I'm a little steamed about the way the Romney campaign is explaining all the "London Shambles" gaffes the past few days. Instead of admitting that Romney has problems with diplomacy and tact, they are blaming jet lag and those "odd, eccentric" Brits.
Come on, really? You want us to believe Romney can be a world leader "better" than Obama even while he complains that every little thing throws him for a loop, from baked goods to grits, from jet lag to meeting the press? Candidates are often unprepared, and so are Presidents, but they have to be able to think on their feet, to go with the flow, to play it by ear, and to wing it. Romney likes to talk about "sport" - well, that's the "sport" of politics. If he can't do it, he just can't do it.
Romney has been running for months as an international businessman. Hasn't he ever been to London before this? Doesn't he know what manners are appropriate in such settings? Or were his trips to Europe before this just about fine hotels and dining, with servants who said "Yes, Sir" whenever he snapped his fingers?
He cannot have it both ways - that he is an "innocent abroad" but also a savvy politician who "connects" with both Cameron and Netanyahu.
The Romney camp needs to quit this apologetic crap because they are insulting our collective intelligence. Romney can't expect us to believe he's on the same level as Obama in human relations, then have his anonymous sidekicks excuse-away muliple snafus as "bad briefing." How much briefing does a grown man who attended some of the best schools in the country need in order to not piss-off our closest ally? You've got to be kidding us, right?
The New York Times:
. . . the British press devour(ed) Mr. Romney like a pile of mushy peas. His campaign was slow and flat-footed in recognizing it had a problem, and unable to improvise a quick response.
Afterward, the campaign said that Mr. Romney had misspoken because he was tired and jet-lagged. “Even the Energizer Bunny needs new batteries once in a while,” said an adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a delicate topic.
From an "Unnamed Source" in the Daily Mail UK
The official said that Prime Minister David Cameron’s ‘wisecrack’ about it being harder to stage an Olympic Games in London than ‘in the middle of nowhere’ – an apparent reference to Salt Lake City, where Romney oversaw the 2002 Winter Olympics – was ‘probably appropriate, albeit awkward’ and unfortunate for Romney
‘Johnson on the other hand lived up to his reputation as an eccentric, odd fellow. It was unbecoming to attack Governor Romney in that way. There really was no need. But Johnson made it clear in 2008 that his vote would have gone to Obama.’
. . . The campaign official, who was not directly involved organising the London trip, that that the Romney campaign had not prepared sufficiently for ‘a visit of this magnitude’ and that the candidate had not been briefed properly on how to answer questions about the staging of the Olympics.
‘What he gave was the honest assessment of the situation based on his previous experience. Unfortunately in a diplomatic context that's not the sort of thing that should have been coming out of the candidate's mouth. It was bad messaging and media prep.’
The trip should have been a straightforward one, he said. ‘You show up, you smile, you do photo ops, you talk about the special relationship, the deep bonds that connect us and then you go home, or in this case on to Israel and Poland.
Unfortunately, it shows that the campaign by solely focussing on jobs has really neglected foreign policy and international affairs.
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