Opinion

Mitt’s honest talk

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Last week, Mother Jones magazine released a video secretly taken of Mitt Romney speaking at a May 17 fundraiser. Democrats and their media surrogates pounced on the remarks as some sort of exposé. In reality, it was the GOP candidate speaking frankly about the nation’s problems, something President Obama has been loathe to do. The Post invited commentators to weigh in on Romney’s points, and why they cast the election into sharp relief — a true choice between visions of the nation’s future. Here are large portions of Romney’s nearly hour-long remarks, edited to avoid repetition and audience interruptions.

Romney: . . . I see these two very different scenarios. One has America really powering the world economy with an extraordinary economy here, with China working with us, wanting to see stability in the world — and a very vibrant America with freedom and prosperity for the great bulk of the American people. On the other hand, I really do see something like Europe. And — and I think that’s the path we’re on right now. So that’s why I want to make sure that what little I’ll have left after the campaigns goes to my grandchildren.

That’s one piece of — about me that you may not know. The other is just about my — my heritage. My dad, you probably know, was the governor of Michigan and was the head of a car company, but he was born in Mexico. And — had he been born of Mexican parents I’d have a better shot of winning this, but he was unfortunately born of Americans living in Mexico. They’d lived there for a number of years. And — I mean I say that jokingly, but it’d be helpful to be — Latino. And —

Woman in audience: You can pull an Elizabeth Warren.

Romney: Pardon?

Woman in audience: Pull an Elizabeth Warren.

Romney: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Folks who don’t know Elizabeth Warren — she’s the woman who’s running for US Senate in Massachusetts who said that she’s Cherokee and has put on her application over the years that she’s Cherokee and Harvard put down that she’s one of their minority — faculty members. It turns out that at most she’s 1/32 Cherokee. And even that can’t be proven. So — at any event, I mean I could put down my dad was born in Mexico and leave it at that.

But — but his — his dad was in construction, very successful, in Mexico, but in America went broke more than once. So my dad never had the money or time to get a college degree. Without a college degree, became head of a big car company and ultimately governor. And — and believed in America. Believed in the opportunity of this country. Never doubted for a moment that he could achieve his dreams.

. . . there’s a perception that, “Oh, you were born with a silver spoon. You know, you never had to earn anything,” and so forth. And frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you could have, which is to get born in America. And I’ll say there is — let me — 95% of life is set up for you if you’re born in this country.

. . . this is an amazing land. And — and what we have is — is unique. And fortunately it is so special we’re sharing it with the world.

I am concerned about the future, but also optimistic, as I say. I look forward to getting America back on track and having — and having people bringing their ideas and their dreams to this country. We need big dreamers, by the way.

I’m just — we didn’t talk about immigration today, but gosh I’d like to bring in more legal immigrants that have skill and knowledge. I’d like to staple a green card to every Ph.D. in the world and say, “Come to America. We want you here.” Instead we — we make it hard for people who get educated here or elsewhere to make this their home.

Unless, of course, you have no skill or experience, in which case you’re welcome to cross the border and stay here the rest of your life. It’s a very strange setup — run by people who don’t understand that we’re in a global competition of ideas and — and our idea has to win, but only if America remains strong.

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Man in audience: The debates are gonna be coming and I hope at the right moment you can turn to President Obama, look at the American people and say, “If you vote to re-elect President Obama you’re voting to bankrupt the United States.” I hope you keep that in your quiver, because that’s what’s gonna happen. And I think it’s gonna be very effective.

Romney: Yeah. Yeah. It’s — it’s interesting. There’s — the former head of Goldman Sachs, John Whitehead — was also the former head of the New York Federal Reserve and — and I met with him and he said, “As soon as the Fed stops buying all the debt that we’re issuing” — which they’ve been doing, the Feds buy like 3/4 of the debt that America issues. He said, “Once — once that’s over — that’s over,” he said, “we’re gonna have a failed Treasury option. Interest rates are gonna have to go up. You know, we’re living in this borrowed fantasy world where the government keeps on borrowing money.”

You know, we borrow this extra trillion a year. We wonder, “Well, who’s loaning against the Treasury? The Chinese aren’t loaning to us anymore. The Russians aren’t loaning it to us anymore. So who’s giving us a trillion?”

And the answer is we’re just making it up. The Federal Reserve is just taking it and saying, “Here, we’re — we’re giving —” it’s just made- up money. And this does not augur well for our economic future. No. I mean I — you know, some of these things complex enough it’s not easy for people to understand, but point of saying bankruptcy usually concentrates the money.

Man in audience: Governor, to your point on complexity, how — as you travel around America and talk to people in larger groups, perhaps people with different backgrounds or people who are sort of — to what extent do people really understand that we’re hurtling toward a cliff? And to what extent do people really understand the severity of the fiscal situation we’re in? Do people get it?

Romney: They don’t. They — by and large, people don’t get it. People in our party — and part of this is our fault, because we’ve been talking about deficits and debt for about 25 or 30 years as a party and so they’ve heard us say it and say it and say it. The fact that Greece is going through what it’s going through, and they read about France and Italy and Spain, has finally made this issue topical for the American people.

And so when you do polls and you ask people, “What is the biggest issue in the 2012 election?” Number one is the economy and jobs by a wide margin. But number two is the deficit. But the debt . . . doesn’t calculate for folks, but the deficit does. They recognize you can’t go on forever like this, although the people who recognize that tend to be Republican. And the people who don’t recognize it tend to be Democrat. And what we have to get is that 5% or 10% in the middle who sometimes vote Republican, sometimes vote Democrat and have them understand how important this is.

I mean it’s a challenge. I mean I did the calculation for folks today. And USA Today publishes this every year. It’s a front-page story. The headline once a year that somehow escapes people’s attention. And that is if you take the total national debt and the unfunded liabilities of Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, the amount of debt plus unfunded liabilities per household in America is $520,000. Per household.

. . . And even though we’re not gonna be writing a check for that amount per household, they’re gonna be paying the interest on that. You will be paying the interest on that. Because we will — my generation will be long gone and you’ll be paying the interest.

And so you’ll be paying taxes not only for the things you want in your generation, but for all the things we spent money on, which is just — I mean it’s extraordinary to think that tax rates — someone calculated what would happen if we don’t change Medicare or Social Security, the tax rate — you know what the payroll tax is now? It’s 15.3%. If we don’t change those programs that tax rate will have to ultimately rise to 44%.

The payroll tax. Then there’s the income tax on top, which the president wants to take to 40%. Then there’s state tax in most states and sales tax and so forth. You end up having to take 100% of people’s income. And yet the president, three and a half years in, won’t talk about reforming Social Security or Medicare.

And when the Republicans do, it’s the, “Oh, you’re throwing Granny off the cliff.” It’s like, “You’re killing the kids.” The biggest surprise that I have is that young people will vote for a Democrat. They look at this and say, “Holy cow. The only guys that are worried about the future of our country and our future are Republicans.” But the Democrats — you know, they talk about social issues, drawing the young people, and they vote on that issue. It’s like — I mean there won’t be any houses like this if we stay on the road we’re on.

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Woman in audience: I would like there to be much more discussion on what I consider the real big issues. And the real big issues are Iran and how would you your point of view differ from President Obama’s?

Romney: And you are right, which is — a nuclear Iran is an unthinkable outcome. Not just for our friends in Israel and our friends in Europe, but also for us because Iran is the state sponsor of terror in the world. Has Hezbollah now throughout Latin America. Hezbollah with fissile material.

I mean if I were Iran and a crazed fanatic, I’d say, “Let’s get a little fissile material to Hezbollah and have them carry it to Chicago or some other place. And then if anything goes wrong or America starts acting up, we’ll just say, ‘And guess what? Unless you stand down, why, we’re gonna let off a dirty bomb.’ ” I mean this — this is where America can be held up and blackmailed by Iran. By the mullahs. By crazy people. So we really don’t have any option but to keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon.

I’ll give the specific on Iran and then maybe talk more broadly about foreign policy. The specific on Iran is — we should have put in place crippling sanctions at the beginning of the president’s term. We did not. He will say, “Yes, but Russia wouldn’t go along with us.”

Well, he gave Russia their number one foreign policy objective. For a decade all they’ve cared about is getting the missile defense sites out of Poland. And he gave them that and got nothing in return. He could have, I presume, gotten them to agree to crippling sanctions against Iran. He did not, which is, in my opinion, one of the greatest foreign policy errors of the modern time.

And, by the way, if he could not have gotten that from Russia he should have kept the missile defense sites in Poland — just to keep a bargaining chip on the table. I mean — put nothing in ’em if he wants to. I mean I would have kept — I would have kept ’em. I wouldn’t have traded ’em away. But that’s where he was.

Number two, we should have been aggressively supporting the voice of the dissent in Iran. And when there was an effort towards revolution there we should have been aggressively supporting it. And, finally, we should have made it clear, at least by now, that we have military plans to potentially remove their nuclear capabilities.

That doesn’t mean we actually pull the trigger, but it means that we have — that we communicate to them that we’re ready to do so. And that it is unacceptable to America to have a nuclear Iran. Instead, what this administration has done is communicate to the Iranians that we’re more worried about Israel attacking them than we are about them becoming nuclear. It’s extraordinary.

So — those are — some thoughts directed at Iran. I’ll step back. Foreign policy. The president’s foreign policy, in my opinion, is formed in part by a perception he has that his magnetism and his charm and his persuasiveness is so compelling that he can sit down with people like Putin and Chavez and Ahmadinejad and that they’ll find we’re such wonderful people that they’ll go along with us. And they’ll stop doing bad things.

And it’s an extraordinarily naive perception and has led to huge errors in North Korea, in Iraq — obviously in Iran and Egypt. Around the world. My own view is that the centerpiece of American foreign policy has to be strength. Everything I do will be calculated to increasing America’s strength.

When you stand by your allies you increase your strength. When you attack your allies you become weaker. When you stand by your principles you get stronger. When you have a big military, that’s bigger than anyone else’s, you’re stronger. I want to — when you have a strong economy, you build American strength. For me, everything is about strength.

And communicating to people what is and is not acceptable. It’s speaking softly but carrying a very, very, very big stick. And this president has — speaks loudly and carries a tiny stick. And that’s not the right course for a foreign policy. I saw Dr. Kissinger in New York. I said to him — “How are we perceived around the world?” And he said, “One word, veek.” We are weak. And that’s has this president is perceived — by our friends and unfortunately by our foes.

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Woman in the audience: How do you think that the Palestinian problem can be solved? And what are you going to do about it?

Romney: I’m torn by two perspectives in this regard. One is the one which I have had for some time, which is that the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace — and that the pathway to peace is — almost unthinkable to accomplish.

Now why do I say that? Some might say, “Well, just let the Palestinians have the West Bank and have security and set up a separate nation for the Palestinians.” And then come a couple of thorny questions. And I don’t have a map here to look at the geography. But the border between Israel and the West Bank is obviously right there, right next to Tel Aviv, which is the financial capital, the industrial capital of Israel. The center of Israel.

. . . The other side of the West Bank, the other side of what would be this new Palestinian state, would either be Syria at one point or Jordan. And of course the Iranians would want to do through the West Bank exactly what they did through Lebanon. What they did — into Gaza. Which is the Iranians would wanna bring missiles and armament into the West Bank and potentially threaten Israel.

So Israel of course would have to say, “That can’t happen. We’ve got to keep the Iranians from bringing weaponry into the West Bank.” Well, that means that who, the Israelis, are gonna patrol the border between Jordan, Syria and this new Palestinian nation? Oh, the Palestinians would say, “No way. We’re an independent country. You can’t guard our border with other Arab nations.”

And how about the airport? How about flying near to this Palestinian nation? Are we going to allow their military aircraft to come in and weaponry to come in? And if not, who’s gonna keep it from coming in? Well, the Israelis. Well — the Palestinians are gonna say, “We’re not an independent nation if Israel is able to come in and tell us who can land at our airport.”

These are problems. And they’re very hard to solve. All right? And I look at the Palestinians not wanting to seek peace anyway for political purposes. Committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel and these thorny issue — thorny issues, that I say there’s just no way. And so what you do is you say you move things along the best way you can.

You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize this is gonna remain unsolved problem. We — we live with in China and Taiwan. All right? We have a potentially volatile situation, but we sort of live with it. And we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately somehow, something will happen to resolve it. We don’t go to war to try and resolve it imminently.

On the other hand, I got a call from a former secretary of State — and I won’t mention which one it was. But this individual said to me — “You know, I think there is a prospect for a settlement between the Palestinians and the Israelis — after the Palestinian elections.” I said, “Really?”

And — you know, his answer was, “Yes. I think there’s some prospect.” And I didn’t delve into it, but, you know, I always keep open the idea. I should tell you, the idea of pushing on the Israelis to give something up to get the Palestinians to act is the worst idea in the world. We have done that time and time and time again. It does not work.

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Man in audience: For the past three years, all everybody’s been told is, “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of it.” How are we gonna do it, in two months before the elections, to convince everybody you’ve gotta take care of yourself?

Romney: Well, there are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right? There are 47% who are with him. Who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they’re entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. But that’s — it’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.

And I mean the president starts off with 48%, 49%, 40 — or he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. 47% of Americans pay no income taxes. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. And he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that’s what they sell every four years.

And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5% to 10% in the center that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion. Whether they like the guy or not.

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Man in audience: When the electorate tunes in September, the markets are gonna be looking marginal tax rates rates going up. Another debt ceiling fight. The sequestration under the debt ceiling deal. What do they call it? Taxageddon — you know, they call it.

Romney: They’ll — they’ll probably be looking at what the polls are saying, but if it looks like I’m gonna win the market — markets will be happy. If it looks like the president’s gonna win, the markets should not be terribly happy. It depends on, of course, which markets you’re talking about. Which types of commodities and so forth.

But my own view is that if we win on November 6th there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. And we’ll see capital come back and we’ll see without actually doing anything, we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.

If the president gets reelected, I don’t know what’ll happen. I can’t — I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected. But my own view is that if we get a tax — a Taxageddon, as they call it, January 1st, with this president — and with a Congress that can’t work together — it really is frightening. It’s really frightening in my view.

Man in audience: . . . I wanna see you take the gloves off and talk to people that actually read the paper, that read the book and care about knowing the facts and — knowledge is power. As opposed to people that are swayed by, you know, what sounds good at the moment. You know, I — if you turned into a — like eager to kill, it would be a landslide, in my humble opinion.

Romney: Well, I wrote a book that lays out my view for what has to happen in the country and people who are fascinated by policy will read the book. We have a website that lays out white papers on a whole series of issues that I care about.

I have to tell you, I don’t think this will have a significant impact on my electability. I wish it– I wish it did, but I think our ads will have a much bigger impact and the debates will have a big impact.

. . . My dad used to say, “Being right early is not good in politics.” And . . . discussion of a whole series of important topics typically doesn’t win elections. And there are– for instance, this president won because of “hope and change.”

. . . I can say this, which — and I’m sure you’ll agree with this as well — we speak with voters across the country about their perceptions. Those people I told you, the 5%, to 6% or 7% that we have to sort of bring on our side? They all voted for Barack Obama four years ago.

So — and, by the way, when you ) when you say to them, “Do you think Barack Obama is a failure?” they overwhelmingly say, “No.” They like him. But when you say, “Are you disappointed that his policies haven’t worked?” they say, “Yes.” And because they voted for him they don’t wanna be told that they were wrong. That he’s a bad guy. That he did bad things. That he’s corrupt.

Those people that we have to get, they want to believe they did the right thing but he just wasn’t up to the task. They love the phrase that he’s over his head.

. . . But, you see, you and I, we spend our day with Republicans. We spend our days with people who agree with us. And these people are people who voted for him and don’t agree with us.

An so the things that animate us are not the things that animate them. And the best success I have in speaking with those people is saying, you know, “The president’s been a disappointment. He told you he’d keep unemployment below 8%. Hasn’t been below 8% since. 50% of kids coming out of school can’t get a job. 50%. 50% of the kids in high school in our 50 largest cities won’t graduate from high school. What are they gonna do?”

And the — these are the kinds of things that I can say to that audience that — that they nod they head and say, “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

What he’s gonna do, by the way, is try and vilify me as someone who’s been successful. Or who’s, you know, closed businesses or laid people off and this is an evil bad guy. And that may work. I actually think that right now people are saying, “I want someone who can make things better. That’s what — that’s gonna motivate me. Who can get jobs for my kids and get rising incomes.” And I hope to be able to be the one that wins that battle.

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Woman in audience: I’ve seen Obama a lot of times on these sort of talk shows. I’ve never seen you on any of them. And I think they will . . . see you in a different light, because I think a lot of women, especially, do not watch debates. They can maybe you have to show your face more on TV and talk in your just, like, regular aesthetic.

Romney: I have been on “The View” twice now. . . . And I’ve done the evening shows. I’ve been on Letterman a couple of times. I’ve been on Leno — more than a couple of times. And now Letterman hates me because I’ve been on Leno more than him. [They’re] very, very jealous of one another, as you know.

And I was asked to go on “Saturday Night Live.” I did not do that in part because you wanna show that you’re fun and you’re a good person, but you don’t wanna — you also wanna be presidential. And Saturday Night Live has the potential of looking slapstick and not presidential.

Woman in audience: I agree.

Romney: But “The View” was fine. Although “The View” is high risk because of the five women on it, only one is conservative. Four are sharp tongued and not conservative. Whoopi Goldberg in particular. Although last time I was on the show she said to me, “You know what? I think I could vote for you.” And I said, “I must have done something really wrong.”

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Romney is absolutely right that America needs more high-skilled immigrants. Our current policy is to allow foreign students to come here, receive the best education in the world and then force many of them to leave when they’ve acquired their degrees because we don’t issue enough H-1B work visas to allow them to stay.

Where he errs is saying we shouldn’t also welcome low-skilled workers.

The United States needs computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists and other highly trained professionals, but we also need people with a strong work ethic who will do the sometimes difficult, dirty and dangerous jobs that Americans shun, like picking tomatoes, cleaning toilets in offices and hotels, and caring for children so that mothers can work. These jobs pay too little to entice American workers, who rightfully believe they shouldn’t spend an average of about 13 years in school to end up in a lettuce field doing stoop labor. And we can’t just raise wages for these jobs without either passing on the increases to consumers and fueling inflation — or driving businesses into bankruptcy or taking their jobs elsewhere.

Romney and the GOP have an opportunity to become the pro-legal immigrant party by proposing immigration reform that makes sense for the country’s long-term economic interests. If he started talking more about legal immigration reform and less about illegal immigration (which is at a 40-year low right now), he might even win back some of those disaffected Hispanic voters. Without them, Romney is likely to lose states like Nevada and Colorado.

President Obama has given Romney an opening. At this week’s Univision forum, the president had to answer a tough question from host Jorge Ramos, who reminded the president that candidate Obama had promised comprehensive immigration reform in his first year in office. “And with all due respect you didn’t keep that promise,” Ramos said. The president’s answer was less than satisfactory, blaming it on Republicans even though the president never offered his own bill — and still hasn’t. “I did not make a promise that I would get everything done, 100%, when I was elected as president,” he summed up — which is why many analysts predict lower Hispanic turnout for Obama on Election Day.

LINDA CHAVEZ, columnist, member of Reagan and Bush administrations.

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Want some more scary numbers? Romney is right to point out just how broke the United States is, but did you know the feds in Washington blow through some $188 million dollars (nearly a fifth of a billion) they don’t have per hour, most of which is “borrowed” — as Obama noted the other night on Letterman — “from ourselves” in the form of the Federal Reserve IOUs.

Indeed, Obama’s annual operating deficits (the yearly net loss, as opposed to the accumulated national debt) are running at more than $1 trillion, so in the absence of any meaningful budget-cutting, expect the debt clock to keep spinning like a Tilt-a-Whirl.

With the Baby Boomers starting to cash in their chips, both Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid (which currently gobble up more than 40% of federal spending) are barreling toward insolvency.

According to the latest report of the entitlement giants’ trustees, Social Security — which just dipped into in the red, despite congressional efforts to “save” it back in the 1980s — will go belly up in 2033, while Medicare gets its plug pulled even earlier.

And ObamaCare? That monstrosity only makes things worse — more than quadrupling the nation’s unfunded liabilities, according to a recent Senate Budget Committee report.

By one estimate, the total unfunded liabilities of the US government are $84 trillion. (Other guesstimates put it much higher.) Nearly a third of which is debt service, Social Security/Medicare and paying for the federal government’s employees.

Romney also rightly points out that the tab will fall to the youth of America, who still, according to polls, back the Democrats. Because they are falsely told by the left that everything will be OK.

What Romney did here is tell the truth about the numbers, and he should keep doing that. Because the message will start to seep through. If nothing is done, voter under 30, there will be nothing left for you.

MICHAEL A. WALSH, journalist and author.

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Today, many in the Middle East believe that Obama has led the US into strategic retreat. Iranian leaders see Obama as a second Jimmy Carter and see his presidency as a window of opportunity to complete their nuclear program, defeat the uprising in Syria and prepare to dominate Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of the projected American retreat. Publicly and for the first time, they declare the “destruction of America” as the principal goal of what they claim is global “Islamic Awakening.”

Last Thursday, the Tehran daily Kayhan, published by the “Supreme Guide,” ran an item about another of Romney’s “leaked” remarks.

“Mitt Romney . . . has said one should not negotiate with the Palestinians because they do not want peace,” Kayhan wrote. “He is telling the truth. What the people of Palestine want is the total elimination of Israel.”

Right on target, Romney’s analysis could provide the basis for developing a new policy for dealing with what is emerging as the principal threat to American interests in a crucial region, not to mention the impact of a nuclear-armed Iran on US national security.

AMIR TAHERI, commentator and author.

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Though Democrats jumped all over this bit of realism from Romney, it’s quite the task ferreting out anything in the statement that isn’t perfectly obvious or indisputably true.

Romney, in fact, seems to possess a deeper grasp of the logistical problems facing any quixotic two-state solution than most politicians in the United States — and certainly most members of the Obama administration.

When Romney says Iranians would attempt to transform the West Bank into something that looks like Lebanon, a place with proxy armies stand ready to launch attacks on northern Israel and destabilize the region, he leaves out that Iranians have already tried. These days the West Bank’s Fatah faction and Gaza’s Hamas faction have been trying to form a long-term unity government. It is probable that a “free” West Bank would soon come under Hamas rule — through the magic of democracy. And Ismail Haniya, the prime minister of the Hamas government in Gaza, visited Iran only in February to reaffirm their good relations.

Moreover, Romney didn’t completely rule out peace, he simply made an observation about the likeliness of a two-state solution coming to fruition. The GOP nominee also says that’s he’s open to ideas. But he doesn’t concede, unlike many Democrats, that pushing Israel to surrender more to the Arabs is a palatable path to peace. In fact, he says it “is the worst idea in the world.” Maybe not the worst, but I suspect many pro-Israel Americans can relate to Romney’s point.

While running for president in 2008, Obama said he would take “an active role” in a two-state solution “from the start of my administration.”

How’d that work out?

When Romney says that “we live with in China and Taiwan” he is acknowledging that the United States can’t always dive in and resolve complex situations — nor should we try. It’s fair to say that our efforts and creating peace in the Middle East are a mixed bag. And believe it or not, the plight of the Palestinians is not the most important foreign policy issue facing the nation. It’s refreshing to hear a candidate say it.

DAVID HARSANYI, columnist and senior reporter at Human Events.

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Romney knows what he’s talking about in terms of strategy. You can’t tell people that they were wrong in voting for Obama. You can’t make them more invested in their 2008 choice. Polls show that voters do, indeed, believe that Obama is “in over his head” and strongly agree that his economic policies have not made things better. Some say they have made things worse, but the line that really moves people to Romney is to ask: “If Obama has not succeeded in turning the economy around in his first term, what on earth will he do differently in the second term that offers a better prospect of success?”

By focusing his campaign on the vast expansion of welfare under Obama — a virtual doubling of food stamp and Medicaid spending — and the tremendous growth in the recipient population, Mitt Romney can draw a sharp contrast between an America on food stamps and one on paychecks (a comparison that Newt Gingrich first made). That could be the key to victory.

DICK MORRIS, author, with Eileen McGann, of “Catastrophe.”

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Is Romney a square for being reluctant to appear on “Saturday Night Live”? Not really. Romney didn’t get to where he is by being cool or funny. There’s a big chance he’d come across as a dork on “SNL,” and whom would that benefit? The nation’s satire community, which simply wants a clip of him looking ridiculous and/or awkward to play with. Romney isn’t running for comedian in chief.

Consider the case of George W. Bush. He had a solid, self-deprecating sense of humor, so when he appeared at the annual Al Smith political dinner and said, “Some people call you the elite. I call you my base,” he was lampooning his own image as a country-club type. But when Republicans crack jokes, the most sharply satirical minds suddenly suffer the breakdown of their irony detectors. Michael Moore used the Al Smith clip against Bush in “Fahrenheit 9/11,” as if the clip was a kind of found footage in which Bush was secretly videotaped letting his inner Thurston Howell out.

David Letterman was even worse with Bush when he appeared on “Late Night” in 2000 to find the nation’s Emperor of Irony uncharacteristically turning completely earnest — grilling Bush for several minutes on capital punishment.

“Letterman proved to be twice as tough as many of the journalists covering Bush,” declared an exuberant Jake Tapper on Salon. As though Bush was responsible for Texans’ longstanding approval of the death penalty.

Bush’s Democratic predecessor, Ann Richards, never issued a death-row pardon and oversaw 50 executions. Yet she didn’t incur Letterman’s wrath in her 1992 appearance on his show. “Ann Richards will be out here a little bit later,” Letterman said at the time. “You can’t help but have a lot of respect for this woman and her accomplishments.”

And did it help Sarah Palin when she agreed to appear on “SNL” in October of 2008 only to find herself sitting and listening to Amy Poehler ridiculing everything she stood for in a rap?

These talk and comedy shows are not neutral ground — they are biased toward the president, treat Democrats with kid gloves and try to make Republicans look the fool. Romney understands that.

KYLE SMITH, New York Post columnist.