I thought this was amusing on Romney's visit

[dieseltaylor]

FOREIGN visits are a great way to burnish a politician's statesmanlike credentials, especially for a presidential hopeful. So the headlines in today's British press are not what Mitt Romney ordered.

"Romneyshambles" quips The Independent. "Who invited party-pooper Romney?" asks the conservative, and generally pro-American, Daily Mail. And The Sun, as always, is the pithiest; "Mitt the Twit" is its headline.

Mr Romney's mistake was in the classic mould for all politicians; deliver one message tailored for the home audience, before being more diplomatic overseas. Questioned by Brian Williams over whether the Olympic games would be a success, he said

You know, it's hard to know just how well it will turn out. There are a few things that were disconcerting, the stories about the private security firm not having enough people, supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging.

To be fair, most Britons would have similar doubts. But that's not to say they like to hear some foreign politician expressing them. It's a bit like going to a dinner party and complaining loudly about the decor and the cooking. Perhaps Mr Romney thought Britons wouldn't notice. But over here in "old Europe", we have the television. The internet, even!

The remarks were perhaps designed to highlight Mr Romey's own success as the organiser of the Salt Lake City winter Olympics in 2002. But the patronising tone did nothing to endear him to the Conservative Party over here. David Cameron tartly remarked

We are holding an Olympic games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world. Of course, it's easier if you hold an Olympic games in the middle of nowhere.

Boris Johnson, mayor of London, mocked the American, telling a Hyde Park crowd

There's a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know whether we're ready. Are we ready?

Sadly for Mr Romney, that was not his only gaffe. He appeared to forget the name of Ed Miliband, calling him "Mr Leader" and said he had looked out of the

backside of Downing Street

at the beach volleyball court. Again, the latter can be put down to the vagaries of the English idiom and there are plenty of Britons who might forget the name of the Labour leader, who is popularly claimed to look like Wallace (from the Wallace and Gromit animation) or Rowan Atkinson's Mr Bean character.

Still, not a great start to the tour. The most biting remarks came from anonymous officials. The Daily Mail quotes one mandarin as saying

What a car crash. We are speechless.

while the unkindest cut of all came from a "diplomatic source" in The Times:

It is worse than Sarah Palin in terms of basic diplomacy.

Update: It may be a good job that the British press hasn't read Mr Romney's book, "No Apology". Foreign Policy points out that the book contains a section that says

England is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn't make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/blighty/2012/07/romney-britain?spc=scode&spv=xm&ah=9d7f7ab945510a56fa6d37c30b6f1709

[Michael Emrys]

Good lord.

Michael

[gunnergoz]

It was pretty appalling.

[Michael Emrys]

Seems like one of the major occupations for American politicians these days is to embarrass the country on the world stage.

Michael

[costard]

His approach might appeal to people living in the 1770's. Obscure bunch to target for approval.

[JonS]

[dieseltaylor]

: )

I am kind of interested in how he managed to get so much into his retirement pot. However overall when you know that the economy was dragged to disaster by financial/political insiders shennanigans you would have thought a candidate with that background in spades would be seen as wildly unpopular. The Tea Party must feel somewhat pissed with both candidates being part of the insiders.

Wiki has some interesting stuff including his draft deferments. My general feeling is that people who have never been at the sharp end are much more gung-ho than those who have fought or suffered from war.

[Michael Emrys]

My general feeling is that people who have never been at the sharp end are much more gung-ho than those who have fought or suffered from war.

I think you are right.

Michael

[Bigduke6]

Nah, their major occupation is making a lot of money for themselves and their friends.

Embarrassing their country is, you know, an unwanted but to them acceptable side effect. Like collateral damage.

Never knew Mitt was a chicken hawk. Doesn't surprise me much.

The real question is, if you took a guy like that and showed him a lot of dead and wounded soldiers and fathers and women and children, and the destroyed homes and smashed infastructure and the disease all that comes with it, and told him this is the price of using force to push a foreign policy objective, would a member of the political elite reconsider?

Or would he figure it was just acceptable? A guy that high up on the social pyramid, how affected would he be by death and destruction visited on people not of his social class? He might just figure that those died - friend AND foe - really aren't that important. He might just decide the property that was destroyed was cheap and in any case belonged to some one else. And that his buddies and the economy did pretty well producing the weapons and developing the military infrastructure to go out and kill those foreign people.

As to "if they saw the elephant maybe they would be more careful", well, maybe they would. But by and large they haven't. By my count the presidents who saw battle or battlefields in the last century were:

- Teddy Roosevelt, at the head of a volunteer dismounted cavalry unit in Cuba. Was under heavy fire and saw close to half his command made casualties.

- Truman, commanding a national guard artillery battery in France. In the last century at least he is probably the president who had the very best appreciation of what explosives and flying metal do to people and property.

- IKE, although it should be noted he apparently never was shot at

- JFK, commanding a PT boat in the Pacific, which is not exactly the best place to see what wars do to civilians. But certainly he saw his shipmates die.

- Ford, junior officer on a light carrier in the Pacific that was under fire but never hit. Naval aviation being what it is, however, he saw plenty of people hurt and killed in accidents or in the next ship over.

- Bush the elder, torpedo bomber pilot. A dangerous job where you or your buddies can die, but not one where one normally sees the effects of war on the ground

To be fair, Hoover probably had a very good understanding of what wars do to countries in the big picture from his interwar humanitarian work.

Going from the last century, if a man fought in the ranks in land combat, his chances of being elected are pretty small. Clearly navy jobs help; besides the above FDR, Carter and Nixon all were navy officers at one time or another.

I think it is perhaps interesting that the presidents that had the best look at the nasty side of land war - TR and Truman - were the presidents that least trusted the military industrial complex and the corporations that ran it. Truman did not come from a particularly rich background but TR certainly did. Maybe there's a connection there, I dunno...

[Michael Emrys]

Clearly navy jobs help; besides the above FDR, Carter and Nixon all were navy officers at one time or another.

So, BTW, was Johnson. He hitched a ride on one bombing mission, collected a bronze star and went home. Friends in high places...

Michael

[gunnergoz]

"Let's your kids and his kids fight."

Works for most politicians and has for quite some time.

[dpabrams]

What a car crash. We are speechless.

Were you upset when Obama sent back the bust of Churchill?

Or did you even know about it?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/4623148/Barack-Obama-sends-bust-of-Winston-Churchill-on-its-way-back-to-Britain.html

[Stalins Organ]

Why would anyone be?

It was on loan to Bush, and the new pres has differnt tastes.

[dpabrams]

Why would anyone be?

It was on loan to Bush, and the new pres has differnt tastes.

That’s right. Obama is so cool that he would never blunder, gaffe or return a bust of Churchill to our greatest ally for ill or ignorant reasons. He just simply has different tastes. Perhaps a bust of Che or Moa is more along his cool tastes?

[JonS]

A Moa statue would be kewl.

[Bigduke6]

If the special Anglo-Saxon relationship depends on the location of a statue bust, then it ain't much of a relationship.

I think the real problem is that the US leadership has a couple of decades of properly bonehead foreign policy to account for, particularly expensive wars that have been economically ruinous, and for their own reasons the British leadership hitched their wagon to it. Basically the politicians played the "our societies are in great danger, you the people must sacrifice" card. One of the things that was sacrificed was something like a century of history of Britain and the US conducting foreign policy for the general good of both nations; we now have 20 years more or less of joint foreign policy that made things for average people in both countries a good deal worse.

Had to happen sooner or later, I guess. Not so long ago the Americans thought China was a natural ally and just a wonderful country full of charming simple people, that belief is dead and gone too.

[dieseltaylor]

American politicians have made quoting Churchill, whose mother was American, something of an art form, but not Mr Obama, who prefers to cite the words and works of his hero Abraham Lincoln. Indeed a bust of Mr Lincoln now sits in the Oval Office where Epstein's Churchill once ruled the roost.

Seems very reasonable and to honest not particularly important. The interesting thing is that it was only lent and I personally don't like to furnish my study or house with lent objects.

[dpabrams]

I think the real problem is that the US leadership has a couple of decades of properly bonehead foreign policy to account for, particularly expensive wars that have been economically ruinous.

Oh ya that’s right. It’s all Bush’s fault.

[ZPB II]

It's almost as if this thread offends someone's political sensibilities.

[dpabrams]

It's almost as if this thread offends someone's political sensibilities.

Politics? What politics? There is (NO POLITICS, NO COMMERCIAL LINKS, NO SPAM)

[gunnergoz]

That’s right. Obama is so cool that he would never blunder, gaffe or return a bust of Churchill to our greatest ally for ill or ignorant reasons. He just simply has different tastes. Perhaps a bust of Che or Moa is more along his cool tastes?

You have to be kidding, right?

[Bigduke6]

Oh ya that’s right. It’s all Bush’s fault.

Well, he had help of course.

But incompetence is bipartisan. Clinton went right along with the idea that US military hegemony meant the US could dictate foreign policy worldwide, indefinitely. And Obama seems to think that taking what the generals say at face value, and making sure the weapons programs keep getting funded no matter what, is what it takes to be an effective commander in chief.

It's like Ike said. The professional military and the industries that support it care far more about things like careers and benefits and increased status and spiffy new equipment and coporate income and continued profit and expansion, than the overall good of the nation. It is in their personal interest to lie about the how many real foreign enemies the country has, and it is in their interest to lie about those enemies' capabilities. So they do. They say they are patriotic and are defending the nation. In fact, and this becomes more and more true the higher you go up the pecking order, they are defending what is personally most profitable for them.

The leadership of the country has been complicit for decades, but since the breakup of the Soviet Union it's been particularly bad. Looking back, it's got to have been one of the most idiotic foreign policy plays of the last couple of centuries, by any nation. In 1990 the US had defeated its Cold War opponent, the Soviet Union, and had the opportunity to take all that intellectual and industrial potential that had gone into fighting the Cold War, into economic capacity and insfrastructure. There was a moment of US primacy, where the country's leaders could take the nation in whatever direction they chose, there were no more viable outside threats.

Think of what might have been, if the wealth and energy and political will that went into Iraq I and II and Afghanistan before/during/after surge, into the CIA and the TSA and the FBI and NRO and the NSA; had gone into building bridges and roads and schools and productive industry at home. I'm not advocating total disarmament, but just a domestic focus and a defensive, non-provocative stance against outside threats.

Instead, we embarked on a series of increasingly stupid military expeditions more or less calculated to increase US influence over Middle Eastern fossil energy sources, or to supress Middle Easterners mad about those expeditions. We embarked on the biggest military buildup, by some standards at least, since WW2. And at the same time, we attempted to maintain military technological and operational primacy over the rest of the world. This was not a forced choice, it was a long-term path chosen and hewed to by a series of democratic and republican administrations.

Are we wealthier? Is the nation better off? Is the economy booming? Are we more competative? Are we any safer? Is there more or less hope for a better future, for our children?

Sure, if you're a career military or an arms plant worker, or somewhere else in the economy supporting that, you're probably doing somewhere between pretty well and outstanding these days. Last I heard for the desired MOSes a guy with a high school education can get a reup bonus sufficient to buy a pretty nice pickup truck or put a solid down payment on a house - try that in the civilian economy. If you're part of senior management or military leadership, times probably have never been better.

[dpabrams]

You have to be kidding, right?

Perhaps I would have a better idea if he would just release his college transcipts. Why the secrecy?

[JonS]

It's almost as if this thread offends someone's political sensibilities.

Pro gun, anti abortion, pro states rights, pro torture, pro corporate welfare, anti social welfare, anti taxation.

How'd you think I did?

[dpabrams]

Pro gun, anti abortion, pro states rights, pro torture, pro corporate welfare, anti social welfare, anti taxation.

How'd you think I did?

(NO POLITICS, NO COMMERCIAL LINKS, NO SPAM)

Freedom loving Constitutionalist that believes in the free market economy. Government is not answer. That pretty much sums it up.

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." Thomas Jefferson