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Mitt Romney’s Vapid Foreign Policy

  • August 1, 2012
  • The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI’s Will Marshall detailed Mitt Romney’s recent adventure in the world of foreign policy over at The American Interest.  Romney was able to stumble his way through a trip to Britain, Israel, and Poland all while offering very little in the form of substantive policies focusing more on criticisms of President Obama’s foreign policy.

Mitt Romney’s midsummer foray into foreign policy has left Democrats giddy with schadenfreude. More than his stumbling performance abroad, however, it’s the substance of Romney’s views that ought to really give voters pause.

Or, more precisely, lack of substance. With less than 100 days to go, Romney has yet to develop a coherent outlook on U.S. security and leadership in a networked world. What we get instead is GOP boilerplate about American greatness and exceptionalism, and a pastiche of spaghetti-against-the wall criticisms of Obama’s foreign policy.

Romney, of course, wants the election to center on the economy, and he’s offering himself, in effect, as a more experienced and capable CEO. His missteps over the past week, however, raise doubts about his ability to take over as Commander in Chief.

The sequence began with his first major foreign policy address, to the Veterans of Foreign Affairs. It was a pedestrian affair that left even conservative commentators underwhelmed, when they bothered to comment on it at all. Next, Romney embarked on his Grand Tour of three U.S. allies—Britain, Israel and Poland—supposedly dissed by Obama. The point of the exercise was to show that Romney knows how to treat America’s best friends.

Read the entire article HERE 

Photo Credit: Austen Hufford

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