Media crits Romney’s trip abroad, overlooked Obama’s failures

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney was very well received when he visited Israel. (Photo: Mitt Romney campaign)Predictably, traditional media found fault with some aspects of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s trip abroad.

It almost goes without saying: Republican messaging ahead of November must consistently remind the public media will always favor a Democrat regardless of reality.

A recent example is occurring now, with U.S. Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta’s trip to Israel.

Prior to the trip, Reuters said Panetta “denied media reports on Tuesday that he would discuss possible military attack plans against Iran during a brief visit to Israel.”

By the next day, sympathetic media appeared to put words in Panetta’s mouth, with many headlines claiming the secretary used terms like “force” and “military.” However, video clips of his trip do not reflect those words coming from Panetta. Nor have clips shown Panetta taking questions from reporters. Headlines actually made Panetta sound more forceful than he actually was.

Romney was very decisive, assuring Israel of U.S. support. Agence France Presse reported:

“We should employ any and all measures to dissuade the Iranian regime from its nuclear course," he [Romney] said, expressing hope that diplomatic and economic measures would help achieve this aim, but adding that "in final analysis, of course, no option should be excluded."

The topper for Romney came when he acknowledged Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

At a recent presser, Obama’s press secretary refused to name the capital of Israel.

In 2011, Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu publicly corrected Obama on the president’s statement suggesting Israel revert to the 1967 borders.

By 2012 when he returned to Washington, Netanyahu delivered another lesson to Obama. Netanyahu said in a speech, “Jerusalem [is] the eternal, united capital of Israel.”

At that same event, Netanyahu specifically called out a Republican congressman, praising him for leading the effort in Congress to pass new sanctions against Iran. Obama had taken credit for the sanctions.

President Barack Obama has actually maintained a very puzzling foreign policy, and not just on Israel and Iran.

Our president is putty in Russia’s hands, evidenced by Obama’s plea for “space” on a decision about missile defense. President Dmitry Medvedev was asked to wait until after Obama’s “reelection” to make decisions. Obama didn’t know his mic was still on when he put forth the question when Medvedev visited the U.S.

Romney cited Russia as a foe to the U.S., and he got that exactly right. Media were shocked, but then, they may not be aware of questionable efforts by Russia to place spies in Obama’s cabinet or by intel leaks in Canada about U.S. security or the deployment of two army brigades by Russia to the Arctic. There’s no doubt that Iran and Syria are festering because Russia obstructs action on those countries and the U.S. at present is not about to buck the Bear.

Obama bowed to the Saudi king, overlooked $55 million in U.S. taxpayer money directed to Iran in 2009 (for a “peaceful nuclear program”) and, defying the practice of both Republican and Democrat presidents, signed on to the UN Human Rights Council right after that council voted to protect a single religion above all others—Islam. That resolution, by the way, directly violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

In 2009 the Obama administration completely misread a constitutional crisis in, of all places, Honduras. How soon we forget.

The Middle East has come unglued and we have no idea exactly who is running the show in Egypt or Syria. It’s too early to tell whether our involvement in the Libya War, engaged without consent of the U.S. Congress, will lead to anything good.

Traditional media may want Obama to be a foreign policy wizard, but fact is, he is a foreign policy disaster.

Romney knows more about foreign policy than the junior senator from Illinois did when Democrats pre-selected him as their presidential candidate.

Traditional media just can’t bring themselves to cover Obama’s mishaps or, for that matter, to praise Romney, the Republican who looked and sounded very much like a president proud of his country when he spoke in both Poland and Israel.

As for Russia, the country’s iconic newspaper Pravda has endorsed Obama for president. Pravda said Romney had “too much testosterone.”

Romney, by contrast, received an endorsement from a man whose name is synonymous with freedom, Lech Walesa, the former president of Poland.

(Commentary by Kay B. Day/August 1, 2012)