Shocking news, folks: Election year politics makes it hard to get things done, especially given Republican attitudes towards President Obama (White House photo)
President Obama
explains his open mic
comments to Russian Preisdent Dmitry Medvedev:
"The only way I get this stuff done is If I'm consulting with the Pentagon, with Congress, if I've got bipartisan support and frankly, the current environment is not conducive to those kinds of thoughtful consultations," Obama told reporters following a meeting with the presidents of Russia and Kazakhstan. "I think the stories you guys have been writing over the last 24 hours is pretty good evidence of that."
Not so controversial after all, right? I mean nobody in their right mind believes Republicans will cooperate with President Obama on anything right now. But what about
the question of whether his comments demonstrate that he is hiding his true agenda from the American public?
“I think everybody understands that — if they haven’t, they haven’t been listening to my speeches — I want to reduce our nuclear stockpiles,” Obama said. “And one of the barriers to doing that is building trust and cooperation around missile defense issues. And so this is not a matter of hiding the ball, I’m on record.”
If he's hiding anything, he's hiding it in plain sight. But as clear as that fact may be, he can't get anything done while Republicans are engaging in election year political warfare. And with his response to President Obama's comments, Mitt Romney
proved Obama correct:
If he's planning on doing more and suggest to Russia that he has things he's willing to do with them he's no willing to tell the American people, this is to Russia this is without question our number one geopolitical foe, they fight every cause for the world's worst actors, the idea that he has some more flexibility in mind for Russia is very, very troubling indeed.
So now Russia is our number one foe? What happened to China? Or Iran? And if that's true, why did Romney bury the Russia section of his 43-page foreign policy
white paper on page 33? Just two pages of discussion on our "number one foe"?
The answer to those questions is obvious. This is just a case of Mitt Romney and Republicans taking positions on foreign policy issues in order to help win a political campaign. In other words, President Obama was right.