Mitt Romney has headed overseas for a trip to England, Israel and Poland that’s meant to burnish his foreign-policy credentials — and contrast his proposed policies with President Obama’s record.
Not surprisingly, Team Obama wasted little time trying to tarnish the trip — starting with the laughable assertion that Romney’s overseas trip is “almost entirely built around fund-raising.”
This from a president who seems to spend most of his time raising campaign cash. To date, he’s held more than 170 such events, and he’s on track to surpass all five of his immediate predecessors in fund-raisers — combined.
Reminded that then-candidate Obama took a campaign jaunt abroad four years ago, a spokesman insisted “that wasn’t a political trip, it was a substantive trip.”
Nonsense.
The highlight of what can rightly be described as a nonstop photo-op was Obama’s speech in Berlin, the first leg on what has turned into a four-year apologize-for-America tour: “We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions,” confessed the would-be president.
Romney, on the other hand, will be delivering genuinely substantive remarks, of the kind he previewed this week before the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Like rightly observing that “in dealings with other nations, [Obama] has given trust where it is not earned, insult where it is not deserved and apology where it is not due.”
Or noting Obama’s failure to deter — or even actively confront — Iran’s nuclear quest, of which he said “there is no greater danger in the world today.”
His trip to Israel will underscore Obama’s failure as president to visit there, though he has visited Arab countries — part of what Romney has called “this administration’s shabby treatment of one of our finest friends.”
Little wonder the Obama team quickly put out word that he plans his own trip to Israel — but only if he’s re-elected.
But with Egypt and Syria in turmoil, Turkey sliding into the Islamist camp, the Palestinians refusing to negotiate and Iran headed steadily toward nuclear weapons, he probably won’t be keeping that promise, either.