“Mitt Romney is a smart man who has had much professional success. But even Republican insiders have admitted to me that he has been strangely amateurish on foreign policy. His campaign, they note, is not staffed by the obvious Republican foreign policy heavyweights–people like Robert Zoellick, Richard Armitage, Richard Haass and Stephen Hadley. As a result, he has blustered about Russia’s being our greatest geopolitical adversary (actually it is a second-rate power), seems willing to start a trade war with China, is vague yet belligerent about Syria and Iran and has gone back and forth on the timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Romney faces a tough problem. President Obama is the first Democrat in nearly 50 years to enter an election with a dramatic advantage in foreign policy. (The last time was Lyndon Johnson vs. Barry Goldwater in 1964.) Unless Romney can craft a smart, strategic alternative, that gap will only get wider.” — Fareed Zakaria
RT @ronchusid: Romney's Problem on Foreign Policy #p2 #p21 #topprog http://t.co/y8E1DEcK
And what do you think is the likelihood that Romney’s current circle of foreign policy advisors — the overwhelming majority of them Cheney/Bush retreads — will allow calmer and more temperate voices such as those of Armitage & Zoellick, Hadley & Haass, inside the neocon echo chamber they have constructed around him?
My guess is slim to none, and Slim’s leaving town.