Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech at VMI (text here) was not received very well. Politico reports:
Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech Monday was filled with tough talk and slams of President Barack Obama’s leadership — but little of the clarity Romney has vowed to bring to the Oval Office.
What the Republican nominee’s campaign billed as a major foreign policy address didn’t have much new in it and left some analysts unimpressed. The speech, they said, was much like Romney’s previous swings at laying out a foreign policy: couched in broad ideology and big ambitions and lacking the specifics for how he’d bring any of them about…
“There’s absolutely nothing in this speech. This is a repackaging of language that has been a staple of Romney’s campaign since he threw his hat in the ring,” said James Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations. “If Romney has a foreign policy strategy, he still has not told us what it is. The governor is very fond of saying hope is not a strategy, but that cuts both ways. He didn’t answer two key questions: what he would do differently and why we should expect what he would do to work.”
The same could be said when Romney talks about his domestic policies.
“Mitt Romney once again tried to engage the president on foreign policy, and we have a simple message for him: Bring it on,” said Obama campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt.
“President Obama has shown time and again that he is a tough, responsible and steady commander-in-chief,” LaBolt noted. “Mitt Romney has shown throughout this campaign that he would be the exact opposite. Behind the tough talk, he has been erratic, unsteady and irresponsible in his audition on the world stage.”
Look at their records so far. Obama had bin Laden killed and did severe damage to al Qaeda. Romney went to the U.K. and managed to harm our relations with a close ally.
