In May 2011, when asked by CBS News about why he would not
release photos of the killing of Osama bin Laden, President Obama
said, “We don’t need to spike the football.”
How much things have changed in a year.
As we’ve approached this week’s third anniversary of that happy
moment when the mass murderer was lobotomized by a Navy SEAL’s
bullet, bin Laden-related chest thumping has become the
administration’s campaign tactic-of-the-week.
At the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on
Saturday night, Barack Obama
touted that “last year at this time — in fact, on this very
weekend — we finally delivered justice to one of the world’s most
notorious individuals.”
Even Hillary Clinton has been waxing nostalgic
about the bin Laden raid, evoking images of sleep-deprived heroes
(such as herself) being revived by crowds cheering outside the
White House gates following news of the terrorist’s death.
In a new web ad called “One Chance,” former President Bill
Clinton — oddly chummy with Obama of late — says that Obama “took
the harder and the more honorable path” by ordering the raid on bin
Laden’s Pakistan compound. The ad goes on to quote Mitt Romney’s
2007 comment that “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth, spending
billions of dollars just trying to catch one person,” implying that
a President Romney might not have ordered the assault on bin Laden
given the same information that Obama had. It is a reprehensible —
and literally incredible — assertion.
Not surprisingly, the Obama ad does not mention Romney’s
clarification a few weeks later: his point was that bin Laden would
be replaced and that killing him would not mean the end of al
Qaeda. During a 2007
debate, Romney made his view on bin Laden crystal clear: “We’ll
move everything to get him. But I don’t want to buy into the
Democratic pitch that this is all about one person. Because after
we get him, there’s going to be another and another.… It’s more
than Osama bin Laden. But he is going to pay, and he will die.”
(See Romney’s remarks at about 6:40 into this video of the May
3, 2007 Republican debate.)
The Miami Herald notes several instances of Barack
Obama saying that the issue of bin Laden should not be used by
himself or by others (such as Hillary “Do I look as tired as I
feel” Clinton) to score political points. But of course, that’s
just what the president is doing now. Desperate times call for
desperate measures.
The Herald also reports the Romney camp’s response to
the “One Chance” ad: “The killing of Osama bin Laden was a
momentous day for all Americans and the world, and Governor Romney
congratulated the military, our intelligence agencies, and the
President. It’s now sad to see the Obama campaign seek to use an
event that unified our country to once again divide us, in order to
try to distract voters’ attention from the failures of his
administration. With 23 million Americans struggling for work, our
national debt soaring, and household budgets being squeezed like
never before, Mitt Romney is focused on strengthening America at
home and abroad.”
As if the web ad weren’t hypocritical and pathetically
self-serving enough, the president sat down with NBC’s Brian
Williams for an “exclusive interview” to be aired on Wednesday. The
interview is, according to MSNBC, “the first for network
television” to be filmed inside the White House Situation Room,
from where the administration’s national security team watched the
bin Laden raid take place.
This is almost as much an indictment of NBC News as it is of the
president, but complaining about liberal media bias is like
complaining about a puppy peeing on your rug: it’s just what they
do. If you don’t like it, don’t buy a puppy — and don’t watch NBC
News.
The Obama administration is flustered by the lack of traction by
his other recent divisive campaign tactics. It’s doing anything it
can to distract from Obama’s record, pointing to the one rousing
success of his administration — but one that would be hard to
imagine any other president not grabbing should the same
opportunity have arisen.
As Republican strategist and Romney advisor Ed Gillespie said on
Meet the Press, “this is one of the reasons President
Obama has become one of the most divisive presidents in American
history. He took something that was a unifying event for all
Americans, an event that Governor Romney congratulated him and the
military and the intelligence analysts in our government for
completing the mission in terms of killing Osama bin Laden. And
he’s managed to turn it into a divisive, partisan, political attack
that former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci for President Reagan
called ‘sad.’ John McCain called ‘shameful.’ I think most Americans
will see it as a sign of a desperate campaign.”
Indeed, if there is one thing that Americans should learn from
the Wednesday interview, it is that President Obama simply has
nothing else he can talk about that will appeal to the broader
American electorate. His record is one of economic suppression and
radical leftist policy that only energizes his “Progressive” base.
Even many of those can’t be too pleased with their employment
prospects after more than three years of an Obama presidency. And
ironically, they are the people (other than terrorists themselves)
least pleased with Obama’s aggressive use of drones to kill
terrorist enemies of America, one of the few laudable policies of
this administration. With friends like that…
Perhaps Romney, with his response to the Obama web ad, is
following the advice of Jed Babbin who suggests
on these pages that in order to beat Barack Obama in November,
“Romney will have to be much tougher in his own right, and ready to
respond with the appropriate level of vehemence to Team Obama’s
attacks.” This goes hand-in-glove with Michelle Malkin’s
advice to Mitt Romney to stop saying that Obama is a “nice guy”
and instead discuss this administration’s many (non-terrorist)
victims.
With that in mind, a few ideas for Romney on this anniversary of
bin Laden’s death:
- “If only President Obama weren’t as effective at killing the
economy as he is at killing terrorists…” (Substitute “freedom” for
“the economy” occasionally, especially when trying to capture
libertarians, Tea Party activists, and Ron Paul supporters.)
- “It’s unfortunate that President Obama thinks that the EPA’s
relationship to jobs should be the same as the Navy SEALs’
relationship to Osama bin Laden.”
- “It’s too bad Barack Obama won’t go outside his leftist comfort
zone to help all Americans the way he does to hurt a few
terrorists.”
- And slightly tangential to bin Laden: “If President Obama were
doing such a good job, why is he having so many of his campaign
messages delivered by people named Clinton?”
The recent hype about the killing of bin Laden is a sign of
Obama’s weakness, not his strength. Obama knows it, NBC News knows
it, and it’s time for Mitt Romney to make sure voters know it —
and make sure it sticks.
