Israel Matzav: And you thought Joe Biden was gaffetastic....

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

And you thought Joe Biden was gaffetastic....

And you thought it was Joe Biden who was gaffetastic....

In the Washington Post, Marc Thiessen lists five Obama gaffes that are being exploited by Mitt Romney in Israel and Poland. The two that relate to Israel are:

Obama's announcement that "the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps," without any warning to Israel because Obama wanted to stick it to Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Obama's open-mic conversation with with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in which he 'accidentally' told the world how much he loathes Prime Minister Netanyahu.

The other three gaffes deal with Poland (caving in to Russian demands to scrap missile defenses on the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Poland, telling Dmitry Medvedev to tell Vladimir Putin that he would have 'more flexibility' on missile defense after the 2012 elections, and the reference to 'Polish death camps' a few months ago). Mitt Romney has been showing a his administration would be different, without openly criticizing Obama. Thiessen explains:

In Poland, Romney is signaling that while Obama may have sacrificed Poland on the altar of his “reset” policy with Russia, as president, Romney will pursue a “reset” policy, not with Russia but with Poland and the United States’s other central European allies. It is a message that will resonate from Warsaw to Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio — swing-states with large Polish-American populations.

In Israel, Romney signaled that the days of trash-talking and back-stabbing Israeli leaders will end if he becomes president. Obama’s gaffes at Israel’s expense have helped cement the impression that, as one former Palestinian official recently told The Post, Obama has shown “a complete lack of an emotion-based relationship with Israel.” Indeed, when Obama met with Jewish leaders at the White House recently and was told that was told he was not being “evenhanded,” he admitted: “You are absolutely right and we are going to fix that … the sense of evenhandedness has to be restored.” Romney’s unspoken message this week is that if Israel’s supporters back home want “evenhandedness,” the best way to get it is to replace Obama in the White House. It is a message that will resonate with Jewish voters (whose support for Obama has dropped 10 points since 2008) and pro-Israel evangelicals in the United States.

No doubt Romney’s foreign trip got off to a difficult start in London. But in the annals of gaffes, which is worse: One slip of the tongue suggesting London might not be ready for the Olympics or five major gaffes that have severely undermined this country’s relations with two of its most important allies?

And it's the last part that's really key. The White House has been trying to paint a picture of Romney as incompetent when it comes to foreign policy. That picture is untrue, but in any event, Obama is worse than incompetent: He's downright dangerous.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Campaign 2012, Mitt Romney, Poland, US foreign policy, US-Israel relationship