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"\n\n Freedom/peace/prosperity/decency/hope! Mitt Romney took the stage today to deliver a Big Foreign Policy Speech, and it was a big win. Not in the sense that it was riveting, or even captivating, or even all that coherent\u2014but with the momentum of a debate win and an at-least-partially-reset campaign on his side, Romney succeeded in doing something he hasn't been able to hack for months now: he presented this election as a referendum on Obama.\n\nI mean this in the simplest, most unexciting sense. Romney offered only criticism, and provided nothing on which he himself might be judged. But this isn't supposed to be choice; it's supposed to be discussion about Obama's incompetence (besides which, as the Times noted today, Romney is no foreign policy expert and his advisors are still divided over which positions he should take). So he stayed in safe territory, scolding Obama for being too soft on bad people and too slow to befriend freedom lovers. And after quoting George Marshall on peace\u2014\"The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it,\" he said\u2014he went on to assume that familiar Republican posture of increasing military spending, getting tougher on Iran, and just generally doing the big-stick carrying that is supposed to stop all war forever because everyone will be too afraid to screw with us and our friends.\n\nThe problem with this philosophy, of course, is that when your whole foreign policy is convincing our enemies that we are eager to go to war, we often end up, you know, going to war. (Though at least no one will doubt our \"resolve in our might\"\u2014one of what Romney calls his \"bedrock principles,\" along with \"confidence in our cause\" and \"clarity in our purpose.\") Against a stock-still backdrop of posed military flags, was at his most plastic, working his way through this pablum convincingly but emotionlessly, and looking every bit the mail-order American President he has long promised to be.\n\nWe often underestimate the extent to which the American people expect things to go poorly, especially when it comes to foreign policy, and the shear ordinariness of this event helped underscore that Romney agrees. The Middle East is going to be a mess no matter what, the thinking goes, so you might as well spare yourself the embarrassment of a President who apologizes for America (and for our web videos) while the streets burn. It's a decidedly Bush-ian worldview, a fact reinforced by the statements of praise for the speech, choreographed and released by the Romney campaign, from Old Guard GOP bigs like John McCain, Bob Dole, and John Bolton. A breath of fresh air it was not, but in lambasting Obama as a weak, dangerous, failure, and in positioning Romney as the candidate of the status quo ante, you'd have to say it did what it needed to do. And that's a little depressing.\n\n Read more on Death Race 2012\n\nHunger Reads: Big Bird Saves SNL Debate Coverage and Two Dartmouth Alumnae Vie For Same Senate Seat\n\nTrail Gear: Peter Nicholas's Noise-Blocking Earmuffs\n\nMore From Snoop on His Carefully Thought-Out Endorsement\n\n Follow Reid Cherlin on Twitter for more updates from the campaign trail."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/mitt-bin-ein-berliner-romneys-big-foreign-policy-speech>