Despite a misstep in London, Mitt Romney had a successful foreign trip. No, it featured no charismatic moments before the Victory Column in Berlin’s Tiergarten.
It was an adult leader meeting with other adult leaders, mainly in Israel and Warsaw. The Brits did not distinguish themselves—even Tory leader David Cameron seems to have a man-crush on President Obama. But this is not the case for leaders in Israel and Warsaw, where Romney was excellent.
Thanks to a biased and corrupt (no, that is not too strong a word) media, most Americans aren’t aware of anything about the trip except for “gaffes.” The media nowadays looks for gaffes like pigs search for truffles.
Charles Krauthammer this morning takes note of Romney’s London stumble, when he was less than effusive about the city’s arrangements for the games, but distills the nature of the trip as a whole—and the media’s attempts to trash it:
Soon that initial stumble was transmuted into a metaphor for everything that followed. The mainstream media decided with near-unanimity that the rest of the trip amounted to a gaffe-prone disaster.
Really? The Warsaw leg was a triumph. Romney’s speech warmly embraced Poland’s post-communist experiment as a stirring example of a nation committed to limited government at home and a close alliance with America abroad, even unto such godforsaken war zones as Afghanistan and Iraq, at great cost to itself and with little thanks.
Especially little from the Obama administration, which unilaterally canceled a Bush(43)-era missile-defense agreement with Poland to appease Russia. Without any overt criticism of the current president, Romney set out a foreign policy of radically greater appreciation of and fidelity to American allies.
Romney also gave a good speech in Israel, where he linked cultural values to economic prosperity—something that offended both the media and the Palestinians, who are notoriously poorer than the Israelis, in no small part because of corruption.
Krauthammer comments:
He declared flatly that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. The official Obama position is that Israel’s capital is to be determined in negotiations with the Palestinians. On Iran, Romney asserted that Israel has the right to defend itself. Obama says this as boilerplate. Romney made clear he means it — that if Israel has to attack, the United States won’t flash the red light before nor punish Israel afterward.
The media accompanying Romney, which really should be considered part of the Obama campaign, was so obnoxious that Rick Gorka, a Romney aide, fed up, urged them to kiss his derriere. This shocked the delicate sensibilities of the banshees:
The horror! On the eve of the 2004 Democratic Convention, Teresa Heinz Kerry offered precisely that anatomically risky suggestion to an insistent Pittsburgh journalist. Not only did she later express no regret, but Hillary Clinton reacted with: “Good for you, you go girl.”
So where’s the Romney gaffe? Is what’s good for the Heinz not good for the Gorka?
The media’s bias is going to make it very difficult for voters to get a realistic picture of what is going in this all-important election.