Will Romney’s gaffes hurt his campaign?
IT’S easy to dismiss Mitt Romney’s foreign trip as a debacle after the White House hopeful’s controversial comments in London and Israel. Harder to discern is whether he has helped or hurt his case with US voters.
Romney has lurched from one hiccup to the next on his first venture onto the global stage, offending the British by questioning their readiness to host the Olympics, then infuriating Palestinians by saying Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and that Israeli “culture” helps them succeed economically.
And in Poland, his meeting Monday with Lech Walesa was given an awkward tint when the Solidarity union which the anti-communist hero headed in the 1980s said it had nothing to do with inviting Romney and actually supports American unionized workers widely disparaged by Romney and his fellow Republicans.
Romney, struggling to overcome criticism about his business record and refusal to release more than two years of tax returns, was hoping his sojourn would set him apart from President Barack Obama on a few key fronts, namely that he could be a better friend to Britain, Israel and Poland and stand up more forcefully against Iran and Russia.
He is also looking to shore up support among millions of pro-Israel evangelical Christian voters in the United States, many of whom remain suspicious of Romney’s conservative credentials, and wean Jewish voters away from Democrat Obama, who handily won that demographic in 2008.
Scholar Aaron Miller at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a former adviser to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, gave Romney’s trip a four out of 10.
“With the pro-Israeli community... I think it probably helped him,” Miller said, citing Romney’s reassurances that he opposed Iran developing the capacity to produce a nuclear bomb and supported Israel’s right to defend itself.”But with respect to demonstrating his foreign policy acumen, demonstrating his agility to respond cleverly and substantively, let alone wisely, I think he dropped the ball.”
With just 99 days to go before the election, Romney’s campaign was seeking a more favorable outcome from his trip than the headlines in Britain (“Mitt the Twit” was one) and the disbelief in Palestinian quarters over his comments in Israel. The White House jumped on the gaffes as examples that Romney was not ready for his presidential close-up, and Obama’s re-election campaign highlighted the low points of the challenger’s trip. “He’s been fumbling the foreign policy football from country to country,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. “This raises some questions about his preparedness.”
Miller said Romney might suffer when Obama drills into the gaffes made in London. But he and other observers acknowledged that the election will hinge almost exclusively on the health of the US economy and perception of Obama’s ability to help create American jobs.
