Mitt Romney's Plan C: The Jimmy Carter Strategy. If It Fails, There is Always Plan D.
Mitt Romney's Terrible Wall Street Journal Op-Ed
It's official: The Republican nominee has no new ideas for the Middle East.
BY AARON DAVID MILLER
First, full disclosure. I'm not associated with either the Barack Obama or the Mitt Romney campaign in any way. Over the years, I've worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations and voted for candidates from both parties. On foreign and domestic policy, I've come to believe that the appropriate dividing line for Americans should not be between Democrat and Republican, left and right, liberal and conservative, but between dumb and smart. And we ought to be on the smart side.
That's why I was stunned to read Mitt Romney's op-ed in Sunday's Wall Street Journal, which ran under the headline, "A New Course for the Middle East." Even by the standards of political silly season and in the heat of battle weeks before an election -- when exaggeration, obfuscation, and willful distortion become the orders of the day -- this article sets a new bar for its vacuity, aimlessness and lack of coherence. There's nothing "new" in it, and it provides no "course for the Middle East." If anything, it takes us back to the kind of muscular nonsense and sloganeering that has wreaked havoc on our credibility in recent years. Here's why:
1. Obama's Middle East mistakes
Obama's record in this still angry, broken, and dysfunctional region is far from perfect. But the latest security failure in Libya reflects badly on a record that has been pretty competent on such matters. Convinced he could transform the Middle East partly with his own persona and partly with the goodwill engendered by the fact that he wasn't George W. Bush, Obama raised expectations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and on diplomacy and engagement with Iran, Syria that he could never deliver. This wasn't about the lack of American leadership. None of these problems were amenable to rapid transformation from Day One. American power was limited by the inherently conflicting agendas of regional actors, whose interests were not our own, and whom we could not control or co-opt. In raising hopes, President Obama diminished U.S. credibility, but to criticize him for failing to stop Iran's nuclear program or for not delivering an Israeli-Palestinian agreement is ridiculous. Not even a negotiating team of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad could have done that.
2. Obama's successes
Obama accomplished three critically important things in this region for which Romney will not (but should) give him credit. First, he became a more focused and more disciplined version of Bush 43 when it came to counterterrorism policy: He killed Osama bin Laden, pulverized al Qaeda, and has so far prevented another attack on the continental United States. Protecting the homeland is the organizing principle of a nation's foreign policy. If you can't do that, you really don't need a foreign policy. Second, Obama committed himself to (and is succeeding in) extricating America from the two longest wars in our history -- wars that were among our most pointless, given what we sacrificed and what we've gotten in return. Third, he kept us out of new ones. (See Syria, Iran.) It is important to think through what your objectives are before you act and, in particular, how the application of American military power, whether alone or with others, would achieve those goals or make them worse. So far, in Syria and Iran, Obama has made the right call by not pursuing military half measures that might not work, could make the situation worse or create a slippery slope to greater U.S. involvement.
3. Israel
Romney has part of this right. Obama wrestled with Benjamin Netanyahu on the wrong issue -- settlements -- with no strategy or sense for how to use this tactic to achieve the ultimate goal: an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. And there's no doubt that on an emotional level, even though Bibi is hardly an easy guy to get along with, Barack Obama isn't Bill Clinton or George W. Bush when it comes to bonding with Israel. And frankly, this is a serious problem. But to imply that Obama is willfully dismissing or trivializing Israeli concerns on Iran, let alone throwing Israel under the bus, just doesn't wash. With the exception of Britain, the United States probably has a closer relationship with Israel than any other nation. Even so, our interests -- given that there are two of us -- can't always align perfectly. And we need to deal honestly with one another when they don't. Should Romney become president, the personal relationship between Netanyahu and the president would improve. But who's to say that Romney's instincts to ignore the Palestinian issue or give Israel greater leeway on striking Iran's nuclear sites are the best policies for Israel? Indeed, the governor is hardly Israel's salvation. Dollars to donuts, I'd bet that within a reasonable period of time, Netanyahu would also find a way to annoy Romney and vice versa.
4. U.S. leadership
I hope Romney doesn't believe his own rhetoric and that his op-ed is only campaign bluster. Because if it's real, we should be worried. I didn't much care for Obama's high-minded, idealized speeches early on about transforming the Middle East -- and I don't care much for Romney's fancy words either. We're stuck in a Middle East we can't fix or leave. And that requires a pretty cruel and unforgiving look at reality, not a bunch of slogans that imply we can do what we want or get others there to do it for us. The past twenty years of failed American policy on peacemaking and war making in this region -- under Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama-- reveal the costs of failure and what it's done for our image abroad.
This has nothing to do with being a "declinist" or not believing in American "exceptionalism." We are exceptional, but part of that uniqueness lies in understanding that the wisest policies are those that find the balance between the way the world is and the way we want it to be. Great powers get themselves into heaps of trouble when they commit transgressions of omniscience and omnipotence by thinking they know everything and can do everything, too. Romney's op-ed is chock-full of both -- and that's not being on the smart side.
GOP’s October surprise?
Source reveals "Jimmy Carter Strategy" to make Obama seem weak on defense in campaign's final month
According to a highly reliable source, as Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama prepare for the first presidential debate Wednesday night, top Republican operatives are primed to unleash a new two-pronged offensive that will attack Obama as weak on national security, and will be based, in part, on new intelligence information regarding the attacks in Libya that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens on Sept. 11.
The source, who has firsthand knowledge of private, high-level conversations in the Romney camp that took place in Washington, D.C., last week, said that at various times the GOP strategists referred to their new operation as the Jimmy Carter Strategy or the October Surprise.
He added that they planned to release what they hoped would be “a bombshell” that would make Libya and Obama’s foreign policy a major issue in the campaign. “My understanding is that they have come up with evidence that the Obama administration had positive intelligence that there was going to be a terrorist attack on the intelligence.”
The source described the Republicans as chortling with glee that the Obama administration “definitely had intel” about the attack before it happened. “Intelligence can be graded in different ways,” he added, “and sometimes A and B don’t get connected. But [the Romney campaign] will try to paint it to look like Obama had advance knowledge of the attack and is weak on terrorism.”
He said they were jubilant about their new strategy and said they intended to portray Obama as a helpless, Jimmy Carter-like president and to equate the tragedy in Libya with President Carter’s failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980. “They are so excited about it,” he said. “Over and over again they talked about how it would be just like Jimmy Carter’s failed raid. They feel it is going to give them a last-minute landslide in the election.”
The source, however, said he was dubious about the tactic. “To me, it is indicative that they have lost touch with a huge portion of the electorate,” he said.
The source declined to reveal the names of the GOP operatives who were present. But he said, “These were the top guys in the party. It was a private, unguarded planning conversation.” He further described participants in the meeting as consisting of well-known names tied to the big Republican super PACs and people who had access to high-level national security intelligence.
“As usual, Karl Rove wasn’t present,” he said, “but some were close to Rove.”
The source said that “there was quite a bit more” to the operation than simply revealing the intelligence regarding Libya. He declined to discuss what he described as the second phase of the operation.
However, already there is evidence that the first phase of the operation is underway. On Wednesday, Sept. 26, on Fox News, Karl Rove called Obama’s reaction to what happened in Libya “inexplicable” and added that Obama is “more intent on campaigning than meeting his responsibilities as commander-in-chief.” He went on to warn that Obama’s policies in Libya endangered the U.S. with regard to Iran. “I am astonished,” Rove said. “We are projecting weakness when we need to be projecting strength.”
Similarly, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a one-time GOP presidential hopeful who became known as the mayor of 9/11, followed Rove in criticizing Obama on the attack in Libya. “This is a deliberate attempt to cover up the truth, from an administration that claimed it wanted to be the most transparent in history,” he told Fox News. “And it’s the worst kind of coverup: the kind of coverup that involves our national security. This is a coverup that involves the slaughter of four Americans.”
Giuliani added that the Obama White House wanted to dismiss the role played by al-Qaida because it seemed to diminish the triumph of having killed Osama bin Laden. “I think it’s because they have this narrative that they defeated al-Qaida,” he said. “They never say the words ‘Islamic fundamentalist terrorism’. They want to wish it away. The president was moving on to Asia - he was going to declare this a great victory for himself and unfortunately, this terrible act of terror intervened in their very convenient narrative.”
Likewise, Bob Corker, Republican senator from Tennessee, described the administration’s response to “the terrorist attack” in Libya as “bizarre.” And on Sunday, Sept. 30, both Mitt Romney and vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan joined in the attacks. “I think they want to do their very best to keep the people of America from understanding exactly what happened. We expect candor, we expect transparency, particularly as it relates to terrorism,” Romney said.
Added Ryan, “Why is he [Obama] not on the same page with his own administration officials who are saying that this is a terrorist attack? We’ll leave it up to you to decide whether it’s a coverup or not.”
In an apparently related development, early October 1, at 4:45 am, The Daily Beast posted an article asking “why did it take eight days for the administration to acknowledge the 9/11 attacks in Benghazi were acts of terrorism?” The report cited unnamed U.S. intelligence officers who referred to an intercept of monitored communications between members of a local militia in Libya which “suggest the assault was in fact a premeditated attack.”
In addition, a Politico article posted last night said Romney advisers were divided over how aggressively to attack President Obama over his handling of the events in Libya. One unnamed Romney adviser described them as “a huge gift” to the campaign. “Across the board - domestic, economic and foreign-policy issues - President Obama has been outmatched by events,” he said. “He’s an observer of events, not a shaper of events. Everywhere you look, he’s been outmatched.”
But other Romney advisers, led by media strategist Stuart Stevens, wanted to stick to the economy as the central issue. “They’ll tell you that you’ve got to focus people on the fact that their economic prospects are not very good and all that,” the aide told Politico. “Well, Romney’s been trying to do that now since he clinched the nomination at the end of April - and he’s failed. The president is better at deflecting attention from the bad news than Romney is at driving home the impact of the bad news on individual voters.”
UPDATE (11:45 am EST): A Sunday, September 30 Wall Street Journal article by Romney himself suggests that the Karl Rove faction of Romney’s camp, led by neoconservative foreign policy adviser Dan Senor may have won out. “These developments are not, as President Obama says, mere ‘bumps in the road.’ “ Romney wrote. “They are major issues that put our security at risk. Yet amid this upheaval, our country seems to be at the mercy of events rather than shaping them.”
Coming just days before the presidential debates, which most observers thought would be focused on the state of the economy, Romney’s article strongly suggests he may well turn the subject to Libya.
The Jimmy Carter Strategy? Really?
Yes, that's apparently the latest desperate idea from the Romney campaign:
The source described the Republicans as chortling with glee that the Obama administration "definitely had intel" about the attack before it happened. "Intelligence can be graded in different ways," he added, "and sometimes A and B don’t get connected. But [the Romney campaign] will try to paint it to look like Obama had advance knowledge of the attack and is weak on terrorism."
He said they were jubilant about their new strategy and said they intended to portray Obama as a helpless, Jimmy Carter-like president and to equate the tragedy in Libya with President Carter’s failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980. "They are so excited about it," he said. "Over and over again they talked about how it would be just like Jimmy Carter’s failed raid. They feel it is going to give them a last-minute landslide in the election."
What's amazing to me is that they are still trying to reconjure Reagan's 1980 campaign! The man has been turned into a God and his policies and electoral tactics are like some kind of eternal creed to which these lost souls subscribe. But using the recent mess in Libya as Obama's equivalent of Carter's helicopter crash? Please. Obama had one such moment - and he killed Osama bin Laden, something Dick Cheney couldn't do however many people he had tortured. And yet today's aspic-GOP have nowhere but 1980 to turn. Marc Lynch rolls his eyes:
[I]n what passes for foreign policy debate six weeks before a presidential election, Republicans are focused on selectively parsing words to concoct a fantasy of the greatest scandal in American history -- worse than Watergate! As dangerous as the failure to connect dots before 9/11! Grounds for impeachment! The political calculations here are almost painfully transparent, as the Romney campaign desperately flails about for a way to attack Obama on foreign policy and change the subject to anything which doesn't include the phrase "47 percent." The media, bored with the current electoral narrative and always infatuated with sensational images of Muslim rage and the hint of scandal, is happy to play along. Such is policy debate during election season.
The focus of the "BenghaziGate" narrative has been on the conflicting narratives offered by Obama administration officials about what happened. The administration, they argue, intentionally played down the terrorism dimension of the attack for political reasons. A fair reading of administration statements would suggest confusion in the initial fog of war, with conflicting information and carefully guarded assessments which were updated as more evidence came in. Frankly, I don't think the administration did a particularly good job of communicating their stance, or coordinating their message across different officials, and they did seem oddly defensive and reactive as the media narrative gathered steam. But as "scandals" go this is weak stuff indeed.
The real questions:
Was this an opportunistic attack by local extremists, or an attack coordinated with and supported by the remnants of al Qaeda Central? Even if it was opportunistic and unplanned, will its success become a model for future attacks? Will the Libyan government and the popular movements to disarm militias be strong enough to successfully establish state control? What is the significance of the fizzling of the protests across most of the region, and the crackdown by elected governments on the groups behind them? What about other governments faced with potentially emergent extremist groups, from Tunisia and Egypt to farther afield? How could the United States effectively work with those governments to meet such challenges? And at home, does Romney support Arab democracy along with long-time advocates in his party such as John McCain and Bill Kristol, or does he side with those on the GOP right more fearful of the empowerment of Islamists? I certainly don't know the answers to all these questions, even if most contributors to the "debate" seem to have such perfect information.
It's official: The Republican nominee has no new ideas for the Middle East.
BY AARON DAVID MILLER
First, full disclosure. I'm not associated with either the Barack Obama or the Mitt Romney campaign in any way. Over the years, I've worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations and voted for candidates from both parties. On foreign and domestic policy, I've come to believe that the appropriate dividing line for Americans should not be between Democrat and Republican, left and right, liberal and conservative, but between dumb and smart. And we ought to be on the smart side.
That's why I was stunned to read Mitt Romney's op-ed in Sunday's Wall Street Journal, which ran under the headline, "A New Course for the Middle East." Even by the standards of political silly season and in the heat of battle weeks before an election -- when exaggeration, obfuscation, and willful distortion become the orders of the day -- this article sets a new bar for its vacuity, aimlessness and lack of coherence. There's nothing "new" in it, and it provides no "course for the Middle East." If anything, it takes us back to the kind of muscular nonsense and sloganeering that has wreaked havoc on our credibility in recent years. Here's why:
1. Obama's Middle East mistakes
Obama's record in this still angry, broken, and dysfunctional region is far from perfect. But the latest security failure in Libya reflects badly on a record that has been pretty competent on such matters. Convinced he could transform the Middle East partly with his own persona and partly with the goodwill engendered by the fact that he wasn't George W. Bush, Obama raised expectations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and on diplomacy and engagement with Iran, Syria that he could never deliver. This wasn't about the lack of American leadership. None of these problems were amenable to rapid transformation from Day One. American power was limited by the inherently conflicting agendas of regional actors, whose interests were not our own, and whom we could not control or co-opt. In raising hopes, President Obama diminished U.S. credibility, but to criticize him for failing to stop Iran's nuclear program or for not delivering an Israeli-Palestinian agreement is ridiculous. Not even a negotiating team of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad could have done that.
2. Obama's successes
Obama accomplished three critically important things in this region for which Romney will not (but should) give him credit. First, he became a more focused and more disciplined version of Bush 43 when it came to counterterrorism policy: He killed Osama bin Laden, pulverized al Qaeda, and has so far prevented another attack on the continental United States. Protecting the homeland is the organizing principle of a nation's foreign policy. If you can't do that, you really don't need a foreign policy. Second, Obama committed himself to (and is succeeding in) extricating America from the two longest wars in our history -- wars that were among our most pointless, given what we sacrificed and what we've gotten in return. Third, he kept us out of new ones. (See Syria, Iran.) It is important to think through what your objectives are before you act and, in particular, how the application of American military power, whether alone or with others, would achieve those goals or make them worse. So far, in Syria and Iran, Obama has made the right call by not pursuing military half measures that might not work, could make the situation worse or create a slippery slope to greater U.S. involvement.
3. Israel
Romney has part of this right. Obama wrestled with Benjamin Netanyahu on the wrong issue -- settlements -- with no strategy or sense for how to use this tactic to achieve the ultimate goal: an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. And there's no doubt that on an emotional level, even though Bibi is hardly an easy guy to get along with, Barack Obama isn't Bill Clinton or George W. Bush when it comes to bonding with Israel. And frankly, this is a serious problem. But to imply that Obama is willfully dismissing or trivializing Israeli concerns on Iran, let alone throwing Israel under the bus, just doesn't wash. With the exception of Britain, the United States probably has a closer relationship with Israel than any other nation. Even so, our interests -- given that there are two of us -- can't always align perfectly. And we need to deal honestly with one another when they don't. Should Romney become president, the personal relationship between Netanyahu and the president would improve. But who's to say that Romney's instincts to ignore the Palestinian issue or give Israel greater leeway on striking Iran's nuclear sites are the best policies for Israel? Indeed, the governor is hardly Israel's salvation. Dollars to donuts, I'd bet that within a reasonable period of time, Netanyahu would also find a way to annoy Romney and vice versa.
4. U.S. leadership
I hope Romney doesn't believe his own rhetoric and that his op-ed is only campaign bluster. Because if it's real, we should be worried. I didn't much care for Obama's high-minded, idealized speeches early on about transforming the Middle East -- and I don't care much for Romney's fancy words either. We're stuck in a Middle East we can't fix or leave. And that requires a pretty cruel and unforgiving look at reality, not a bunch of slogans that imply we can do what we want or get others there to do it for us. The past twenty years of failed American policy on peacemaking and war making in this region -- under Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama-- reveal the costs of failure and what it's done for our image abroad.
This has nothing to do with being a "declinist" or not believing in American "exceptionalism." We are exceptional, but part of that uniqueness lies in understanding that the wisest policies are those that find the balance between the way the world is and the way we want it to be. Great powers get themselves into heaps of trouble when they commit transgressions of omniscience and omnipotence by thinking they know everything and can do everything, too. Romney's op-ed is chock-full of both -- and that's not being on the smart side.
GOP’s October surprise?
Source reveals "Jimmy Carter Strategy" to make Obama seem weak on defense in campaign's final month
According to a highly reliable source, as Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama prepare for the first presidential debate Wednesday night, top Republican operatives are primed to unleash a new two-pronged offensive that will attack Obama as weak on national security, and will be based, in part, on new intelligence information regarding the attacks in Libya that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens on Sept. 11.
The source, who has firsthand knowledge of private, high-level conversations in the Romney camp that took place in Washington, D.C., last week, said that at various times the GOP strategists referred to their new operation as the Jimmy Carter Strategy or the October Surprise.
He added that they planned to release what they hoped would be “a bombshell” that would make Libya and Obama’s foreign policy a major issue in the campaign. “My understanding is that they have come up with evidence that the Obama administration had positive intelligence that there was going to be a terrorist attack on the intelligence.”
The source described the Republicans as chortling with glee that the Obama administration “definitely had intel” about the attack before it happened. “Intelligence can be graded in different ways,” he added, “and sometimes A and B don’t get connected. But [the Romney campaign] will try to paint it to look like Obama had advance knowledge of the attack and is weak on terrorism.”
He said they were jubilant about their new strategy and said they intended to portray Obama as a helpless, Jimmy Carter-like president and to equate the tragedy in Libya with President Carter’s failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980. “They are so excited about it,” he said. “Over and over again they talked about how it would be just like Jimmy Carter’s failed raid. They feel it is going to give them a last-minute landslide in the election.”
The source, however, said he was dubious about the tactic. “To me, it is indicative that they have lost touch with a huge portion of the electorate,” he said.
The source declined to reveal the names of the GOP operatives who were present. But he said, “These were the top guys in the party. It was a private, unguarded planning conversation.” He further described participants in the meeting as consisting of well-known names tied to the big Republican super PACs and people who had access to high-level national security intelligence.
“As usual, Karl Rove wasn’t present,” he said, “but some were close to Rove.”
The source said that “there was quite a bit more” to the operation than simply revealing the intelligence regarding Libya. He declined to discuss what he described as the second phase of the operation.
However, already there is evidence that the first phase of the operation is underway. On Wednesday, Sept. 26, on Fox News, Karl Rove called Obama’s reaction to what happened in Libya “inexplicable” and added that Obama is “more intent on campaigning than meeting his responsibilities as commander-in-chief.” He went on to warn that Obama’s policies in Libya endangered the U.S. with regard to Iran. “I am astonished,” Rove said. “We are projecting weakness when we need to be projecting strength.”
Similarly, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a one-time GOP presidential hopeful who became known as the mayor of 9/11, followed Rove in criticizing Obama on the attack in Libya. “This is a deliberate attempt to cover up the truth, from an administration that claimed it wanted to be the most transparent in history,” he told Fox News. “And it’s the worst kind of coverup: the kind of coverup that involves our national security. This is a coverup that involves the slaughter of four Americans.”
Giuliani added that the Obama White House wanted to dismiss the role played by al-Qaida because it seemed to diminish the triumph of having killed Osama bin Laden. “I think it’s because they have this narrative that they defeated al-Qaida,” he said. “They never say the words ‘Islamic fundamentalist terrorism’. They want to wish it away. The president was moving on to Asia - he was going to declare this a great victory for himself and unfortunately, this terrible act of terror intervened in their very convenient narrative.”
Likewise, Bob Corker, Republican senator from Tennessee, described the administration’s response to “the terrorist attack” in Libya as “bizarre.” And on Sunday, Sept. 30, both Mitt Romney and vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan joined in the attacks. “I think they want to do their very best to keep the people of America from understanding exactly what happened. We expect candor, we expect transparency, particularly as it relates to terrorism,” Romney said.
Added Ryan, “Why is he [Obama] not on the same page with his own administration officials who are saying that this is a terrorist attack? We’ll leave it up to you to decide whether it’s a coverup or not.”
In an apparently related development, early October 1, at 4:45 am, The Daily Beast posted an article asking “why did it take eight days for the administration to acknowledge the 9/11 attacks in Benghazi were acts of terrorism?” The report cited unnamed U.S. intelligence officers who referred to an intercept of monitored communications between members of a local militia in Libya which “suggest the assault was in fact a premeditated attack.”
In addition, a Politico article posted last night said Romney advisers were divided over how aggressively to attack President Obama over his handling of the events in Libya. One unnamed Romney adviser described them as “a huge gift” to the campaign. “Across the board - domestic, economic and foreign-policy issues - President Obama has been outmatched by events,” he said. “He’s an observer of events, not a shaper of events. Everywhere you look, he’s been outmatched.”
But other Romney advisers, led by media strategist Stuart Stevens, wanted to stick to the economy as the central issue. “They’ll tell you that you’ve got to focus people on the fact that their economic prospects are not very good and all that,” the aide told Politico. “Well, Romney’s been trying to do that now since he clinched the nomination at the end of April - and he’s failed. The president is better at deflecting attention from the bad news than Romney is at driving home the impact of the bad news on individual voters.”
UPDATE (11:45 am EST): A Sunday, September 30 Wall Street Journal article by Romney himself suggests that the Karl Rove faction of Romney’s camp, led by neoconservative foreign policy adviser Dan Senor may have won out. “These developments are not, as President Obama says, mere ‘bumps in the road.’ “ Romney wrote. “They are major issues that put our security at risk. Yet amid this upheaval, our country seems to be at the mercy of events rather than shaping them.”
Coming just days before the presidential debates, which most observers thought would be focused on the state of the economy, Romney’s article strongly suggests he may well turn the subject to Libya.
The Jimmy Carter Strategy? Really?
Yes, that's apparently the latest desperate idea from the Romney campaign:
The source described the Republicans as chortling with glee that the Obama administration "definitely had intel" about the attack before it happened. "Intelligence can be graded in different ways," he added, "and sometimes A and B don’t get connected. But [the Romney campaign] will try to paint it to look like Obama had advance knowledge of the attack and is weak on terrorism."
He said they were jubilant about their new strategy and said they intended to portray Obama as a helpless, Jimmy Carter-like president and to equate the tragedy in Libya with President Carter’s failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980. "They are so excited about it," he said. "Over and over again they talked about how it would be just like Jimmy Carter’s failed raid. They feel it is going to give them a last-minute landslide in the election."
What's amazing to me is that they are still trying to reconjure Reagan's 1980 campaign! The man has been turned into a God and his policies and electoral tactics are like some kind of eternal creed to which these lost souls subscribe. But using the recent mess in Libya as Obama's equivalent of Carter's helicopter crash? Please. Obama had one such moment - and he killed Osama bin Laden, something Dick Cheney couldn't do however many people he had tortured. And yet today's aspic-GOP have nowhere but 1980 to turn. Marc Lynch rolls his eyes:
[I]n what passes for foreign policy debate six weeks before a presidential election, Republicans are focused on selectively parsing words to concoct a fantasy of the greatest scandal in American history -- worse than Watergate! As dangerous as the failure to connect dots before 9/11! Grounds for impeachment! The political calculations here are almost painfully transparent, as the Romney campaign desperately flails about for a way to attack Obama on foreign policy and change the subject to anything which doesn't include the phrase "47 percent." The media, bored with the current electoral narrative and always infatuated with sensational images of Muslim rage and the hint of scandal, is happy to play along. Such is policy debate during election season.
The focus of the "BenghaziGate" narrative has been on the conflicting narratives offered by Obama administration officials about what happened. The administration, they argue, intentionally played down the terrorism dimension of the attack for political reasons. A fair reading of administration statements would suggest confusion in the initial fog of war, with conflicting information and carefully guarded assessments which were updated as more evidence came in. Frankly, I don't think the administration did a particularly good job of communicating their stance, or coordinating their message across different officials, and they did seem oddly defensive and reactive as the media narrative gathered steam. But as "scandals" go this is weak stuff indeed.
The real questions:
Was this an opportunistic attack by local extremists, or an attack coordinated with and supported by the remnants of al Qaeda Central? Even if it was opportunistic and unplanned, will its success become a model for future attacks? Will the Libyan government and the popular movements to disarm militias be strong enough to successfully establish state control? What is the significance of the fizzling of the protests across most of the region, and the crackdown by elected governments on the groups behind them? What about other governments faced with potentially emergent extremist groups, from Tunisia and Egypt to farther afield? How could the United States effectively work with those governments to meet such challenges? And at home, does Romney support Arab democracy along with long-time advocates in his party such as John McCain and Bill Kristol, or does he side with those on the GOP right more fearful of the empowerment of Islamists? I certainly don't know the answers to all these questions, even if most contributors to the "debate" seem to have such perfect information.