Mitt the Flip Back in Time 0

I remember sitting on the swing on the side porch in the late ’50s, after reading some apocalyptic article in Readers Digest, thinking that it was good that I lived within 40 miles of the largest military complex in the world, since the firewall from the nuclear bomb would take us out and we wouldn’t have to worry about the aftermath of World War III.

The Cold War was entering the chilly stasis where it would remain for the next three decades. The United States and the Soviet Union had recently had dueling “atmospheric” H-bomb tests. The Korean stalemate had not yet solidified and the failed revolution in Hungary was a recent event. “Who lost China” was a political bludgeon in campaigns (as if China had ever been ours to lose), and Ike was sending the first “advisors” to Viet Nam.

Trudy Rubin considers Mitt the Flip’s foreign policy statements, then wonders whether he is still sitting on that swing, lost in the past.

Romney’s foreign affairs statements have a Rip Van Winkle quality, as if he had just emerged from a sleep of two decades. His cold war language suits the bipolar world of the 20th century, not the current era.

One telling example: Earlier this year, he made the stunning claim that Russia was “our number-one geopolitical foe,” prompting former Secretary of State Colin Powell to comment, “C’mon, Mitt, think. That isn’t the case.”

Romney’s cold war mind-set prevents him from coming to grips with the major global problems he would have to deal with. In October, in a major foreign policy speech, he insisted: “This century must be an American century. In an American century, America leads the free world, and the free world leads the entire world.”