Mitt Romney may be settling in as his party’s presumptive nominee, but his team is still cutting its teeth when it comes to going toe-to-toe with President Obama. This week, a series of misfired remarks over what seemed like an easy political winner for Romney — Obama’s ‘hot mic’ moment with Russia’s leader — is now being turned by the White House into a referendum on the ex-governor’s foreign policy chops.
As a Sunday interview with Vice President Joe Biden made clear, Democrats are on the offensive over the ‘hot mic’ affair.
“He acts like he thinks the Cold War is still on. Russia is still our major adversary. I don’t know where he’s been,” Biden said on CBS’ Face The Nation, pointing out various ways in which Russia is working with the U.S. “So I think what the exchange did — it exposes how little the governor knows about foreign policy.”
So, how did Romney lose control of a story that was destined to hurt Obama?
Last Monday, when Obama’s comment to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more “flexibility” on missile defense after the election was picked up by a live microphone, Romney was presented with a golden opportunity. The gaffe fit perfectly into the GOP’s narrative that the president is a radical in sheep’s clothing who will impose far-left policies as soon as he’s re-elected. But over the course of the last week, Romney dropped the ball.
The first mistake: While his campaign was sending out press releases about how Obama would impose “job-killing tax increases” in a second term, Romney was making news by accusing Russia of being “without question our number one geopolitical foe.” The candidate’s pronouncement against Russia turned public scrutiny from Obama back on him. Democrats shot back with a statement from Gen. Wes Clark, saying Romney’s comment “sounds like a rehash of Cold War fears.”
The back and forth went on all week, with Democrats largely defending the gaffe as a statement about the realities of election-year politics and asking Americans not to read anything else into it — but peppering those comments with questions about Romney’s knowledge of foreign affairs.
Then, on Friday, the Romney campaign all but gave up the game. Challenged by team Obama to release his last 30 years of tax returns, Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul responded by calling on the president to “release the notes and transcripts of all his meetings with world leaders.”
Team Romney’s point was that Obama should prove “that he’s not promising to sell out the country’s interests after the election is over.” Dems slapped their foreheads in response, pointing out the obvious perils of releasing sensitive information from meetings between world leaders, and hammering Romney with another round of attacks on his foreign policy “naiveté.”
Saturday morning, the DNC had yet another foreign policy expert, this time the Dr. Colin Kahl, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, attack the campaign’s comments as “yet another indication that Mitt Romney is not ready to be Commander-in-Chief.” And now, almost a week after Obama’s gaffe, Team Romney has been silent on the issue for going on two days while the Obama camp — including both Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — is happy to discuss their opponent’s “Cold War mentality.”
Whether or not Romney is naive about foreign policy, this episode demonstrates some of Romney’s weaknesses in messaging wars with the president. Romney and Republicans will probably continue to use the ‘hot mic’ incident against Obama, but they’ve given the president ample room to bite back.
