available some 1,100 cartons of files from SLOC.

But manuscript archivist Elizabeth Rogers said anyone looking for dirt on Romney will be disappointed. Rogers said the files, set aside for years for higher priority projects until the 2012 election heated up, focus on the nuts and bolts of putting on an Olympics.

"You want to learn the mechanics of running an Olympics, this collection will be a gold mine. If someone wants to find juicy details of what went on behind closed doors, we don't have it," she said. "There's just nothing negative."

E-mail: lisa@desnews.com Twitter: dnewspolitics

By ABC News

Jul 25, 2012 12:07pm

Summer 2012: Travels With Mitt Romney

gty london jef 120511 wblog Summer 2012: Travels With Mitt Romney

Getty Images

ABC’s Emily Friedman reports from the trail, with input from Meghan Kiesel and Jilian Fama out of D.C.:

It’s summer travel season and Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, is taking a break from the U.S. campaign trail for a week-long trip abroad. He’ll see the Olympic opening ceremonies as well as travel to Poland and Israel and give everyone a taste of what kind of statesman he’d be as president.

Read more about his itinerary and what he hopes to accomplish.

And check back here for an continuously updated travelogue:

7/25/12 – London, England and Anglo Saxon Heritage (Friedman)

6:30 p.m. GST (1:30 p.m. EST) Just before 6 p.m. local time in London, Mitt Romney ventured out of his Hyde Park hotel to head over to the Tower of London for an interview.

His body man tweeted along the way a photo of the presidential candidate looking out the window and toward the British Parliament buildings, which are on the way.

 

ht mitt romney london jp 120725 wblog Summer 2012: Travels With Mitt Romney

Image credit: Twitter/@dgjackson

When the motorcade arrived at the Tower of London — which is adjacent to the Tower of London bridge that is currently decorated with the Olympic ring logo — Romney’s senior policy advisor Lanhee Chen took a photo of their afternoon snacks — an assortment of potato chips.

Or, as the Brits call them, “crisps.”

 

ht romney hilton snacks jp 120725 wblog Summer 2012: Travels With Mitt Romney

Image credit: Twitter/@lanheechen

5:19 p.m. GST (12:19 p.m. EST): A campaign sticker for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is seen on a street sign for Romney Street in London, on Wednesday, July 25.

 

ap romney street london ll 120725 wblog Summer 2012: Travels With Mitt Romney

Image credit: Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

4:21 p.m. GST (11:21 a.m. EST): Pictured is the view of Hyde Park from Romney’s hotel. If you wanted this view from your hotel room, a suite with private balcony overlooking the park would run you about 879 pounds or $1,363 per night. Comparatively, a standard room with a queen bed is only $401 a night.

 

ht mitt romney lake mr 120725 wblog Summer 2012: Travels With Mitt Romney

Image credit: Emily Friedman

3:24 p.m. GST (10:24 a.m. EST): Romney is preparing to attend the Opening Ceremonies of the London games later this week. A major selling point of Romney’s campaign is his stewardship of the 2001 Salt Lake City Olympics. Read more about that here

 

ht london hilton jp 120725 wblog Summer 2012: Travels With Mitt Romney

London Hilton on Park Lane Hotel

2:30 p.m. GST (9:30 a.m. EST): Romney landed in London Wednesday morning at around 10:30am, an arrival that was not advertised to the press. He is staying at the luxurious Park Lane Hilton located on 22 Park Lane in London.

The hotel was awarded ”UK Best Business Hotel 2011″ for the 5th time, by Business Traveller Magazine and was called ”England’s leading business hotel 2009″ by World Travel Awards Europe.

According to its website, the Park Lane Hilton boasts, “stunning views of London from all guest rooms, the only hotel in London to offer this, the London Hilton on Park Lane is famed for its unparalleled five star luxury and prestigious location on Park Lane.”

The presidential candidate was treated to an uncharacteristically warm London – it is above 80 degrees here.

Romney’s trusted body guy, Garrett Jackson, tweeted:  “We are wheels down in London. Excited to be here to cheer on Team USA.”

The Romney motorcade then weaved through the streets of London – already clogged with pre-Olympic traffic – to the hotel, where other members of the International Olympic Committee are staying.

Romney’s car pulled into an underground area where the candidate stepped out and put on his jacket. His wife Ann, already in the Olympic spirit, emerged from the car wearing a Navy USA jacket with an American flag patch on her arm.

Despite promises that the Romney campaign would not disparage President Obama abroad, two Romney advisers said in an interview with the London Telegraph. ”We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he [Romney] feels that the special relationship is special,” an adviser told the British paper. “The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we have.” Read more about that here.

Get more pure politics at ABC News.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com.

My dear Jonathan Rauch,

I am Sid Harth.

NPR does not allow me so many words. In short, you have not done a good job. The same words you used, could be used for the GOP candidate, Mitt Romney. The results would be approximately, similar, if not exactly same.

Presidency does something to the body (politics) and soul of a candidate. Electioneering is a nasty business, here in America. Candidates, seldom, talk about bread and butter issues. This time, as the various polls, suggest, foreign policy is not an issue.

Knowing all the polls results, Mitt Romney campaign, is reinventing the wheel. Knowing very well, that is, that Mitt Romney, pleasant, personable and charming, if not a charismatic public person, Mitt is presented (to the locals) as a savior.

I disliked this artificial personality. I like Mitt Romney for what he could do, better then what Barack Obama has not done, yet.

Take front seat on domestic problems, not foreign relations or international problems, not directly affecting our country's safety and security.

On his first day in London, Mitt Romney, the candidate, is still not talking about his great foreign policy.

"Mitt-Man, MIA@webworldismyoyster.com"

...and I am Sid Harth@webworldismyoyster.com

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New Republic: Love Foreign Policy? Vote Obama.

by Jonathan Rauch

President Barack Obama delivers his message to the Muslim world from the auditorium in the Cairo University campus during a one-day visit to Egypt on June 4, 2009.
Enlarge Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

President Barack Obama delivers his message to the Muslim world from the auditorium in the Cairo University campus during a one-day visit to Egypt on June 4, 2009.

Jonathan Rauch is a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and a contributor to The National Journal, The Atlantic and The New Republic.

Pundits and, for that matter, the Obama campaign were right to ding Mitt Romney's foreign policy address Tuesday for banging the table instead of putting anything substantive on it. But what could Romney do? Obama has given him almost nothing to work with. Foreign affairs won't decide the 2012 election, but, if it did, President Obama would win walking away.

Replying to Romney's speech, Robert Gibbs, an Obama adviser, said this: "It's widely accepted that President Obama has an exceptionally strong record on national security issues, and I think, quite frankly, Mitt Romney is having a hard time making an argument against President Obama on these issues." It pains me, as a supposedly crankily skeptical journalist, to agree with a partisan spin doctor, but here goes: Gibbs is right.

I never drank the Obama Kool-Aid in 2008. The then-candidate's promise of "a new kind of politics," I wrote in National Journal at the time, "borders on chicanery." Replace partisanship with pragmatism? Set aside ideology to take the best solutions from both parties and ease the country out of its mess? Fat chance, I said. Well, for the record, I hereby eat half a crow. Whatever you may think of Obama's domestic and economic records (which we can debate some other time), on foreign policy he has delivered the post-partisan, pragmatic, and generally successful policy he promised.

Two major surprises have marked his presidency, one negative, one positive. On the downside, the silver-tongued orator who inspired millions as a candidate turned out to be a mediocre communicator as president. On the upside, the greenhorn candidate who had barely any experience of, or interest in, foreign policy has proved to be an impressively adept presidential diplomat. On almost every front internationally, he has improved the country's position since 2008.

A surprising thing about the other two surprises is they are two aspects of the same phenomenon. The reason Obama exceeds expectations on international relations is the same reason he disappoints at domestic communication: his style is technocratic, undemonstrative, and patient — not so good for galvanizing the public in a time of economic crisis, but great for diplomacy.

Great? Well, at least very good. Greatness comes from winning cosmic conflicts like World War II and the Cold War, and at present we are fortunate not to be engaged in any and therefore not to need a great leader. (Remember, in this connection, the wisdom of Calvin Coolidge: "It is a great advantage to a president, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know he is not a great man.") In ordinarily messy, disorganized times like these, success in foreign policy means navigating treacherous currents safely, avoiding major mistakes, leaving the country stronger than you found it, and hopefully nudging the world forward a little. By that measure, Obama has done well.

An exception was his naïvely conceived and clumsily executed run at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His rookie flailing set back the peace process (such as it was) and made him look like a doormat. But he learned from his mistakes. And consider the positive side of the ledger.

Ending two wars. He has closed out the war in Iraq on acceptable terms. He is on course to do the same thing in Afghanistan. Ending two wars is a big deal.

Stabilizing relations with Russia. Russia-U.S. relations were in a tailspin when Obama entered office. Thanks to the Russia "reset," they are stable today. Russia could certainly be more cooperative on Iran and Syria, but it is quietly helping us in Afghanistan (where it could instead be a major irritant) and generally not putting bite behind its bark.

Stabilizing relations with China. The administration built enough capital with Beijing to smuggle a prominent dissident out of the country with barely a diplomatic ripple — an extraordinary thing, if you think about it. Hardly less extraordinary is that the administration's "Asia pivot," which is really a move to counterbalance China, is also clicking smoothly into place.

Isolating Iran. Partly thanks to Obama's show of willingness to negotiate, Europe is joining with the U.S. in boycotting Iranian oil, a remarkable show of solidarity behind exceptionally tough sanctions. Sanctions may yet fail, but Obama's patient approach has weakened Iran's position and built a consensus that will make further steps more effective. Oh, and Israel hasn't bombed Iran and Hezbollah hasn't bombed Israel.

Strengthening America's brand. In Europe and most of the rest of the world (Muslim countries being important exceptions), the United States is significantly more favorably regarded than when he took office. That is bankable soft power.

Prosecuting the war on terror. Obama has been so successful at continuing and refining the most effective elements of Bush's counterterrorism policy, while taming its provocative excesses that Republicans don't even want to raise the issue. Pinch me.

No, everything is not hunky-dory. And, no, a short article like this one cannot provide anything close to a textured appraisal of foreign affairs in the Obama years. But I think even a long, detailed, textured article would come in the end to two questions and two fairly clear answers. First: in foreign affairs, are we better off than we were four years ago? Answer: yes. Second: on the geopolitical scene, have we experienced any grave crises or setbacks? Answer: no. And that is why Romney has so little to say.

Or, rather, it is one reason. The other is that Obama has planted himself and the Democrats exactly where Romney, by rights, ought to be: on the kind of pragmatic realism that Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush used to own.

Lawrence J. Haas, a senior fellow with the American Foreign Policy Council and the author of the excellent new book Sound the Trumpet: The United States and Human Rights Promotion, notes that Obama has expressed admiration for the elder Bush and exhibits a similar approach. Like Bush 41, Haas says, Obama "operates as a classic realist, not a human rights promoter." Also in the realist vein, Obama "lacks a vision as to where he would like to take the country or the world. He operates from problem to problem."

Two diplomatic officials, one current and one former, balk at calling Obama a realist; he is not coldly manipulative or indifferent to human rights. (For example: Obama has done more to stand up for gay rights internationally than any previous world leader.) But they concur that he is outcome-oriented, a pragmatist rather than an idealist or visionary. "He's focused on the bottom line: what are our key equities and how do we protect them," says the serving diplomat. At the Brookings Institution, Tamara Cofman Wittes, a former Obama State Department official, says Obama believes in bending the arc of history, but also believes you can't bend it at right angles. "He's playing a long game and doing it pretty well."

The kind of realism Obama practices is founded not on Machiavellian amorality but on a theory about where peace comes from. For Republican hawks and neocons, peace comes from American strength and hegemony; for Democratic doves and internationalists, peace comes from international cooperation and transnational institutions. Obama's realism, like that of Ike and Bush 41 holds that American strength and international cooperation both have their place, but that peace comes from equilibrium between contending forces. To realists, power may not be admirable, but it must always be dealt with; and, in dealing with it, conserving and effectively deploying America's power, a scarce and precious commodity, is Priority One, for it is the commodity upon which human rights and U.S. hegemony alike ultimately depend.

A realist may choose to upset an equilibrium now and then, but never lightly. Power, like a floodtide surge, has its own hydraulics. Once equilibrium is gone, it can be very hard and costly to restore. For very different reasons, human rights activists and neocons deplore Obama's slowness to jump into the fray when rotten and antagonistic old orders tremble in places like Iran, Libya, Egypt, and now Syria. Eisenhower and Bush, however, understood well the importance of looking before leaping, whether in Suez and eastern Europe in the 1950s or in Ukraine and the Balkans in the early 1990s. Obama is in their mold.

Obama's quiet accomplishment, in foreign policy, has been to do just as he promised: take the best ideas from the other side, integrate them into his own party's tradition, and put them to work to strengthen the country's position. Being a dab hand at foreign affairs will not, it's true, save him in 2012, any more than it saved Bush 41 from the soft economy 20 years ago. What it has done is kept him viable in a miserable environment, improved the Democrats' credibility on national security, taken from the Republicans the foreign-policy real estate that they used to own — and left Mitt Romney standing in a puddle of his own shallow verbiage.

 

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ThinkProgress Home

‘Quite Far To The Right’: Meet Mitt Romney’s Foreign Policy Team

By Zack Beauchamp and Ali Gharib on Jul 25, 2012 at 5:50 pm

Mitt Romney turned attention to his foreign policy this week, with a largely substance-free and fact-challenged speech on Tuesday and a European tour that will eventually take him to Israel. While Romney gone to great lengths to avoid talking national security, it’s no secret that neither Romney nor his advisers appear capable of outlining a clear vision of a Romney administration’s foreign policy. What little specifics we do hear sound suspiciously like the Obama administration’s positions. So for those wondering what a Romney presidency might mean for U.S. troops and diplomats, there’s not much to go on.

But what’s troublesome about Romney on foreign policy is what’s cooking behind the scenes. Gen. Colin Powell recently complained that Romney’s foreign policy team is “quite far to the right.” Indeed, veterans of the Bush/Cheney administration “pepper” Romney’s foreign policy team and the so-called “Cheney-ites” are reportedly winning the presumptive GOP presidential nominee’s ear. Here’s an in depth look at some of the key advisers a President Romney will hear from on foreign policy and what we might come to expect in a Romney administration:

JOHN BOLTON

Before advising Romney, Amb. John Bolton served briefly as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under a recess appointment — awkward from the start because of his lifelong disdain for anything multilateral. After leaving government and taking up a position at the American Enterprise Institute, he turned on the Bush administration for not being hawkish enough on Iran. It’s a note he’s been striking since as a Fox contributor, sometime presidential candidate, and frequent guest on right-wing conspiracy theorists’ radio shows. He cheers for negotiations with Iran to fail, a position that supports his “default setting” of wanting to bomb Iran for any old reason even though he has admitted it might not work. Ominously, Bolton even once suggested a nuclear attack against Iran.

ELIOT COHEN

Just months after the war in Afghanistan began, Eliot Cohen — “was closely affiliated with the circle of hawks who surrounded Vice President Dick Cheney” — was agitating for a war in Iraq, calling it the “big prize.” As a co-founder of the Project for A New American Century, a neoconservative pressure organization critical to the development of the Iraq War, Cohen helped push the case for toppling Saddam. Though critical of the execution of the Iraq War, Cohen appears to have drawn only the most limited of conclusions, as he was seen as recently as 2009 making the case for a new war in Iran.

 

COFER BLACK

The Daily Beast described former C.I.A. officer Cofer Black as “Mitt Romney’s trusted envoy to the dark side”: “he often acts as the campaign’s in-house intelligence officer.” When the two first linked up during Romney’s first campaign, Black still had his position as a vice chairman of the controversial security contractor known then as Blackwater. In 2007, Romney refused to rule out torture of terrorism suspects, and said he’d have to consult with Black about it. Black led the C.I.A. counterterror shop when the harsh interrogations were carried out and he took the lead on President Bush’s secret rendition program. His speakers’ bureau bio says Black “conceived, planned and led the CIA’s war in Afghanistan.” In a history of the C.I.A., Tim Weiner wrote that Black was “the man who vowed to bring Osama bin Laden’s head to George W. Bush on a pike and did not make good on that promise.”

WALID PHARES

When you’re too controversial for Congressman Peter King’s hearings on terrorism among American Muslims, that ought to be a warning flag for any prospective employers. Yet Walid Phares, a Lebanese Christian with a long history of involvement in violent militias back home, is prominently listed as a “special adviser” in official Romney campaign literature. Investigations into Phares’ role in the brutal Lebanese Civil War suggests he was personally responsible for infusing Christian theology into the official ideology of the sectarian Lebanese Forces, an important fighting group in the war. Phares also has numerous links with the Islamophobic anti-Sharia movement.

MICHAEL HAYDEN

One might think Michael Hayden, who led both the CIA and the NSA at different points under George W. Bush, might be a calming influence: he has publicly warned about the consequences of a strike on Iran. However, Hayden is one of the most vigorous and defenders of torture, although accurately describing the practice he helped implement clearly makes him uncomfortable. Despite the overwhelming evidence that torture isn’t an effective means of getting intelligence and the simple truth of its moral repugnance, Hayden continues to defend the practice, comparing those who agree with the expert consensus to birthers and truthers. In office, Hayden demonstrated a clear track record of covering up the facts about Bush-era torture.

DAN SENOR

A number of Romney’s advisers who rose to prominence defending the Iraq war and its conduct, but none quite as much as Dan Senor. Currently the cofounder of a neoconservative pressure group, Senor was the spokesman for the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, where he painted a rosy picture of the occupation, even once telling reporters, “Well, off the record, Paris is burning. But on the record, security and stability are returning to Iraq.” Even after he was done, he continued to work toward improving the optics of the occupation gone awry. That approach carried over to debates about attacking Iran, where, as part of a Romney campaign call, he suggested the administration should not openly discuss consequences of a strike.

MAX BOOT

Max Boot has a remarkably consistent standard of advocating for war, even by neoconservative standards. In October of 2001, Boot called for “America to embrace its imperial role,” jauntily proclaiming that “Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.” Though one might think he would want to downplay those remarks today, Boot recently decided he got it entirely right, only wishing “policymakers in the Bush administration had listened.” Boot took an astonishingly rosy view of the ease of the Iraq War, suggesting it would only “require a long-term commitment of at least 60,000 to 75,000 soldiers.” Today, Boot can be found advocating for (one presumes simultaneously) staying in Afghanistan, intervening in Syria, and bombing Iran.

ERIC EDELMAN

A former Cheney aide and Bush Ambassador to Turkey, Eric Edelman follows in his bosses’ hawkish footsteps, recently suggesting that a war with Iran is the only possible alternative to an unpalatable world with an Iranian bomb. Romney recently used Edelman to attack Obama on leaking classified information, an awkward choice of spokesperson given that Edelman “originally suggested the idea to [Scooter] Libby to start leaking information about Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger” when he worked for the convicted felon.

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David Frum

Mitt Romney, Anglo-Saxon

by Jul 26, 2012 9:00 AM EDT
Mitt Romney

The Obama campaign responded quickly and forcefully to charges made by two unnamed Romney aides to the Daily Telegraph in London that President Obama doesn’t understand the special relationship between the U.S. and the U.K. -- and that Romney would restore the ties from the two countries’ shared Anglo-Saxon heritage. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

Jim Geraghty sums up the "Anglo-Saxon" controversy best. Not only do Romney's most important foreign-policy advisers come from a huge range of backgrounds, many distinctly non-WASP, but …

A lot of people think of themselves as “advisers” and claim that title, and sometimes folks with little or no real influence or connection on the campaign claim to be well-plugged in.

If this is Stu Stevens or Beth Myers saying this, it’s a bigger deal than if it’s 23-year-old intern Irving Schmidlap, whose primary duty is refilling the water cooler. Even if somebody said it, it doesn’t necessarily mean anyone on Team Romney actually listens to this person.

Secondly, the British press has a reputation for sometimes being not quite… reliable sources when it comes to eye-catching quotes from anonymous sources. The Telegraph is a little better than the others, but… Matt Lewis recalls the Telegraph retracting a story about Michelle Obama spending $50,000 on Agent Provocateur lingerie back in February. So if something sounds a little too good to be true in the British press… there’s a good chance it is.

There's one more reason to doubt the authenticity of the quote, at least insofar as it comes from somebody close to the candidate: It's well-known that Obama's relationship with David Cameron is the least frigid of his relationships with European leaders. If Romney had been en route to visit Angela Merkel, that would have been a very different story…

Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.

David Frum is a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Daily Beast and a CNN contributor.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.

Comments (10)

Sort: Newest | Oldest
coggocog just now

Personally, I do not feel offended by this controversy about somebody saying something or the other that gets some free press.

If Mitt Romney wants to clear the mess created by this silly comment, he could, simply, call Barack Obama and apologize. Why is he not doing it?

Edit (2 minutes)
Like Reply ottovbvs 2 minutes ago

It turns out someone called Nile gave this interview to the Telegraph. He is a Romney advisor. He denies saying this but has on previous occasions waxed lyrical about the British and American shared anglo saxon heritage.  

Like Reply deepsouthpopulist 2 minutes ago

I doubt anyone associated with Romney said it. Romney and his team are multi-culturalists. They don't think in these terms. At the level of basic fact however, it's true. Romney shows the Northern European phenotype. Obama doesn't. Although interestingly enough, both men are descended from polygamists.

David Frum:

from a huge range of backgrounds, many distinctly non-WASP...

LOL. I'd say that's understatement of the year. Kagan et. al. and many Romney advisers hold Israeli dual-citizenship. Non-WASP backgrounds indeed!

I also note that Frum has no problem throwing out the slur "WASP," apparently without shame. Frum is a hypocrite. This slur -- WASP -- originated as a slur against elite Whites in the northeast, certainly an execrable group in many ways, but not because they're White. Has anyone ever run into any Anglo-Saxons who were not White? 

Like Reply FauxReal 5 minutes ago

What makes this believable is that it reflects the message and strategy of the campaign. They've been sending a message that the President doesn't understand America, is foreign. In fact, the candidate uses the word "foreign" constantly to describe the President's policies. There's a message there.

Shadow of the Leader - 

Like Reply ApostasyUSA 10 minutes ago

Quote, "hey I'm white, you're white, let's be white together, remember being white? remember the white people?"If this is true, and a Romney person did say this, something is terribly wrong with these people. It is pure ignorance.If this is true, then it is an indication of the types of people in Romney’s inner circle, influencing his decisions.Romney’s whole campaign just comes across as wrong.

Like Reply halo3v 14 minutes ago

Anonymous quotes should not be used, by either side of the aisle.  If the quote is valid, the person who passes it along would not have a problem attaching their name to it. 

The media, or what passes for media these days, should know better than to use "unnamed sources" or "anonymous sources".   

Signed - An Independent

ps What Romney said about Russian infrastructure and programs is 110% accurate.  Do people really NOT know that Putin ran the KGB?  (There was a good reason neither W or Bill Clinton trusted him)

Like Reply ottovbvs 32 minutes ago

Geraghty is a paid shill so anything he says is worthless. I've no doubt it was said by someone, after all we had another of Romney's advisors on foreign relations on a public platform a couple of days ago talking about curtailing the activities of Soviet Russia that ceased to exist 20 years ago. Romney's advisors are a bunch of idealogues quite likely to make crass comments like this anglo saxon one.    

1 Like Reply Solo4114 32 minutes ago

Even if someone did say it, historically speaking, the U.S. does share a common Anglo-Saxon origin with the U.K.  Our political institutions are evolutions of English institutions.  Our cultural development is, in no small part, influenced by English history (indeed, the history of the entire U.K.).  People would deny this only out of sheer ignorance or pigheaded political correctness.Now, all that aside, it's a SPECTACULARLY stupid thing for someone in the Romney campaign to actually SAY, precisely because of the reaction we've seen.  It also ignores that (1) the U.S. has also been culturally influenced and has developed as a result of non-Anglo-Saxon peoples, and (2) the U.K. itself is not uniformly Anglo-Saxon either.  Try telling a Scot, a Welshman, or an Irishman that you share a common Anglo-Saxon heritage.  Go on.  I dare you.  Try telling it to a Pakistani living in Manchester.  Or a Jamaican living in London.  At any rate, the "too good to be true" bit is what gets me.  The Romney campaign has had its flubs and stumbles, but this is goes well beyond an "etch-a-sketch" moment.

AP News

International audition: Romney faces high stakes

By Kasie Hunt on July 25, 2012

LONDON (AP) — Mitt Romney — a one-term governor untested on the world's political stage — faces high stakes in the coming week during visits to England, Israel and Poland. It's a trip that amounts to an international audition.

The Republican presidential candidate is seeking to persuade voters back home to elect him their leader in a complex, dangerous world. And his trip will invite comparisons to Barack Obama's successful overseas 2008 tour before he won the White House.

Romney, whose decades in private business gave him ample exposure to international affairs, hopes to prove that he is no novice on foreign policy. At the same time he'll be highlighting a key part of his resume — the successful Salt Lake City Olympics he managed — with a visit to the opening days of the London Games. He's also planned a series of meetings — and photo events — with political leaders in the three countries he's visiting in hopes of projecting an image of leadership.

His itinerary is limited to a few tightly controlled appearances in countries that are close allies of the United States, suggesting that Romney knows there are risks as well as potential benefits to his trip.

Romney will be visiting two countries in Europe, a region he's spent most of his campaign criticizing. Beyond that, he's certain to face pressure to outline where he stands on such weighty matters as missile defense, Afghanistan troop levels, violence raging in Syria, the nuclear threat from Iran and the Middle East peace process, putting him on the spot to add details to a foreign policy vision that so far has been short on them.

He also faces the tricky task of contrasting himself with Obama while staying true to his promise not to openly assail the president while on foreign soil, honoring longstanding tradition that American politicians don't criticize their government while abroad. Drawing implicit contrasts with the president also could be difficult because Romney has so far not outlined sharp foreign policy differences with his Democratic opponent.

"I don't want to be in any way critical of the president or to be fashioning foreign policy departure from the president, while I'm on foreign soil," Romney told NBC News during a Wednesday interview in London when asked about how he would help Israel as president. "But I can tell you that, that with regards to any nation that, that feels its security is at risk that they should have a firm conviction that America is securely behind them."

The sheer logistics of putting together an overseas political trip could stress a campaign still trying to transition from the primary season and struggling to compete against Obama's battle-tested re-election machine. Anything short of flawlessness could raise questions about whether Romney and his team are ready to go head-to-head against Obama this fall, whether they're "ready for prime time."

The trip also will keep Romney off the campaign trail for a full week as Obama hammers him in states essential to winning the 270 Electoral College votes needed for victory this fall. There are signs that Romney may have been gaining some traction after a month of being on the receiving end of Democratic attacks by assailing the president over a remark about business owners. Obama has spent the past few days on the defensive.

Plus, the campaign's focus on foreign policy for the week takes the spotlight away from the central argument for Romney's candidacy — that Obama is hurting the economy and the Republican's business experience makes him best able to spark job creation — and puts attention on a Romney weakness.

Republican presidential candidates traditionally have had an advantage over their Democratic opponents on foreign policy and national security. But an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday shows that Americans, by a 10-point margin, trust Obama as commander in chief over Romney.

Just over 100 days until the election, polls show the race close, and Democrats and Republicans agree that it's likely to remain so heading into the fall. In tight races, anything can tip the balance — a foreign trip included.

Four years ago, Obama was a first-term senator when he spent part of the 2008 summer traveling to war zones, the Middle East and several European countries. The high-profile trip intended to burnish his foreign policy credentials culminated with a speech to hundreds of thousands of people outside the Victory Column in Berlin. The rock-star reception he received was intense. So was the wall-to-wall media coverage back home.

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  • It iwll be a flop.  Most european countries believe in a fair democratic view of the left, not the unfair all about the money like the gop.

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While doing research on this post, I came across many instances of GOP dirty tricks, not necessarily to be blamed on candidate, Mitt Romney.
Here are few selected morsels to whet your appetite.

Bush's Hit Man

In early December 1999, George W. Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove, and Dallas Morning News reporter Wayne Slater squared off in the Manchester, New Hampshire, airport. Rove was angry over a story Slater had written suggesting that it was plausible that Rove was behind the whispering campaign that warned that Senator John McCain--then soaring in the GOP presidential primary polls--might any day unravel because he had been under so much pressure when he was tortured as a POW in Vietnam.

About the Author

Lou Dubose
Lou Dubose was the co-author, with the late Molly Ivins, of two New York Times bestsellers about George W. Bush: Shrub...

Also by the Author

Hillary Clinton may have won Texas, but the huge crowds participating for the first time in the primary and caucuses were there mainly because of Barack Obama.

The judge who chided Bush over aid to children is part of a state tradition.

In a 700-word article that Slater said wasn't the most significant thing he'd written about Rove, he referred to questionable campaign tactics attributed to Rove: teaching College Republicans dirty tricks; spreading a rumor that former Texas Governor Ann Richards was too tolerant of gays and lesbians; circulating a mock newspaper that featured a story about a former Democratic governor's drinking and driving when he was a college student; spreading stories about Texas official Jim Hightower's alleged role in a contribution kickback scheme; and alerting the press to the fact that Lena Guerrero, a rising star in the Texas Democratic Party, had lied about graduating from college. Rove was explicitly linked by testimony and press reports to all but the gay and lesbian story; the college incident had been so widely reported for fifteen years that it was essentially part of the common domain. Slater also reported that primary candidates Steve Forbes and Gary Bauer blamed the Bush camp for the smear campaign.

"He said I had harmed his reputation," Slater recalls. Says another reporter who was traveling with Bush, "It was pretty heated. They were nose to nose. Rove was furious and had his finger in Slater's chest." Adds the same reporter, "What was interesting then is that everyone on the campaign charter concluded that Rove was responsible for rumors about McCain."

That Karl Rove, who, according to the White House press office is not giving interviews, hasn't always abided by the Marquess of Queensberry rules of political engagement is not exactly breaking news. As long ago as 1989, when Rove collaborated with an FBI agent investigating Hightower, the then-Texas agricultural commissioner complained about "Nixonian dirty tricks."

That was at a time when Rove was a big player only in Texas. Since then, he has become George W. Bush's closest adviser, directed Bush's presidential campaign and is now working in an office just down the hall from the most powerful official in the world. Some wonder to what extent Rove will use the power of the federal government against those who would cross the President. Rove's past suggests such worries are not unfounded. "This guy is worse than Haldeman and Ehrlichman," a source who worked in Hightower's office twelve years ago said in a recent interview, referring to Nixon's advisers at the time of the Watergate break-in. "He'll have an enemies list." The interview ended with a request common among sources speaking about Rove, even those no longer involved in politics: "I'd prefer you didn't quote me on this."

Rove operates from deeply held conservative beliefs, which were shaped when he was a child growing up in Utah. His sister told Miriam Rozen of the Dallas Observer that as a child Rove had a Wake Up America poster hanging above his bed. Rove has said that while going to college, he was never inclined to identify with the antiwar movement and supported the troops because "it was hard to sympathize with all those Commies." The "die-hard Nixonite" remains deeply resentful of the legacy of the counterculture of the sixties. Visitors to his Austin office would often leave with a copy of The Dream and the Nightmare by Myron Magnet, a Manhattan Institute fellow who argues that the political and cultural left corrupted the nation's poor and deprived them of the work ethic they now need to lift themselves out of poverty. Rove is an eclectic and voracious reader, and although he never completed college, a self-taught historian. He is absolutely dedicated to George W. Bush, whom he describes as "the kind of candidate and officeholder political hacks like me wait for a lifetime to be associated with."

Rove arrived in Houston in 1977 to work for a George Herbert Walker Bush PAC run by James Baker 3d. Rove subsequently moved from Houston to Austin, and in the ten years it took George W. Bush to lose $2 million of other people's money in the oilfields of West Texas, he became the Republican Party's premier political consultant. At the time of Rove's arrival, US Senator John Tower was the only Republican holding statewide office. When Rove left earlier this year to serve as a senior adviser to President Bush, all twenty-nine statewide elected offices were held by Republicans, and both US Senate seats were occupied by Rove clients: Phil Gramm and Kay Bailey Hutchison. Almost half of GOP officeholders--including the governor, the attorney general, the chief justice and several justices on the Texas Supreme Court--were also clients. Rove and the consulting firm he owned until joining the Bush campaign have represented more than seventy-five candidates in twenty-four states.

There have always been nagging questions about the tactics Rove has used to establish market domination. So when a tape of Bush's practice debate sessions was mailed to Congressman Tom Downey, Al Gore's opponent in practice debates, the speculation among the press corps in Austin was that Rove had arranged it. (A post office surveillance camera captured an image of an employee of Bush media consultant Mark McKinnon mailing a package that might have been the tape; a federal grand jury in Austin is still looking into the incident.) Some speculated that the move was intended to eliminate Downey from his role as debate coach (which it did), others that it would provide an excuse to cancel the debates (which, in hindsight, would have been helpful to Gore).

Rove, after all, works in the tradition of the late Lee Atwater, the Republican attack-dog/consultant who said of Michael Dukakis that he would "strip the bark off the little bastard" and "make 'Willie' Horton his running mate."

Rove's first foray into politics involved gaining entry to the office of Alan Dixon--a candidate for state treasurer in Illinois in 1970--stealing some campaign stationery and printing and distributing a fake invitation to Dixon's campaign headquarters, promising "free beer, free food, girls, and a good time." "I was nineteen and I got involved in a political prank," Rove told the Dallas Morning News in 1999. A year later, Atwater ran Rove's campaign for the presidency of the national College Republicans, and working together they defeated Terry Dolan, the Republican operative who later founded the National Conservative Political Action Committee that helped elect Ronald Reagan.

When, in the wake of the Watergate break-in, Rove was accused of teaching dirty tricks to college Republicans, he attributed the accusations to rumors started by Dolan. After the FBI interviewed Rove, the Republican National Committee--then chaired by Bush the Elder--looked into the charges, decided they were baseless and offered Rove work. Rove later joined Bush and Baker to work on the PAC that Bush set up to position himself for the 1980 presidential campaign, which he lost to Ronald Reagan.

Rove soldiered on in obscurity until 1986, when he was working on the second campaign of Bill Clements, a Republican trying to recapture the governor's office after losing it to Democrat Mark White. Rove made news by going public with a complaint that an electronic bugging device had been found in his office--shortly before a scheduled televised debate between the two candidates. "We never took it seriously, because we knew nobody in our shop had anything to do with it," says Dwayne Hollman, who worked for White at the time. Hollman said it was assumed that it was a publicity stunt. "It was investigated by the FBI," Hollman said, "and nothing ever came of it."

Yet some wonder what "came of" Rove's meeting with FBI agent Greg Rampton, who conducted that investigation. Local authorities who looked into the bugging seem to agree with Hollman's assessment. "We were the first on the scene and concluded that Rove had hired a company to debug his office, and that the same company had planted the bug," says a source involved in the Travis County DA office's investigation. But the media reported that Rampton had determined there was nothing to pursue.

Two years later, Rampton began an investigation that involved his setting up shop in the offices of Garry Mauro, the state land commissioner and later the loser in the 1998 gubernatorial race won by George W. Bush. Mauro said Rampton informed him that a former Land Commission employee was involved in an appraisals scheme that involved the commission. "I told my general counsel to tell [Rampton] to come on in," Mauro said. Rampton accepted the invitation. "On the day of the Democratic state convention, I got a subpoena for every document you could possibly imagine," Mauro said.

Mauro says he was warned by Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock--who, Mauro said, insisted on speaking to him outside their office buildings--that three Democrats, including Mauro, Hightower and himself, were being targeted. As Mauro puts it, "Greg Rampton lived in my office. He roamed the halls. He had us put in a computer room, he picked out files of people who had given money and tried to establish by regression analysis...that anytime somebody gives you a contribution, there is a quid pro quo. Once they showed up with twelve agents and brought their own copier." In the end they found nothing, according to Mauro. "But," he adds, "they made it hard to run a campaign." (Attempts to contact Rampton through the FBI office in Denver, from which he recently retired, were not successful.)

If Rampton struck out in Mauro's office, he connected in Hightower's, after slowing down only to subpoena Bullock's campaign finance filings. In the summer of 1989, pending indictments against two aides to Hightower--who used his office to attack what he called "the bullies, bankers, bastards and tort reformers" who run the state--were announced in Washington. But it wasn't Rampton or any other Justice Department official who announced them. It was Karl Rove, the political consultant working for Hightower's Republican opponent, Rick Perry.

Hightower refuses to discuss the incident. Rove later admitted under oath that he had met with Rampton during the summer of 1989 "regarding a probe of political corruption in the office of Texas agriculture commissioner Jim Hightower." And in June of 1990, Perry sent out a fundraising letter claiming that Hightower's office was rife with corruption and was under investigation by the FBI, though there were no indictments until after the 1991 general election, in which Hightower lost his re-election bid.

Rove has repeatedly denied involvement in the FBI investigations of top Democrats in the 1980s and did not respond to questions submitted to him regarding this story. When questioned under oath before a Texas Senate committee in 1991, Rove was evasive about his relationship with Rampton and engaged in semantic hairsplitting worthy of Bill Clinton. "How long have you known an FBI agent by the name of Greg [Rampton]?" a Democratic senator asked Rove. The answer should have been fairly straightforward, as Rampton had cleared Rove of the bugging incident five years earlier and had met with him a number of times subsequently, which Rove had disclosed in a federal questionnaire in 1989. Yet Rove was, to say the least, evasive: "Senator, it depends. Would you define 'know' for me?"

Rove became acquainted with George W. Bush while working for his father and Baker in Houston but didn't work for the younger Bush until he decided to run for governor in 1994. The campaign was all Rove: a four-point message, rumors about the opponent (Ann Richards) circulated by surrogates and little direct exposure to the press.

To those following the Bush campaigns that Rove ran, it was evident that he was more than just a political consultant to Bush. Writing in the Boston Globe magazine, David Shribman posed the questions that many in the press corps dared not ask during the presidential campaign: "Is there a place where George W. Bush ends and Karl Rove begins? Are you the wizard behind the curtain of George W.? Is W. too dependent upon you? And, worst of all: Are you George W. Bush's brain?"

Rove has certainly done much of Bush's thinking for him. Asked by a reporter for the National Review what thinkers had shaped Bush's political philosophy, Rove cited Magnet's The Dream and the Nightmare, Gertrude Himmelfarb's The Demoralization of Society, James Q. Wilson's On Character and several other books--none of which Bush would have been likely to see but for Rove. (Recall Bush's response in the debate about which political philosopher had most shaped his thinking: It was not Magnet, Himmelfarb or Wilson but Jesus Christ.)

When working as a political operative and not a mentor, Rove has been bipartisan, eliminating Republicans who represented a threat to his boss's career with the same zeal with which he attacked Democrats. "He's enormously effective," says Dallas lawyer and Bush critic Tom Pauken, noting that Rove's political bible is Machiavelli's The Prince. And it is Machiavelli--not the authors of the conservative and neocon canon--who has informed Rove's treatment of Pauken. In 1994, as Bush was beginning his first race for governor, the machinery of the Republican Party of Texas was taken over by Reagan Republicans and fundamentalist Christians, and Pauken--who had worked in the Reagan Administration--was made party chairman. It was a faction that Rove correctly perceived would create problems for Bush, who had always understood that the Christian conservatives must be kept in line. Rove called big funders and diverted money from the state party to Bush political accounts that he controlled. "He did everything he could to cut off the money to the party...throughout the time I was chair," Pauken says. "Karl understands the importance of money in politics, and he made it more difficult for me to function."

Similarly, after two Christian-right candidates for the State Board of Education, Bob Offutt and Donna Ballard (Offutt was an incumbent), traveled to New Hampshire to endorse Steve Forbes in the Republican primary, they returned home to find their opponents' campaigns suddenly flush with cash from big Republican givers associated with Rove. "You don't cross Karl Rove and not expect repercussions," a defeated Offutt told the Austin American-Statesman. A Republican political consultant was more colorful: "To put it in a nutshell, you don't tug on Superman's cape."

In January, Superman moved into the White House office previously occupied by Hillary Clinton. And he's only a phone call away from Attorney General John Ashcroft.

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Lou Dubose

Lou Dubose was the co-author, with the late Molly Ivins, of two New
York Times bestsellers about George W. Bush: Shrub: The Short But
Happy Political Life of George W. Bush and Bushwhacked: Life in
George W. Bush's America, both published by Random House. He also
wrote, with Texas Monthly senior writer Jan Reid, a political
biography of Republican House majority leader Tom DeLay: The
Hammer (Public Affairs, 2004). His final collaboration with Ms.
Ivins was Bill of Wrongs (Random House, 2007). He currently edits
the semi-monthly Washington Spectator and divides his time
between Austin, Texas, and Washington, DC.

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Mitt Romney's biggest problem is... Mitt Romney

The Republican's whiny "I'm rubber you're glue" attitude to Obama will alienate American voters.

By John Stoehr Published 18 July 2012 9:25
Mitt Romney's fractured reflection
Mitt Romney's fractured reflection. Photograph: Getty Images

Republican Mitt Romney decided long ago that the only thing he was going to focus on this campaign was the economy. 

Not gay marriage. Not immigration. Not gun rights. Not anything but the economy and how the president botched it.  

He'd present himself, as he did when he ran for governor of Massachusetts, as Mr Fix-It while his deep-pocketed confreres spent beaucoup bucks attacking from the rear.

The idea was that the election is a referendum on Barack Obama's first term, but in focusing exclusively on the economy, Romney forget something: to define himself.

Most candidates for president tell a story about themselves that connects with Americans emotionally and intimately. Beyond policy, image, mud-slinging and ideology, candidates hope to craft narratives that make them feel real.

But unlike George W. Bush's story of redemption and Obama's story of audacious hope, Romney's story inspires little affection. In fact, his story might inspire the opposite of affection, and that may be what Romney fears most.

  • He's the son of a wealthy businessman and statesman who attended elite universities before founding a Wall Street firm that made millions for shareholders while sending thousands of American jobs overseas.
  • He's an influential member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons), an arcane religious sect that, unfairly or not, most Americans really don't understand, and neither do some former Mormons.
  • He lives in the shadow of his legendary father. George Romney was the head of the innovative car company (AMC), a firm that made things, as opposed to a private-equity firm like Mitt's Bain Capital that makes nothing. He was also a progressive Republican who fought for civil rights and even contravened his own party to achieve equal opportunity while Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Nixon.
  • And Romney the son is the former (centrist) governor of the only state to initiate universal health care. That would be something to crow loudly about if Romney were a Democrat or if this were 2008. But in 2012, the Republicans' conservative faction has disqualified the fact that he set the example for the biggest domestic policy program of 21st-century America.

So Romney doesn't talk about himself.

That means opportunity, and Obama has taken it.

In a series of attack ads, the Obama campaign has portrayed Romney as a corporate raider who dismantled companies, sent jobs to Mexico and China, and pocketed millions. The president has, as Lou Dubose of the Washington Spectator put it, taken a page from the Karl Rove playbook. 

The former Bush advisor was famous for taking an opponent's greatest asset — in this case, Romney's background as a big-time business leader — and turning it into his greatest liability. Rove did just that when he "Swiftboated" Vietnam War hero John Kerry. The difference, as Dubose sees it (and I agree), is that while Rove's attacks were based on misinformation, conspiracies and fabulist reveries, Obama's attacks are distinguished for their being grounded in fact. 

Indeed, Romney has tried to create the impression that Obama is lying about his tenure at Bain Capital, but with rare exception, everything the Obama campaign has said about Romney has come from independent news reports.

Obama is also taking advantage of a tic unique to Romney. Talking Points Memo dubbed it the "Rubber/Glue" method. Here's how it works. The president calls Romney an "pioneer" in outsourcing (true, according to the Washington Post). Then Romney returns volley, saying: "I'm rubber you're glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you!" He adds that the president is the "Outsourcer-in-Chief." 

I wish I were kidding. The more Romney does this, the whinier he appears. Americans don't like whiners. Especially rich ones.

So Romney's main problem may be Romney. If he talks about himself, he risks losing votes. If he doesn't talk about himself, he risks losing votes. It's Mitt's Catch-22.

If Romney can make this election look like a referendum, he has a chance to win it. If he doesn't, and instead Obama dominates the campaign narrative, then he's sunk. 

Even House Speaker John Boehner knows this. 

The American people probably aren’t going to fall in love with Mitt Romney. I’ll tell you this: 95 percent of the people that show up to vote in November … are going to vote for or against Barack Obama. … Mitt Romney has some friends, relatives and fellow Mormons … some people that are going  to vote for him...

 

5 comments

YouMisinformedBrits's picture
Mon, 2012-07-23 08:33 — YouMisinformedBrits (not verified)

The paragraph about Rove's misinformation on Kerry and Obama's attacks based on fact not only prove the bias of this author, but they also prove they know little to nothing on the subject. Independent news sources were also the origin of Swiftboat attacks against Kerry. John Kerry's fellow soldiers from his tenure in Vietnam hated him, thus we got Swiftboat. Team Obama's attack on Bain is such a joke, most in his own party think it's a bad attack. It also doesn't seem to work. Bain is a multi-billion dollar corporation that, according to this author, produces nothing? How about the numerous corporations Bain created and jump started? Ever heard of Staples? Mitt Romney co-founded Bain and it remains a highly successful venture capitalist company - it is far larger than AMC ever was. The suggestion that Mitt lives in his father's shadow is the same farcical attack line liberals tried to use against George W. Bush. Romney survived a tough primary campaign that existed almost entirely of attacks on his time at Bain - citizens ignored it, yet Obama's team decided to recycle it anyway (to no effect). What is the opinion of this author that Obama has to brag about? Net job creation is down over 4 years. Exploding deficit. Longest economic recovery of all time. BO attacks Romney precisely because he can't run on his own merit. Lastly, the facts that are cited as criticism against Romney (such as outsourcing) are sketchy at best. Romney left Bain to manage the Salt Lake City Olympics in 1999, as reported by nearly ever media outlet. This is when Bain began outsourcing. Does this website check its sources?

Brian F. Wood's picture
Wed, 2012-07-18 16:02 — Brian F. Wood (not verified)

When one inherits, one gets money one didn't earn. Mitt didn't earn his vast wealth; he invested the inheritance he did not earn. If we want a land of equal opportunity for all, we will tax inheritance at 100%. Inherited businesses will be given to the workers. And in a sane and just world, the wealthy, who are, as G. K. Chesterton averred, scum, will be scrutinized as closely as kids who wear their pants low.

John Cheese's picture
Wed, 2012-07-18 16:53 — John Cheese (not verified)

Move to Russia or Cuba...

John Cheese's picture
Wed, 2012-07-18 13:18 — John Cheese (not verified)

Ha ha, what a farce! All the top 1%'s in Congress & even el Presidente & Peloosi have "offshore" related investments. Bain did not outsource jobs overseas during Mitt's tenure, & he has the money to defend himself about this Obama-chicago style political thuggary this summer. Barry is even campaigning & asking for donations overseas- WTF?
The Baraka's supposed auto-biography is now known to have "composite stories". Even the new Hawaiian governor Abercrombie backed off his statement that he would "produce" the missing actual birth certificate. Don't hear much about him lately....How bout checking up on Barack's Conneticutt-issued mystery 042 Social Security number? Issued in 1977- 1979. How? Eventually we will know all about our mystery Prez.

As a candidate, Mitt Romney may wish anything, just about anything he desires in U foreign policy. I have few wishes, as a citizen, too. What has that got to do with Mitt Romney's adviser, Richard Williamson's grandiose recommendations to the president, Barack Obama?

As far as we both, Richard and I, bunch of nobodies, he more than I. I could match his vulgarity with mine, in equal proportion and still the US foreign policy does not change, should not change. Instead of Richard Williamson making GOP candidate, Mitt Romney's unstated and unknown foreign policy, in general and vis a vis, Syria, in particular, we, the people, shouldn't worry too much.

In my one of my previous blogs, I said to one article, published in Foreign Policy (Magazine)

Syria, where you don’t always get what you want
Posted By Brian Fishman Tuesday, July 10, 2012 – 12:57 PM

My Dear Brian Fishman, 

I am Sid Harth.

You forgot about arsenic. Many celebrities were reputedly eliminated by such a simple and elegant poison, except Fidel Castro.

Humor aside, why is the world so hung up upon sectarian violence in, of all the places, a Muslim country?

In a friendly country, Pakistan, I better not say more as Uncle Sam may put me in a dog house, every other day, almost, scores of innocent people die. All the military powers, all the free money Pakistan gets from Uncle Sam to be a good dog, all the historic evidence suggests the Islamic countries have not lost the taste of blood over how, when and how many times a devote Muslim prays or not, they keep the violence, not sanity.

Dictators, basically, keep the violence down, not out. All Pakistani rules under this or that dictator, there was relative peace, little progress, more freedom, modulated but not totally outlawed Free Speech.

Since Uncle Sam mandated democracy as the only governing model for Pakistan, the old rivalries have come back with a revenge.

Arm Bashar al-Assad. Problem solved. Less cost. More, permanent results, I say.

Just don’t try that trick on Iran. They don’t need free money, nor arms at discount rates.

…and I am Sid Harth@webworldismyoyster.com

Amanpour

THURSDAY: The Jewish Vote

Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer on Republicans trying to court the Jewish vote.

WATCH: In the Footsteps of bin Laden

A documentary tracing the transformation of a son of Saudi privilege into the world's most wanted terrorist. WATCH ONLINE

Romney's foreign policy prescription for Syria

July 26th, 2012
11:30 AM ET

By Samuel Burke

The international community’s lack of a coherent policy for Syria’s spiraling situation has now allowed the power vacuum to begin to fill with al-Qaeda elements, a senior intelligence official has told Christiane Amanpour. In addition, Jihadi elements are also working to fill that space.

With the radical presence increasing in Syria, calls for Western help to arm the rebels are growing. Wednesday, Mitt Romney’s Senior Foreign Advisor Richard Williamson, reiterated that the Republican presidential candidate believes the U.S. should openly help arm the opposition – a stance the Obama administration rejects and White House spokesman Jay Carney in late May said would add to the “chaos and carnage” in Syria.

In an interview with Christiane Amanpour, Williamson said, “This has gone on for seventeen months and early on Governor Romney said we should have people working with the opposition, trying to identify the moderate forces and help them unify.”

But when Amanpour pressed Richardson on other options to try and weaken Assad, he said Romney is reluctant. “He won’t join his friend John McCain and others who are calling for no fly zones and safe havens.” But he added, “Clearly it’s not something you can put off the table if this goes on.” 

Vali Nasr, a former Senior Advisor to the Obama administration admits the U.S. has largely been reactive in Syria. “The conflict keeps metamorphosing into something worse. It goes in new directions, and then we try to come up to answers to what is happening.”

Nasr doesn’t believe the U.S. can continue its policy of non-engagement as Assad continues to lose his grip on power. “The danger now is that the situation in Syria is deteriorating very rapidly, and if we are going to have a policy of reaction to the latest development, then we will be chasing this ball in whatever direction itis going to go and that’s not where we want to be.”

The international community has pointed its fingers at China and Russia for blocking action against Assad by vetoing three resolutions in the U.N. On that matter Romney’s advisor said, “Yes, you work with them. But you don’t allow Russia to determine how the U.S. pursues its interest in Syria and you don’t allow Vladimir Putin to decide if you’re going to protect innocent people in Syria being killed in awful and horrific ways by a regime that’s going out the door.”

Williams echoed a chorus of criticism that is rising against the Obama Administration, accusing the U.S. of using Russia’s opposition to intervention in Syria as a convenient shield to postpone any action until after the November elections.
Filed under:  Christiane Amanpour • Latest Episode

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9:24 AM  -  Public
Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican candidate for the US presidency, got off to a shaky start in his effort to show a statesmanlike profile when he appeared to question London’s readiness to host the Olympics and the British people’s enthusiasm for the Games: http://on.ft.com/MLePkB

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9
+22
17 comments
David J. Boozer9:26 AM
+3
I would too, they can't even handle their economy.
Day Antonio9:29 AM (edited)
+8
+David J. Boozer i agree with you , but we cant handle ours here either in the US so go figure...lol 
Dan McManus9:30 AM
+7
Such a douche-nozzle.
Mark Joosten9:33 AM
+7
If anyone still things he really cares, please take a look at this youtube film: Gov. Mitt Romney meets a medical marijuana patient--Oct. 6
Dennis Weed9:34 AM
Obama can give them food stamps. That's all he's done here. 
Dan McManus9:36 AM
+1
+Dennis Weed ... who exactly are "them"?
Sean Reynolds9:36 AM
+7
+Dennis Weed You know how I know you watch Fox News?
Sam Ballowe9:43 AM
+1
+Mark Joosten Saw the video. No, he does not care at all.
Patrick Larvie9:52 AM (edited)
+11
Kudos to the Brits for their hospitality as Romney's offensive remarks show that he's really made himself feel at home. Would you mind keeping him there for a while? 
Elaine Vlahakis9:44 AM
Obama "King of you didn't build that" LMAO!
Sean Reynolds9:45 AM
+11
+Elaine Vlahakis In language we have a thing called context.  Have you ever heard of this concept?
Elaine Vlahakis9:47 AM
Sean Reynolds Just thought I'd throw that out there for all you Obama lovers!
Sean Reynolds9:49 AM
+16
+Elaine Vlahakis If I love Obama or not isn't relevant.  If the best an argument someone has is a sentence completely out of context, then you've already lost.
Carl Gilchrist9:51 AM
Mr. Romney had a meeting on Downing Street? Really?
Amazing!!! Who answers to who? 
Elaine Vlahakis9:52 AM
+2
Sean Reynolds....have a great day!
Financial Times10:00 AM
+11
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...and I am Sid Harth@webworldismyoyster.com

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