Romney Still Trying to Have It Both Ways on Foreign Policy

Abstract

The speech itself did not so much lay out a coherent foreign policy vision for the future as much as it sought to secure Romney’s credentials as a critic of President Barack Obama and true believer in the infallibility of U.S. foreign policy and the U.S. military. Lines like “If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your president. You have that president today,” or “In an American Century, America has the strongest economy and the strongest military in the world. In an American Century, America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world,” are either simply right-wing rhetoric, the former, or platitudes, the latter. Coming from Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann, these lines might be true representations of the depth of their thinking on foreign policy. Coming from Romney these remarks seem, at least to some degree, like true representations of what he thinks he needs to say to win the Republican nomination.