Mitt Romney's wobbly European trip is over
Prior to the last US Presidential Election Democratic candidate Barack Obama went off on a tour of Europe to meet criticisms that the young Senator had no real foreign policy, and as Head of the United States Executive could not function as the statesman that the United States needed, that the veteran figure of McCain could draw on to put himself ahead of his rival.
Even Obama's most blind sided opponents would struggle to describe the subsequent tour as anything but a runaway success - peaking at a speech in Berlin attended by about a quarter of a million Germans. This followed a tour of the Middle East where Obama met the Israeli Prime Minister and his Palestinian counterpart, and Obama firmly stated a policy that would be repeated throughout his first term and put the US in a position to ride the fallout of the Arab Spring - that the US is not the enemy of Islam.
In the last few weeks, Mitt Romney has attempted to emulate this tour, but everywhere that Obama succeeded, Romney failed, a stream of ugly gaffes coming from the candidate and his staff, offending Europeans and raising questions in the US media that Romney can manage the relations of the US with both friends and others.
It all started in London, where only days before an eagerly anticipated Olympic Games, Romney made an unforced error by questioning the UK's ability to manage the games. The backlash was massive, both official and public, and gained widespread coverage in both the USA and UK. Referring to Romney's management of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, which the candidate has made much of, David Cameron dismissed Romney by saying it was surely easier to manage an event "in the middle of nowhere" than in London. Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, openly mocked Romney in front of a huge crowd to massive approval. The British tabloids portrayed Romney as a clumsy idiot and the American media relayed the anger.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19007127
In Israel, Obama's message of focusing on the peace process and his time divided between the leaders of both Palestine and Israel was replaced by Romney blundering into a situation where he was widely accused of racism by stating (in Jerusalem, no less, the hotly disputed, illegally colonised and unrecognised capital of Israel) that the Palestinian economy was weaker than the Israeli economy because of "cultural" issues - immediately infuriating Palestinians and their supporters, and causing deep concern for advocates of the two state solution or those seeking a reinvigorated peace process in general.
Worse, the presence of major donors made Romney open to criticisms that he was cynically causing more conflict in Israel for the satisfaction of Jewish-American funders.
In Poland, a campaign spokesman invited journalists to kiss his ass.
Certainly, coverage of the tour has focused overwhelmingly on Romney's gaffes than it has any positives.
But what exact effect will this have on voters at home? The people this campaign was aimed at are likely to be delighted by Romney's aggressive and borderline racist statements in Jerusalem, and he may well suck up some Jewish and Evangelical votes as a consequence. The core of the Romney and Republican support, Tea Baggers with no passports, are not going to give a tiny shite about what any pinko commies think of their boys (I am eagerly looking forward to the responses that will inevitably dominate this thread by partisan Americans disregarding and purposefully misunderstanding anything foreign). But surely, for the middles and the voters to be won over, it can only compound fears that Romney is naive and incapable with foreign policy.
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Originally Posted by Future Filmmaker
, maybe you need someone to tell you to kiss a butt.
