Commanders in Chief
A foreign policy debate for Cuyahoga County.
About
45 minutes into Monday night's Presidential debate on foreign policy,
we found ourselves asking which of the two men on stage in Boca Raton
was the incumbent and which was the challenger. President Obama kept
attacking Mitt Romney for various things he had said or claimed he had
said, while the Republican mostly tried to look fluent on the issues and
steady enough to be Commander in Chief. Maybe Mr. Romney really is
leading in the polls.
If Mr. Obama wanted to make the Republican look "wrong and reckless,"
as he said, he surely failed. The former Massachusetts Governor was so
intent on appearing to be cool and steady that he avoided offering any
major policy differences on Syria, Iran or Afghanistan. Most remarkably,
he even refused to challenge the Administration's handling of the
deadly assault on Americans in Benghazi.
Mr. Romney was clearly keeping his eye on his main challenge of the
evening, which was looking Presidential on issues that offer an
incumbent a natural advantage. He passed that test with ease, making no
major mistakes while offering impressive detail on everything from the
radical government in Mali—make that "northern" Mali—to Pakistan's
nuclear arsenal. He wasn't rattled, and if anything looked cooler than a
sometimes peevish Mr. Obama. The President scored more debating points,
but he looked smaller doing it.
The downside of Mr. Romney's caution is that he offered policies that
he might not be able to sustain if he does win on November 6. On Syria,
he promised no U.S. military action when events might well require it
to protect our allies and prevent a larger war. On Afghanistan, he hewed
so tightly to Mr. Obama's 2014 timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops
that he more or less rebutted himself when he described the continuing
threat to Kabul from terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan.
Reuters
Mitt Romney (L) and Barack Obama during the final U.S. presidential debate in Boca Raton, Florida October 22, 2012
Most disappointing was his continuing
insistence that he will label China "a currency manipulator" on day one
so he can then levy tariffs. If he does do that on day one, what then?
Does he think China won't respond in kind? Or perhaps he thinks the two
countries can default to negotiations that will end with a whimper. But
having promised voters so forthrightly and so often that he'll get tough
with China, he might find that some voters feel betrayed. This is all
bad enough as trade and monetary economics, but Mr. Romney may also be
backing himself into a political corner.
By far the biggest gaffe—or deliberate evasion—of the evening was
made by Mr. Obama when he denied paternity for the sequester defense
cuts now set for 2013 and said they "will not happen." Mr. Obama's aides
rushed out after the debate to say he meant to say the cuts "should not
happen."
But the truth is that Mr. Obama has been using the fear of huge
defense cuts as a political strategy to force Republicans to accept a
tax increase. As Bob Woodward describes in his recent book, Mr. Obama
and the White House helped to devise the defense sequester strategy—no
matter the actual risk to defense.
No doubt voters didn't see a big difference in this debate because it
really wasn't about American foreign policy. It was a debate to change
the minds of the remaining undecided voters in places like Ohio's
Cuyahoga County. Both candidates can read the polls that show those
voters care mainly about the economy and so both candidates returned
again and again to their competing plans.
Mr. Romney won this economic debate going away because he doesn't
have to defend the miserable record of the last four years. He could
even invoke Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claim that America's
soaring debt makes the U.S. weaker. That's a critique of the Obama years
that most Americans would agree with.
No comments:
Post a Comment