If it is true the TV quiz show-modeled exercise in
unpresidential “zingers” and “sound-bites” matters, then you may as
well go for the K.O. Fortunately, there is a simple hit the
governor can use to score in the first seconds of the first round.
It is this:
No matter the topic, the question, the format or anything at
all, the moment Mr. Romney is invited to speak he should say: “Mr.
President, why haven’t we bombed Benghazi?”
If the moderator is too surprised to react, or if he says,
“Governor, the question was — “, either way, Mr. Romney looks into
the cameras and continues:
“My fellow Americans, there are many issues of public policy
before us. We are a large, complex, rich and diverse country, and
there always will be many such issues before us — how to educate
our children; how sustain an economy of job-creating growth; how to
insure Americans have access to the best health care in the world;
and many more. In a democratic republic such as ours, it is normal
that we should disagree and argue about how to manage public
affairs. We debate and discuss all these issues and choose among
various proposals to resolve them or muddle through, and we can do
this in a civil and polite manner.
“But there is also an overarching issue this year. It is not a
public policy issue, although it has policy implications. It is a
moral issue, a national moral issue. It concerns the kind of
country we are and the place of our country in the world today. It
is indeed best encapsulated by the question I just put to President
Obama: why haven’t we bombed Benghazi?
“A couple of weeks ago, a savage mob murdered Americans in
Benghazi, a town in Libya. We, along with our British and French
allies, gave support to rebels in Libya during a civil war in 2011;
without our support, they would have failed in their objective,
which was to overthrow the 40-year regime of Moammar Gaddafi, a
very bad man.
“It is not a stretch to say the Libyans owe their new-found
freedom to us, and particularly to the good and dedicated American
public servants they murdered. Benghazi happens to be the historic
center of opposition to the Gaddafi tyranny and it is the most
important city in the new Libya, even if Tripoli remains the
official capital. But Benghazi is important because most of the
leaders of the victorious rebellion are based there. It is not
illogical to expect that Benghazi should be a hotbed of
pro-Americanism, since so many people there know, or should know,
they would be dead and Gaddafi would still be dictator had we not
helped them.
“Let me put it this way: imagine the year is 1782, just after
the conclusion of the American Revolution that logistically and
otherwise was aided by the French government, and a mob in New York
lynches the French ambassador, New York being at the time the
capital of the young United States. Say what you will about the
French monarchy of the late 18th century, and its motives for
helping us in our fight for freedom, I think you will agree the
French would have been justified in feeling outraged.
“They might even have considered, they surely would have
considered, sending some naval vessels into New York harbor and
giving the New Yorkers what-for, and I don’t think they would have
gone about it with Marquis of Queensberry rules.
“Now of course, this is a pure fantasy for the purpose of
getting a grip on what happened at Benghazi a couple weeks ago. It
never happened and it could not happen: the American
revolutionaries were serious about the professed aims of their
revolution. They were fighting for their rights, their property,
their freedoms, and they had expressed the large principles under
which they proposed to organize themselves once independence from
Great Britain was achieved.
“They took these principles very seriously: they explicitly
stated in the most famous document of the American national
movement that they owed it to mankind, by which they meant both
contemporary international public opinion but also their own and
other civilized societies’ posterities, to justify what they knew
was an extraordinary and dangerous course of action. They took the
full measure of the rebellion they launched and the war they
pursued. It was absolutely the most serious thing ever in their
lives, and they wanted no one to think they had done all this under
false premises.
“Not at all: they said they were rebelling because they believed
in freedom, in the rule of law, in the rights they knew were
theirs, as Englishmen and human beings. They said they had no
recourse because the Empire was repressing their freedoms and their
rights.
“Such men, such patriots, would not have mocked the very
principles for which they fought and died scarcely a year after
winning what had taken nearly a decade to achieve. They would not
have thumbed their noses at the very principles of civilized
government by permitting mob rule and terrorism to rampage in the
streets of their major city.
“But that is what happened in Libya.
“What we saw in Benghazi was this: in the Libyan affair, we were
played for fools, suckered by political gangsters who pretended to
aspire to freedom in order to get us to help them take the place of
other political gangsters.
“This, my fellow Americans, cannot be allowed. It cannot pass.
It must be dealt with as forcibly as necessary, without delay. We
cannot let the world get the message that we are suckers who can be
rolled by primitive thugs.
“Now, do I really think we should turn Benghazi to rubble, as my
rhetorical question to our president suggests?
“To be quite honest, I would not rule it out, were it put on the
table as a viable option by our national security leaders in the
Executive branch and in our armed forces. But the real issue, of
course, is elsewhere: how is it that they dare to do this and why
is it that our response was to apologize and assure the offenders
that we feel their pain?
“And the answer is quite simple. After four years of the Obama
administration they know they can get away with it. We have an
administration that does not fight for America, that does not,
quite frankly, believe that America’s interests come first.
Including, of course, being respected, perhaps even feared as well
as admired — for without respect, none of our other interests can
be secure.
“In asking our president why he has not ordered the bombardment
of Benghazi, I am not proposing that we start World War III, as
surely the Democrat spinners and distorters are already saying. No,
I am saying that the Obama administration has not led — neither in
the grave international crises that define the period we are living
through, nor in any other area of importance to our country, most
notably putting our economy back on track and restoring the
American dream of hard work and success. They have let us down.
Their policies not only invite the kinds of outrages that occurred
at Benghazi, they encourage more. Their policies do not restore our
competitiveness and our job-creating free economic system, they
sink us deeper into the mire and quicksand of debt, deficit, and
discouragement.
“Bomb Benghazi? My fellow Americans, if that is what it takes,
that is what I will do, but let me say this. What it really is
going to take is leadership founded in faith in America and in
Americans — in you, my fellow citizens.
“For the Republic, for America! And may the best team win the
World Series.”
Okay, okay, perhaps he should not refer to the World Series in
this riff, because too many people will say he is ending on a
trivial note. But Mitt Romney must come out swinging — if not
tonight, then surely in the coming weeks as he hits the road, goes
on the 24/7 stump, and carries the message that what America lacks
is pro-American leadership. Whatever the theme — when he is
addressing foreign affairs, or jobs and growth, or debt and
deficit, or health care and education, he must indicate that always
the first principle is this: we will fight against anything that
brings our country down.
