Obama, Romney swap sharp foreign policy criticism

JULIE PACE

Asso­ci­ated Press

SEATTLE — In a rare face-off on for­eign pol­icy, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and Repub­li­can rival Mitt Rom­ney are swap­ping sharp crit­i­cism but expos­ing few clear pol­icy dif­fer­ences on key national secu­rity matters.

For Rom­ney, who seeks to boost his for­eign pol­icy cre­den­tials as he begins a high-stakes trip abroad, a lack of spe­cific pro­pos­als has exposed him to a flurry of crit­i­cism from Obama and his sur­ro­gates. Just over three months from Elec­tion Day, the president’s team has dug in on its efforts to cast the Repub­li­can as a national secu­rity light­weight while try­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on Obama’s strength on such issues.

Fol­low­ing Romney’s speech Tues­day to the Vet­er­ans of For­eign Wars con­ven­tion, Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden said Rom­ney “reflex­ively crit­i­cizes the president’s poli­cies with­out offer­ing any alternatives.”

“When he does ven­ture a posi­tion,” Biden said, “it’s a safe bet that he pre­vi­ously took exactly the oppo­site posi­tion and will prob­a­bly change his mind again and land in the wrong place — far out of the mainstream.”

Romney’s cam­paign has swat­ted away that crit­i­cism, but it’s also shown few signs that the pre­sump­tive GOP nom­i­nee will offer more spe­cific areas of con­trast with Obama when he meets with world lead­ers over­seas. Instead, Rom­ney has con­tin­ued with broad jabs cast­ing Obama as a timid leader.

“If you do not want Amer­ica to be the strongest nation on earth, I am not your pres­i­dent,” Rom­ney told the vet­er­ans group. “You have that pres­i­dent today.”

Rom­ney said he would reset Obama’s reset with the Krem­lin, but he did not elab­o­rate on how. On Afghanistan, he accused Obama of mak­ing polit­i­cally moti­vated deci­sions on draw­ing down U.S. force lev­els. He said that, if elected, he will call for a review of the tran­si­tion in Afghanistan — but with the same goal as Obama of end­ing U.S. com­bat oper­a­tions in 2014.

Rom­ney also said he will restore the U.S.-Israel rela­tion­ship and make the Jew­ish state his first for­eign des­ti­na­tion as pres­i­dent. He said he would increase mil­i­tary assis­tance to Israel, though the Obama team says the admin­is­tra­tion has already pro­vided Israel with record lev­els of secu­rity assistance.

The for­eign pol­icy fight was expected to con­tinue after Rom­ney arrived in Europe on Wednes­day to begin a six-day, three-country tour and Obama pushes on with fundrais­ing events at home. The pres­i­dent was jet­ting from Seat­tle, where he raised money Tues­day night, to New Orleans for more fundrais­ers and a speech to the National Urban League.

In an elec­tion year dom­i­nated by the econ­omy, it could be the last phase of the cam­paign focused on for­eign policy.

That could be good news for Rom­ney, who polls strongly on the econ­omy but has been unable to cut into Obama’s advan­tage on national secu­rity issues. The Obama administration’s coun­tert­er­ror­ism fight against al-Qaida and espe­cially the killing of Osama bin Laden have under­cut long­time Repub­li­can efforts to cast Democ­rats as soft on defense.

An NBC News/Wall Street Jour­nal poll pub­lished Tues­day showed Rom­ney lead­ing Obama 43 per­cent to 36 per­cent on which can­di­date is seen as bet­ter equipped to improve the econ­omy. But the same poll showed Obama is seen as a bet­ter com­man­der in chief, 45 per­cent to 35 per­cent. Last week, a CBS News/New York Times poll found 47 per­cent of vot­ers said Obama would do a bet­ter job han­dling for­eign pol­icy, while 40 per­cent chose Romney.

Romney’s over­seas trip comes dur­ing a notably heated phase of the cam­paign, although the can­di­dates dialed back their neg­a­tive attacks over the week­end fol­low­ing Friday’s mass shoot­ing in Colorado.

Romney’s advis­ers have said the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor plans to avoid obvi­ous attacks on the pres­i­dent while over­seas, fol­low­ing long­stand­ing tra­di­tion that U.S. politi­cians don’t crit­i­cize their country’s leader while abroad.

“The con­trasts will be kept here in the states,” Rom­ney spokes­woman Andrea Saul has said.

White House spokesman Jay Car­ney said an over­seas trip Obama took as a can­di­date in 2008 proved it was pos­si­ble to adhere to that tra­di­tion while still offer­ing sub­stance. Obama kept up his crit­i­cism of Repub­li­can rival John McCain dur­ing that trip, but he avoided direct attacks on Pres­i­dent George W. Bush.

“We’ll see if that stan­dard con­tin­ues to apply,” Car­ney said of Romney’s trip.

Rom­ney will attend the open­ing cer­e­monies of the Olympics in Lon­don on Fri­day night.

Pri­or­i­ties USA Action, a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee sup­port­ing Obama, released a new tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ment Wednes­day using Romney’s tenure run­ning the Salt Lake City Olympics as the basis to attack the Republican.

The ad shows clips of Olympic teams from var­i­ous coun­tries that Pri­or­i­ties USA Action says Rom­ney has ques­tion­able links to, includ­ing China, which the ads says gained thou­sands of jobs through Romney’s out­sourc­ing of pri­vate sec­tor jobs, and Switzer­land, where Rom­ney once kept a bank account.

In Lon­don, Rom­ney also has meet­ings planned with British Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron and other top gov­ern­ment offi­cials. From there, Rom­ney plans to visit Israel and meet with Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu, then wrap up his trip in Poland.

Posted by AP News on Jul 25 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.