Obama responds to Romney’s tough talk on Mideast

JOSH LEDERMAN

STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, defend­ing his for­eign pol­icy record at a time of anti-American rage in the Mus­lim world, fired back at sug­ges­tions from Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney that the pres­i­dent has been weak with allies and ene­mies alike.

In an inter­view air­ing the night before Obama meets with other world lead­ers at the United Nations, the pres­i­dent said, “If Gov. Rom­ney is sug­gest­ing that we should start another war, he should say so.”

It was Obama’s most direct rebut­tal yet to per­sis­tent skep­ti­cism by his White House rival on his han­dling of an unrav­el­ing sit­u­a­tion in the Mid­dle East. Rom­ney has charged the U.S. stance has been marred by mis­cal­cu­la­tions, mixed mes­sages and appeasement.

As far back as May, Rom­ney was con­demn­ing Obama’s response to unrest in Syria, dub­bing it a “pol­icy of paral­y­sis” and call­ing for more assertive mea­sures, such as arm­ing the oppo­si­tion to Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad. As deadly anti-American protests erupted ear­lier this month in Libya and else­where, Rom­ney sought to under­cut what polling shows is a sig­nif­i­cant for­eign pol­icy edge for Obama by call­ing the president’s han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion “dis­grace­ful” and decry­ing a lack of U.S. lead­er­ship in the region.

In a com­pan­ion inter­view to Obama’s appear­ance on CBS’ “60 Min­utes,” Rom­ney broad­ened his reproach to include Israel, crit­i­ciz­ing Obama’s fail­ure to meet with the U.S. ally’s head of state, Ben­jamin Netanyahu, dur­ing the annual U.N. gath­er­ing. Rom­ney called it a mis­take that “sends a mes­sage through­out the Mid­dle East that some­how we dis­tance our­selves from our friends.”

The White House has said sched­ul­ing pre­cluded a meet­ing between the two lead­ers, who won’t be in New York at the same time. With the final six weeks of a hard-fought elec­tion hang­ing over the U.N. sum­mit, Obama has opted out of face-to-face meet­ings with any of his coun­ter­parts — not just Netanyahu — dur­ing his com­pressed U.N. visit.

But Obama pushed back on the notion that he feels pres­sure from Netanyahu, dis­miss­ing as noise the Israeli leader’s calls for the U.S. to lay out a “red line” that Iran’s nuclear pro­gram mustn’t cross to avoid Amer­i­can mil­i­tary intervention.

“When it comes to our national secu­rity deci­sions, any pres­sure that I feel is sim­ply to do what’s right for the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” Obama said. “And I am going to block out any noise that’s out there.”

In a wide-ranging inter­view con­ducted the day after U.S. Ambas­sador to Libya Chris Stevens was killed in an attack on Beng­hazi, Obama defended his for­eign pol­icy suc­cesses, not­ing he’d fol­lowed through on a com­mit­ment to end the war in Iraq and had nabbed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

He also waxed opti­mistic that win­ning a sec­ond term would give him a man­date to over­come obstruc­tion­ism from con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans whose No. 1 goal, he said, has been to pre­vent his re-election.

“My expec­ta­tion is, my hope is that that’s no longer their num­ber one pri­or­ity,” Obama said. “I’m hop­ing that after the smoke clears and the elec­tion season’s over that that spirit of coop­er­a­tion comes more to the fore.”

Rom­ney, in an inter­view con­ducted last week, sought to deflect atten­tion from his run­ning mate, Wis­con­sin Rep. Paul Ryan, over their dif­fer­ences in Medicare pol­icy: “I’m the guy run­ning for pres­i­dent, not him.”

While reaf­firm­ing his com­mit­ment to low­er­ing all income tax rates by 20 per­cent, Rom­ney expressed no unease about his refusal to offer specifics, such as which loop­holes and deduc­tions he’d elim­i­nate to pay for the cuts.

“The devil’s in the details. The angel is in the pol­icy, which is cre­at­ing more jobs,” Rom­ney said, adding that he doesn’t want to see over­all gov­ern­ment rev­enue reduced.

Address­ing the seem­ingly unshak­able charge of flip-flopping on pol­icy issues, Rom­ney pointed the fin­ger at Obama, not­ing his changes of heart on gay mar­riage and mil­i­tary tri­bunals for ter­ror­ism suspects.

“Have I found some things I thought would be effec­tive turned out not to be effec­tive? Absolutely,” Rom­ney said. “You don’t learn from expe­ri­ence, you don’t learn from your mis­takes —why, you know, you ought to be fired.”

The series of inter­views also offered glimpses into both can­di­dates’ per­sonal habits, includ­ing their late-night rou­tines. Rom­ney said his nightly prayer is a time to con­nect both with the divine and with his own thoughts, and said he asks God mainly for wis­dom and understanding.

Obama, describ­ing him­self as “a night guy,” said that after first lady Michelle Obama and their daugh­ters retire around 10 p.m., he hun­kers down for read­ing, writ­ing and occa­sion­ally a moment alone on the Tru­man Bal­cony, with the Wash­ing­ton Mon­u­ment and Jef­fer­son Memo­r­ial in view.

“Those are moments of reflec­tion that, you know, help gird you for the next chal­lenge and the next day,” Obama said.

The “60 Min­utes” inter­views came as Romney’s cam­paign strove to turn the page on a week of pub­lic stum­bles and Repub­li­can hand-wringing, promis­ing a redou­bled effort in the most com­pet­i­tive states to under­cut Obama’s eco­nomic record as vot­ers tune in for the final six weeks of a dead­locked race.

A secretly recorded video released last Mon­day showed Rom­ney writ­ing off his prospects for win­ning over the almost half of Amer­i­cans who he said pay no taxes, are depen­dent upon gov­ern­ment and see them­selves as vic­tims dom­i­nated the week. Ahead of an evening cam­paign stop at a Denver-area high school Sun­day, Rom­ney hud­dled with senior advis­ers in Los Ange­les to rehearse for the three upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial debates, which his aides see as the best oppor­tu­nity to get his cam­paign and its mes­sage back on track.

Amid mount­ing pres­sure to spend less time rais­ing money and more time explain­ing his plans to vot­ers, Rom­ney was refo­cus­ing his sched­ule on the most com­pet­i­tive states. After Col­orado, Rom­ney was to begin a three-day bus tour in Ohio on Mon­day fol­lowed by a stop in Vir­ginia — states that Obama won in 2008 but that Repub­li­cans claimed four years earlier.

While national polls remain tight, polls in sev­eral of the most closely watched states, includ­ing Col­orado, sug­gest Obama has opened nar­row leads. Obama won Col­orado by 9 points four years ago, but the state went to a Repub­li­can in the pre­vi­ous three pres­i­den­tial elections.

Obama took a rare week­end break from the cam­paign­ing ahead of his U.N. address Tues­day, but dis­patched top allies to the Sun­day talk shows to try to keep Romney’s mis­steps alive in the minds of a dwin­dling cadre of unde­cided voters.

Posted by AP News on Sep 23 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.