President Obama and Mitt Romney wrapped up a series of defining debates with a bristling exchange over America’s place in the world as each sought to portray the other as an unreliable commander in chief in a dangerous era.
Picking up where he left off in last week’s debate, Obama went on the offense from the start, lacerating his challenger for articulating a set of “wrong and reckless” policies that he called incoherent. While less aggressive, Romney pressed back, accusing the president of failing to assert American interests and values in the world to deal with a “rising tide of chaos.”
“Governor, the problem is that on a whole range of issues, whether it’s the Middle East, whether it’s Afghanistan, whether it’s Iraq, whether it’s now Iran, you’ve been all over the map,” Obama charged.
“I don’t see our influence growing around the world,” Romney countered. “I see our influence receding, in part because of the failure of the president to deal with our economic challenges at home.”
The debate here at Lynn University, moderated by Bob Schieffer of CBS News, was dedicated to foreign policy even though it veered occasionally into domestic issues, and it presented the last opportunity for the candidates to face each other before the 6 November election. While international relations have often taken a back seat to the economy during the marathon campaign, whoever wins will inherit a world with increasingly complicated challenges, from the turmoil in the Middle East to a resurgent Russia to an emerging China, and the debate highlighted the vexing issues ahead.
For all its fireworks, the debate broke little new ground and underscored that the differences between the two men on foreign policy rest more on tone, style and their sense of leadership than on particular policies. Obama and Romney seemed to align on matters like withdrawal from Afghanistan, the perils of intervening in Syria, and the use of drones to battle terrorists.
While they varied in degree, the heart of their clash rested on who would pursue the same national goals more effectively and ensure America’s enduring economic and security role overseas.
Chopping the air with his hand, Obama came armed with a host of zingers. He accused his opponent, sitting at a table next to him, of “trying to airbrush history” and of seeking to “do the same things we do but say them louder.” At times, Obama lectured and even mocked Romney on the details of certain policies, hoping to expose him as an uninformed pretender at the risk of coming across as condescending. Romney at times sat stiffly, his hands before him, back ramrod straight.
At one point, when Romney complained that the Navy “is smaller now than any time since 1917,” Obama pounced, and noted that the comparison works only if aircraft carriers are equated with gunboats. “We also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military has changed,” the president said. Slowing his words, he added sarcastically: “We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go under water, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship, where we are counting ships.”
The enmity between the men surfaced again and again, and the president seemed to have studied each attack line that Romney had used in the past, like his oft-repeated criticism of Obama s supposed “apology tour” of the world. “You said that on occasion America had dictated to other nations,” Romney said. “Mr. President, America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other nations from dictators.”
Obama hit back fast. “If we’re going to talk about trips that we’ve taken,” he said before pausing dramatically, in a reference to Romney s foreign trip this summer, when he was widely derided for insulting Britain’s ability to host the Olympic Games and for holding fund-raisers in London and in Israel. “When I was a candidate for office, the first trip I took was to visit our troops,” he continued. “And when I went to Israel as a candidate, I didn’t take donors. I didn’t attend fund-raisers.”
Romney pinned the cascading crises around the world on Obama s shoulders, saying the president had failed to live up to his promises from his 2008 campaign and left the country in a weaker position. “Look at the record,” Romney said. “You look at the record of the last four years and say: Is Iran closer to a bomb? Yes. Is the Middle East in tumult? Yes. Is al-Qaeda on the run, on its heels? No. Are Israel and the Palestinians closer to reaching a peace agreement? No.” He sought to use the words of the Iranian leader, a hard-line Islamist who considers the United States the Great Satan, to bolster his argument that the United States has become weak. When the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “says our debt makes us not a strong country, that’s a frightening thing,” Romney said.
The subject of Iran’s nuclear program came up repeatedly. Obama appeared to contradict himself at one point. He labeled “not true” a report in The New York Times that the United States and Iran have agreed in principle to direct nuclear talks after the elections. But he later suggested that Romney had agreed as well: “I’m pleased that you now are endorsing our policy of applying diplomatic pressure and potentially having bilateral discussions with the Iranians to end their nuclear program. But, just a few years ago, you said that’s something you’d never do.”
Both men talked tough on Iran, at one point seeming to compete to show how much each is in the corner of Israel, which considers a nuclear Iran a threat to its existence.
“As long as I’m president of the United States, Iran will not get a nuclear weapon,” Obama said. He said international sanctions had brought the Iranian economy to its knees. Romney said Obama had allowed “daylight” to show between the United States and Israel and vowed to tighten sanctions and seek a war crimes indictment against Ahmadinejad for inciting genocide against Israel.
But at the end of the night, for all the sound and fury on Iran, there was little substantive difference between the candidates. Both are in favor of strong international sanctions, and both said they would use military power if necessary to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. The candidates arrived here as foreign policy, which had been a political asset for Obama, has become more of a liability for him lately, particularly after the attack that killed the American ambassador to Libya last month. Obama s ten-point advantage in July on who would be a better commander in chief has shrunk to a three-point edge in the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll.
For all the attention to Libya at the second debate, the two men seemed to have exhausted the topic this time. There was no chatter over whether Obama had called it an act of terror, and Romney made only a couple of perfunctory references.
Instead, he tried to broaden his critique, praising the president’s counterterrorism efforts but quickly pivoting to call for a more comprehensive strategy to diminish radicalism in the Middle East. “I congratulate him on taking out Osama bin Laden and going after the leadership in al-Qaeda,” Romney said, “but we can’t kill our way out of this mess.”
Obama countered sharply. Facing Romney directly, he said: “I have to tell you that your strategy previously has been one which has been all over the map,” a phrase he would use three times during the debate.
“My strategy is pretty straightforward, which is to go after the bad guys,” Romney replied. “But my strategy is broader than that.” It is important to get the Muslim world to reject extremism, he added. “We don’t want another Iraq. We don’t want another Afghanistan.”
The two men also clashed over Syria, China and Russia. Obama ridiculed Romney for saying Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia was America’s Number One geopolitical foe. “The 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” the president said.
Romney distinguished a “geopolitical” rival from a more pressing national security threat like Iran, but said he would not be naïve about Moscow. “I’m not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia or Putin,” he said. Romney said Putin would not see more “flexibility” after the election, as the president was overheard telling another Russian leader. “After the election, he’ll get more backbone.”
Rico says he can only sigh that Willard is the alternative... (How did the Republicans look high and low and come up with someone who makes Dick Nixon look good?)
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