In a new ad, the Obama campaign is asserting that Mitt Romney wouldn’t have gone after Osama bin Laden:
President Obama’s campaign is … argu[ing that] Mitt Romney would not have launched the raid to capture Osama bin Laden last year….
The campaign suggests Romney would not have ordered the raid by pointing to a 2007 interview with The Associated Press in which Romney said: “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.” …
That quote tells us that Romney was endorsing the George W. Bush approach to bin Laden (“I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you”). And that’s the problem: Not only does Romney’s statement suggest that bin Laden would be alive if Romney were president, it suggests that Romney will meekly go along with GOP orthodoxy at all times.
Everyone knew that President Bush began prioritizing Iraq over Al Qaeda shortly after Tora Bora — or before. Mitt Romney had the opportunity in the 2008 campaign to distinguish himself from Bush — and he either didn’t think there was anything wrong with the Bush approach or didn’t have the guts to make a break with Bush.
What this tells us (as if we didn’t already know) is that Romney is no leader. He’ll slavishly follow whoever sets the tone in his party. And that’s what we really need to take away from that moment in 2007.
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)