“I will never apologize for America,” Mitt Romney vowed succinctly yesterday at a gathering of the Clinton Initiative. Across town a bit later, President Obama managed to (barely) avoid doing just that.
Romney’s theme was free enterprise; Obama’s was free speech. But that was hardly the only contrast.
Obama, in a more rambling address, made a point of telling world heads of state that a “crude disgusting video” mustn’t lead to “mindless violence.”
Not quite the apology Romney implicitly denounced in advance. But our president did sound a bit like the lady who protests too much.
After all, we now know what that that video did not cause the Benghazi riots that killed the US Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens. And the violence, far from “mindless,” increasingly looks to have been a long-planned operation carried out by terrorists commemorating 9/11.
Never mind. Obama, who started and ended his speech to the General Assembly with a tribute to Stevens, went on and on: “I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well . . .” You get the idea.
Obama’s worthy point was that we can’t and shouldn’t ban any offensive piece of video: “Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.” Indeed, as president, “I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so.”
It’s a point worth making, and Voltaire made it very elegantly 250 years ago. But it’s doubtful the president changed a single mind.
Here’s how it works: Obama says that as a Christian he’d stick by the tenet that “we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs.” But Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff, who spoke just before him, called on the United Nations to “repudiate Islamophobia in Western countries.”
And more people in the hall seemed to agree with Roussef and others who’d ban “Islamophobia.” Some, out of zealotry; others, for fear of the zealots’ wrath; still others, out of cynical calculation.
While this wasn’t Obama’s most elegant speech, he sure is a natural in front of a TelePromrompTer, and that’s a gift few politicians possess. It would’ve come in even more handy if UN speeches really made any difference in world affairs — or even change minds in the hall.
Back across town, Romney delivered a much tighter, well thought-out speech outlining a plan to reignite the global economy. Explaining how as president he’d “keep the engine of prosperity running,” the Republican said that in the Mideast “Religious extremism is certainly part of the problem, but that’s not the whole story.”
His plan to address the restlessness of the young, unemployed and aimless in the region would go “beyond foreign assistance,” Romney said: “Nothing we can do as a nation will change lives and nations more effectively and permanently than sharing the insight that lies at the foundation of America’s own economy, and that is that free people pursuing happiness in their own ways build a strong and prosperous nation.”
Romney isn’t a natural politician, and his short speech can’t compete with all the trappings attached to a president delivering America’s annual message to the world. But his plan to export small-government and free enterprise beyond our shores seemed more pointed than Obama’s attempt, worthy as it is, to export free speech to the Arab world.
Yet if Romney won anything yesterday, it was mostly because free speech doesn’t mean a speech has to be freewheeling — or long.