Earlier this week Mitt Romney spent some time
blustering about Iran and foreign policy in the Washington Post, presumably as part of ongoing effort to look like he might give a damn about either. Nothing about his op-ed dissuaded me from my most current Mitt Romney origin theory, which is that Candidate Mitt was assembled in bits somewhere in the bowels of a conservative research facility using spare parts left over from the construction of other failed conservatives; on the plus side, this would make the construction of Mitt-Bot 2012 the closest thing America has left to a manufacturing industry.
The only trouble in pinpointing which year this replicant thinks he is living in is that while his policy prescriptions are always a mash of random, blustering statements taken in fragments from past conservatives, there seems no connecting theme to any of it. Couple this with an understanding of modern American history that seems cribbed together from the conservative equivalent of Bazooka Joe wrappers and the results are ... well, unimpressive at best.
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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2003:
A competent president would seek out the tough questions -- proving by force of argument the truthfulness of his position. This is somethig Blair does almost weekly. Instead, Bush punishes any dissent (read: "real journalism") and coddles the weakest amongst the press corps. That group has to be the laughing stock of the journalism world.
Bush fanatic Andrew Sullivan, in between bashing France, Germany, and Russia, had this to say:
The spin is that he was trying to look calm and reassuring. I just thought he looked wiped. There were moments when he almost seemed catatonic with fatigue.
[...]
All in all, though, this press conference struck me as a mistake. He looked drained, wan, exhausted from this interminable diplomatic process. He seemed defeated to me - and the U.N. has effectively defeated him and protected Saddam.
Ha ha! As if Bush is running around the UN corridors trying to round up votes. That's what the State Department is for. Bush makes the occasional phone call, and he's bushed? I guess when you have to make an excuse for your president's pathetic performance, might as well spin it into another anti-UN diatribe.
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Let us do Mitt the honor of presuming he himself penned this thing with his name on it. Sure, it might be ghostwritten by his staff, but that would imply Mitt is willing to outsource the very important task of blustering foreign policy inanities in the pages of the Washington Post, and that hardly seems very presidential. He begins with attacking President Jimmy Carter, I imagine because Mitt Romney thinks attacking Jimmy Carter is what the hep cats are still doing these days:
Running for the presidency against Carter the next year, Ronald Reagan made it crystal clear that the Iranians would pay a very stiff price for continuing their criminal behavior. On Jan. 20, 1981, in the hour that Reagan was sworn into office, Iran released the hostages. The Iranians well understood that Reagan was serious about turning words into action in a way that Jimmy Carter never was.
That would be one way to look at it. It would be wrong, but it would be one "way" to look at it. The delayed release of the hostages was more widely interpreted by all parties as a final screw you to Carter on the part of the Iranians, who were still miffed about that whole business of Carter authorizing a covert operation to rescue those hostages via a few helicopters and more than a few guns. Reagan, on the other hand, took a decidedly different stance towards Iran. I think we are not supposed to mention it nowadays, but Reagan's policy towards the Iranians was distinctly more coddling. He lifted sanctions against Iran that Carter had imposed for the hostage-taking. Oh, and
he sold them arms. Lots and lots of arms. Anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, mostly. You may remember this primarily because it was in direct opposition to American laws and stuff, and because some of the cash was used to do other illegal things in Central America that nobody quite talks about anymore, but which did manage to get one of the prime criminals a coveted Fox News gig for a while. The arms sales, by the way, were intended to secure the release of seven more American hostages, thus demonstrating
exactly what St. Ronald Reagan's now-vaunted approach to hostage-taking was.
In other words, the Reagan "seriousness" that is so heralded that conservatives still gripe about how the fellow's face has not yet made it onto spendin' money was: negotiating with terrorists. Not just negotiating, but selling them goddamn military weaponry. This is the defacto Republican approach to both a hostile, theocratic Iran and to terrorism in general, at least if we are to take Mitt Romney and the rest of the conservative Bazooka Joe wrapper-readers seriously—and we should take them seriously, since Mitt was determined enough about his let's-be-like-Reagan approach to put it in the Washington Post. Carter sent in the military, but it didn't work, so he counts as "feckless" in the eyes of Mitt. Reagan sold the terrorist-supporting Iran military weapons in exchange for a bit of cold, hard cash; that counts as "serious."
Reagan's supposed foreign policy grandeur has been conservative gospel for some time now. Somehow selling arms to Iran was excused very early on, because hey, at least he was stickin' it to the mean old Congress by doing it. His brave, brave retreat from Lebanon is simply never spoken of. Praising the Reagan legacy is akin to rattling keys in front of a baby; you merely have to say the name and their eyes widen at the splendor of it all, but that is about as far as it gets. Just don't mention that those keys unlock a safe chock full of big government, big deficits, negotiating with terrorists and retreating from all but the most minor fights, or you'll have quite the mess on your hands.
The rest of the Mitt op-ed revolves around just how much like Reagan the current Mitt thinks he is, or at least wants you to think he is. This is manifested primarily calling Iran "evil" and the like, since that is what Reagan would do, and by proposing we build more navy ships, because that is what Reagan would do, and calling for the country to rededicate ourselves to that granddaddy of all government defense pork, the good ol' Star Wars initiative, because that's what Reagan would do. Rick Santorum may want to return to the time of the Salem witch trials, but for Mitt Romney and/or his ghostwriter, going back to the big-hair 1980s would be enough.
So what precisely would a President Mitt Romney do about his conviction that the "evil" Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons? Aside from building some new boats and anti-missile missiles, that's unclear:
As for Iran in particular, I will take every measure necessary to check the evil regime of the ayatollahs. Until Iran ceases its nuclear-bomb program, I will press for ever-tightening sanctions, acting with other countries if we can but alone if we must.
Sanctions? You mean like Carter? And Bush? And Clinton, and other-Bush, and that terrible Iran-coddling slacker, Barack Obama?
I will speak out on behalf of the cause of democracy in Iran and support Iranian dissidents who are fighting for their freedom.
Well, that's novel. Nobody's ever tried that before. Good luck with that bold new approach, sport.
I will make clear that America’s commitment to Israel’s security and survival is absolute. I will demonstrate our commitment to the world by making Jerusalem the destination of my first foreign trip.
Okay, a field trip. Getting bolder, I guess.
Most important, I will buttress my diplomacy with a military option that will persuade the ayatollahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions. Only when they understand that at the end of that road lies not nuclear weapons but ruin will there be a real chance for a peaceful resolution.
Ah, there we go. The Great Romney Plan for solving this crisis that he considers so dire is to yell at them a lot, and remind them that we can bomb them into "ruin" anytime we want. Yeah, if I'm on the other end of that conversation that'd sure convince
me to not develop any countering military strength. Oh, and he says he'll have some aircraft carriers tool around a bit and give more military aid to Israel, which is pretty much the only country in the world the current Republican crop of candidates thinks we should be sending money to. But only if they use it for shootin' stuff.
What is most striking about this anti-Iran, pro-Ronald-Reagan effort is just how very dull it is. It is full of warmed-over rhetoric and talking points so stale you could not even feed them to ducks. Mitt is not just praising the 1980s; he seems unaware that anything has taken place since the 1980s. He blusters about the need for more tough talk because Republicans always say we need more tough talk, no matter how tough the current talk might be. He proposes we expand the military, because Republicans always propose we expand the military. He points to Ronald Reagan, because Republicans always point to Ronald Reagan. It is conventional, phoned-in stuff—foreign policy by rote. Robotic, even.
If anything, the extraordinary dullness of the effort (in which not one original thought is uttered, talking points are hit mechanically, as if by checklist, and every word of rhetoric could be taken from a banal conservative pamphlet produced at any generic point in the post-Soviet landscape) gives the earnest impression that Mitt Romney really does not give a flying damn about foreign policy, or Iran, or any of the rest of it. If he did, he would have something more interesting to say. If he thought about it even for a moment, he would be able to at least explain why expanding our Navy would make a damn stick of difference when it comes to Iran. No such effort is made. He ought to be able to explain what sanctions he would levy that no other presidents or candidates have yet thought of—but no, not a peep. He says he will "support Iranian dissidents who are fighting for their freedom," but beyond the pamphlet phrasing of the vow, there is not a word of how he might do it. "Restoring the regular presence of aircraft carrier groups in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf region simultaneously"—all right, why? "Improved coordination with our allies in the area"—what does that mean, aside from what we are already doing?
It is all so shallow as to be insulting. As I said, it is foreign policy by rote, or perhaps by think-tank. It is a collection of words strung together like a book report, but with no substance behind any of them.
In other words, it is precisely what we have come to expect from Mitt Romney.
I still do not get the sense that Mitt Romney has a damn idea of why he might want to be president. I get that he wants to push through more tax breaks; that seems, at least, to light a fire in his eyes. The rest of it, though, is agonizingly insincere. None of it really pushes back against the premise that Romney is a robotic entity constructed solely for the task of running for president. None of it demonstrates any Romney philosophy more substantive than "things my advisors told me you wanted to hear." Romney might hold true to the Reagan approach of buying America's enemies off by giving them more weapons, at least if there was cash involved, but it is hard to imagine him taking on any of the other tasks needed of a president. It is not just on foreign policy, either; on taxes, corporate power, health care and everything else, Mitt toes the conservative line, but does so using dull-as-dishwater framing and talking points that existed long before Mitt Romney ever thought about becoming president, and which will continue to exist long after Mitt has been rendered obsolete.
Forget likable or not likable: What does Mitt Romney honestly believe? We don't know. And it seems more than clear at this point that he doesn't know, either.