Mitt Romney’s Most Dishonest Speech | Fred Kaplan, Slate

When it comes to lies and half-truths, Romney saves his best stuff for foreign policy.

Kaplan writes about Mitt Romney's campaign speech on Monday at the
Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia:

It was expected that he would distort President Obama into a caricature of Jimmy Carter. But it was astonishing to watch Romney spin a daydream of himself as some latter-day George Marshall, bringing peace, prosperity, and hope to a chaotic world—this from a man who couldn't drop in on the London Olympics without alienating our closest ally and turning himself into a transcontinental laughingstock.

To the extent that Romney recited valid criticisms of Obama’s policies, he offered no alternatives. To the extent he spelled out specific steps he would take to deal with one problem or another, he merely recited actions that Obama has already taken. ...

As he has on other occasions, Romney asserted that a president must “use America’s great power to shape history,” not to let events shape America. But the fact is there are no superpowers in today’s world; no country has as much power to shape history—or as little immunity to the influences of others—as America did in the Cold War era. To exercise true leadership, a president must come to grips with the limits of his or her power. This has nothing to do with notions of “American decline.” It has to do with the shattering of the Cold War world.

And he concludes:

Romney is right that, in some cases, most notably Syria, Obama has not done as much as he might have to influence the course of events. However, there is almost nothing in Romney’s speech to suggest that he would do better—and a great deal to indicate he’d do much worse.

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This article is featured today, Oct. 8, in my daily online "paper," Footprints: Progressive Steps--available at the Progressive Politics tab above and by free email subscription.