"Romney made a strategic decision not go after the president on Libya, or Syria, or other areas where Obama could accuse him of being a Bush-like war monger."

Observed Charles Krauthammer — aptly, I think.

Obama didn't get much to fight against, and as the debate wore on, perhaps Obama worried that he might seem too much like the Obama who lost the first debate. Live-blogging, half an hour into the debate, I wrote: "They've stopped interrupting each other. No belligerence tonight. There's an evenness and similarity to the 2 candidates." 5 minutes later, Obama suddenly got really belligerent. That was odd. I'm thinking he decided he had to tear Romney down even if Romney gave him no useful material. Romney stuck to his game of giving Obama nothing, so Romney "won" by his own terms. He won the game he chose to play, and he didn't get distracted into playing Obama's game, though Obama tried to aggravate him.

Ironically, assuming Krauthammer is correct, Obama wanted belligerence (at the debate) about Romney's belligerence (in the world). Romney declined to be that belligerent — Bush-like! — guy Obama wanted to be belligerent with. Romney deprived him of the casus belli, but he went to war — the war of the debate table — nonetheless.

I'm looking at the transcript. What was going on when Obama suddenly broke the debate's placidity? The candidates were in the middle of chewing over the most abstract question of the night: "What do each of you see as our role in the world?" Most of the questions last night were, essentially, the naming of a country: Libya, Syria, Pakistan.... This was the big-picture question. Romney did his 2 minutes, which included a section about the American economy:

[To lead in the world], we have to strengthen our economy here at home. You can't have 23 million people struggling to get a job. You can't have an economy that over the last three years keeps slowing down its growth rate. You can't have kids coming out of college, half of them can't find a job today, or a job that's commensurate with their college degree. We have to get our economy going.

Obama's response included some domestic economics:

But what we also have been able to do is position ourselves so we can start rebuilding America, and that's what my plan does. Making sure that we're bringing manufacturing back to our shores so that we're creating jobs here, as we've done with the auto industry, not rewarding companies that are shipping jobs overseas.

Making sure that we've got the best education system in the world, including retraining our workers for the jobs of tomorrow.

Doing everything we can to control our own energy. We've cut our oil imports to the lowest level in two decades because we've developed oil and natural gas. But we also have to develop clean energy technologies that will allow us to cut our exports in half by 2020. That's the kind of leadership that we need to show.

And we've got to make sure that we reduce our deficit. Unfortunately, Governor Romney's plan doesn't do it. We've got to do it in a responsible way by cutting out spending we don't need, but also asking the wealthiest to pay a little bit more. That way we can invest in the research and technology that's always kept us at the cutting edge.

That seems like way too much domestic policy, but maybe Obama realized that the election really is going to be about the economy. He wasn't getting any traction on the foreign policy material that is supposedly the topic of this third debate, and this is the last debate. The election won't be won or lost on who stuck to the foreign policy theme, and anyway, Romney started it. But Obama must have also realized that he was going on, as if on autopilot, and not addressing the big-picture question of the night: What does he see as our role in the world? The vision thing!

If "vision thing" doesn't ring a bell for you, here's the "Vision thing" Wikipedia article:

In the January 26, 1987, issue of Time magazine, in an article entitled “Where Is the Real George Bush?” journalist Robert Ajemian reported that a friend of Bush's had urged him to spend several days at Camp David thinking through his plans for his prospective presidency, to which Bush is said to have responded in exasperation, "Oh, the vision thing." This oft-cited quote became a shorthand for the charge that Bush failed to contemplate or articulate important policy positions in a compelling and coherent manner.

Obama collected his wits and, with a few seconds to go on the vision-thing answer, he said:

Now, Governor Romney has taken a different approach throughout this campaign. Both at home and abroad, he has proposed wrong and reckless policies. He's praised George Bush as a good economic steward and Dick Cheney as somebody who's - who shows great wisdom and judgment. And taking us back to those kinds of strategies that got us into this mess are not the way that we are going to maintain leadership in the 21st century.

The vision is: Bush was terrible! The familiar word string "got us into this mess" dribbles out of Obama's mouth for the thousandth time. I'm not Bush — that's the vision, and even though Romney failed — as Krauthammer pointed out — to be enough like Bush to give Obama a place to stand and declare I AM NOT BUSH, he did it anyway.

Schieffer turned to Romney and repeated the words "wrong and reckless policies." (Schieffer was brilliant, by the way. So minimal and unobtrusive, but absolutely there.) "I've got a policy for the future and agenda for the future," Romney said, launching away from the question and into his 5-point plan for the economy. He's not Bush either, and he doesn't bother to explain why. If the question was supposed to be about Bush-and-Cheney's warmongering, Romney ignores that. Obama responds using his 2 minutes to talk about the economy too — not to refocus us on Bush's belligerence. After the 2 men have consumed approximately equal time in this off-topic speechmaking, Schieffer breaks in:

SCHIEFFER: Let me get back to foreign policy.

(CROSSTALK)

SCHIEFFER: Can I just get back...

ROMNEY: Well - well, I need to speak a moment...

SCHIEFFER: OK.

ROMNEY: ... if you'll let me, Bob, just about education...

SCHIEFFER: OK.

Okay!

ROMNEY: ... because I'm - I'm so proud of the state that I had the chance to be governor of. We have every two years tests that look at how well our kids are doing. Fourth graders and eighth graders are tested in English and math. While I was governor, I was proud that our fourth graders came out number one of all 50 states in English, and then also in math. And our eighth graders number one in English and also in math. First time one state had been number one in all four measures. How did we do that? Well, Republicans and Democrats came together on a bipartisan basis to put in place education principles that focused on having great teachers in the classroom.

And here's where Obama goes for the interruption that broke the mood of placidity last night:

OBAMA: Ten years earlier...

ROMNEY: And that was - that was - that was what allowed us to become the number one state in the nation.

OBAMA: But that was 10 years before you took office.

(CROSSTALK)

[OBAMA]: And then you cut education spending when you came into office.

ROMNEY: The first - the first - the first - and we kept our schools number one in the nation. They're still number one today.

SCHIEFFER: All right.

ROMNEY: And the principles that we put in place, we also gave kids not just a graduation exam that determined whether they were up to the skills needed to - to be able compete, but also if they graduated the quarter of their class, they got a four-year tuition- free ride at any Massachusetts public institution of higher learning.

OBAMA: That happened before you came into office.

SCHIEFFER: Governor...

ROMNEY: That was actually mine, actually, Mr. President. You got that fact wrong.

(CROSSTALK)

SCHIEFFER: Let me get - I want to try to shift it, because we have heard some of this in the other debates.

As I put it last night, "Obama just did some sharp interrupting while Romney was rhapsodizing about education in Massachusetts." To restate my observation: Obama suddenly changed his tone, got belligerent, when Romney was just going on innocuously about education. There was no casus belli. Whatever happened happened inside Obama head. I need to be Debate #2 Obama, not Debate #1 Obama. He felt the placidity of the evening, the utter failure to ignite the BUSH!!!!! petard, so he made a fight out of nothing.

Live-blogging the big last debate.

7:06 Central Time: Get ready!

7:32: In the comments, Sorun said, "I predict a big Obama win tonight, since the only people watching will be single women (and Althouse)." Ha ha. Very funny. Right now, we are watching the baseball game. I know there's football too.

8:02: Bob Scheiffer introduces the candidates.

8:04: First question: Libya. Romney talking as Obama keeps an icy stare trained upon him. I don't hear Romney nailing any strong point. He's decided to be conciliatory here for some reason. Obama talking now, stressing liberating the people of Libya after 40 years of despotism.

8:14: Romney: "Attacking me is not an agenda." He corrects Obama about Russia. He certainly wouldn't say to Putin he'll have flexibility after the election. Now, there's a lot of overtalking about Iraq. Obama gains control and talks about being "clear" about foreign policy. The moderator is not intervening, so the topics are allowed to be completely mixed up.

8:17: Obama has picked up Romney's tic of ticking off 5 points.

8:18: Syria. "Syrians are going to have to determine their own future," says Obama. What we see in Syria "is heartbreaking," but it would be "a serious step" to get "more entangled." Romney says "Syria is an opportunity for us." It's "Iran's only ally," but we don't want to get "dragged into a military conflict." Romney's trying to be level-headed and presidential, not to shake anything up here tonight.

 8:21: Romney says we should "be taking the leadership role" in Syria, and Obama picks up that phrase: "We are playing the leadership role."

8:24: Romney doesn't have different ideas about Syria, because we're doing the right thing there, says Obama.

8:25: Egypt: Romney wouldn't have supported Mubarak. Basically, again, Romney agrees with what Obama did. Romney adds some aspirations about the Middle East, but not any real distinction from Obama.

8:29: "What is America's role in the world?" is Bob Schieffer's big, generic question. Romney, "America must be strong. America must lead." Obama says we're "the one indispensable nation... Our alliances have never been stronger."

8:34: They've stopped interrupting each other. No belligerence tonight. There's an evenness and similarity to the 2 candidates (not that there aren't a few disagreements).

8:39: Obama just did some sharp interrupting while Romney was rhapsodizing about education in Massachusetts.

8:43: Romney defends military spending. He emphasizes keeping the numbers of ships and planes up. Obama says Romney doesn't understand how the military works. "We... have fewer horses and bayonets..." he says sarcastically. It's not "a game of Battleship, where we're counting ships."

8:47: Question: Does an attack on Israel count as an attack on the United States? Obama doesn't give a straightforward yes, but says "I will stand with Israel."

8:48: Romney adopts the same "stand with Israel" language. Both stressed military intervention as the last resort.

8:52: Obama says the reports of an agreement with Iran are not true. "We would welcome Iran" into "the community of nations." He chides Romney for acting as though it would work to say the same things but say them "louder."

8:54: Iran "saw weakness," Romney said, harkening back to Obama's campaign 2008 statements about willingness to sit down with the leaders of Iran (and other places). Obama was silent on Iran's Green Revolution. Obama said he'd put "daylight" between the U.S. and Israel, and that encouraged Iran's defiance. We need to "show strength." We need the tightest possible sanctions. We need to indict Ahmadinejad.

8:57: Everything Romney just said is untrue, according to Obama, who claims he was "very clear" about the Green Revolution.

8:58: Romney: "The reason I called it an apology tour... You said America had been dismissive and derisive... America has not 'dictated to other nations.' America has freed other nations."

9:01: Schieffer wants to know what we'd do if Israel called up and said our bombers are on the way to Israel, and Romney rejects the hypothetical. That's not the relationship we have. It wouldn't play out like that.

9:06: Romney assures us we'll bring our troops out of Afghanistan by 2014. But what if the Afghans aren't ready? That was the question. Obama ignores the question the same way.

9:11: "Is it time for us to divorce Pakistan?" asks Bob Schieffer. Romney: No, it's too important — nuclear weapons, terrorists.

9:13: Romney is asked about drone strikes, and he completely supports Obama's policy.

9:18: Obama defends fighting China when it dumped cheap tires here. Romney doesn't want "protectionism" against China, but finding mutual interests with China: We want a stable world, "but you've got to play by the rules." And Romney wants to declare China a "currency manipulator." Romney explains why that makes sense. "I want a great relationship with China" but "they can't roll all over us."

9:26: Lots of fighting over the auto industry. Obama says check the record and a bit later Romney says check the record. Romney's point is that government should not invest in business, while Obama is accusing him of willingness to let the auto companies go into liquidation.

9:30: Romney wants to get the private sector growing, which isn't done by hiring a lot of teachers, though he certainly does love teachers. Schieffer, rushing toward the finish line, says "I think we all love teachers," and announces it's time for closing statements.

9:36: Closing statements. Bob Schieffer ends with his mom's advice: Go vote.

9:40: Michelle Obama comes onto stage to greet Obama and about 10 Romney people — including a lot of kids — come up to hang out with Romney.

9:44: I watched on CNN (with that damn graph on the bottom showing how undecided males and females reacted to each moment), and afterwards James Carville yammered so much about how Obama won that I turned it off. I didn't think either candidate won. They seemed surprisingly similar. Obama certainly maintained eye contact. If it was an eye contact contest, Obama won.

9:52: Here's my bottom line: By adopting a strategy of only modestly challenging Obama and mostly seeming the same as Obama on foreign policy, Romney neutralized foreign policy as an issue and kept the election focus on the economy. He even refocused the discussion on the economy whenever he could over the course of the evening. The election is about the economy, and nothing either candidate said tonight will change that. The only way Obama really could have won is if Romney had tumbled into some kind of exploitable gaffe. That didn't happen.

Bill Keller of the NYT advises Romney, at tonight's debate, "to demonstrate that you understand the world is a complex, unpredictable, subtle and rapidly metamorphosing place."

There's a list of subtopics, beginning with "Go easy on Benghazi."

What to make of this leak from "a senior administration official" to the NYT about a U.S.-Iran agreement to negotiate over nuclear power?

Quite aside from whether there really is such an agreement, why would the administration want to leak the news? There is also an official denial of the agreement, but that just means the administration wants it both ways, and the question remains: Why do they want this?

News of the agreement — a result of intense, secret exchanges between American and Iranian officials that date almost to the beginning of President Obama’s term — comes at a critical moment in the presidential contest, just two weeks before Election Day and the weekend before the final debate, which is to focus on national security and foreign policy.

It has the potential to help Mr. Obama make the case that he is nearing a diplomatic breakthrough in the decade-long effort by the world’s major powers to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, but it could pose a risk if Iran is seen as using the prospect of the direct talks to buy time.

Is it a feint? How is Romney supposed to respond? The Obama team may have figured out the set of possible Romney responses and have Obama prepared to deliver a devastating response to whatever Romney chooses to do.

Romney's foreign policy speech at VMI: "The Mantle of Leadership."

Text here. Excerpt:

I want to be very clear:  The blame for the murder of our people in Libya, and the attacks on our embassies in so many other countries, lies solely with those who carried them out—no one else.  But it is the responsibility of our President to use America’s great power to shape history—not to lead from behind, leaving our destiny at the mercy of events.  Unfortunately, that is exactly where we find ourselves in the Middle East under President Obama....

I know the President hopes for a safer, freer, and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States. I share this hope.  But hope is not a strategy.  We cannot support our friends and defeat our enemies in the Middle East when our words are not backed up by deeds, when our defense spending is being arbitrarily and deeply cut, when we have no trade agenda to speak of, and the perception of our strategy is not one of partnership, but of passivity.

"Daylight" between the United States and Israel.

From a Wall Street Journal article by Mitt Romney:

The president began his term with the explicit policy of creating "daylight" between [he United States and Israel]. He recently downgraded Israel from being our "closest ally" in the Middle East to being only "one of our closest allies." It's a diplomatic message that will be received clearly by Israel and its adversaries alike. He dismissed Israel's concerns about Iran as mere "noise" that he prefers to "block out." And at a time when Israel needs America to stand with it, he declined to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In this period of uncertainty, we need to apply a coherent strategy of supporting our partners in the Middle East—that is, both governments and individuals who share our values....

It means placing no daylight between the United States and Israel.

Does "exceptionalism" = "swagger" in the mind of the Washington Post?

"Obama, Romney differ on need for U.S. 'swagger.'" That's the headline on the WaPo front page now, linking to a story with the headline "Obama, Romney differ on U.S. exceptionalism."

The word put in quotes is "swagger," and that ought to mean somebody said that. The word appears once in the article. After a few sentences on Romney's "far tougher approach to the world" and Obama's emphasis on "diplomacy and partnerships, and American assistance where wanted without heavy-handed demands from the top," we get:

“It’s very clear in reading and hearing what the two candidates have to say that, at least rhetorically, there would be a significant change under President Romney,” said Karl F. Inderfurth, an assistant secretary of state in the Bill Clinton administration who is now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Inderfurth, who is not working with either campaign, said some of the “swagger” of the George W. Bush administration would return to U.S. foreign policy under Romney.

“Obama has tried to tone that down, and he has faced pushback for doing so,” he said.

So, apparently Inderfurth used the word "swagger," perhaps only to characterize the feeling some people got from George Bush (that cowboy), but Romney has never — as far as I can see — said we need "swagger," and Romney's manner seems wholly different from George Bush's. It seems modest and mannerly. The word "swagger" seems more applicable to Obama, who's been killing enemies with drones and likes to point out that he killed bin Laden.

It's rather annoying to see WaPo quote a supposed expert telling us what's "very clear" in the rhetoric and then slap the label "swagger" on it. Show us the rhetoric, and let us judge. I'm displaying your rhetoric, so my readers can judge.

Until now, the campaign has been concerned mostly with the economy, and foreign policy has been viewed largely as a strength for the president, who was behind the killing of Osama bin Laden.

But the recent unrest in the Muslim world — revealed in the attack in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans — has exposed Obama politically and been seized upon by Romney as a product of what he calls the president’s weak engagement of the world.

So, I suspect, you're putting out this article, with that front-page headline, in an effort to help shore up the fortunes of your favored candidate. Let's find a way to scare voters... equate Romney with Bush!

The conflicting philosophies Obama and Romney outlined this week are consistent in large part with their life experiences.

Those backgrounds have given each a different vantage on the world — a former chief executive’s broad-strokes view of how it should work and a former community organizer’s details-matter assessment — and different opinions about the best way to promote U.S. interests at a time of fiscal constraint at home and rapid change abroad.

What?! You're just going to make generalizations about the 2 men based on what they did in the parts of their careers when they were not politicians, and Romney's long career as a business executive is translated into a "broad-strokes view of how it should work" and Obama's short bit of time performing the little-examined role of "community organizer" shows he's a details guy! And the suggestion is that Obama actually got things done while Romney floated above it all with ideas about what "should work." Businessfolk can just believe in big dreams? Is there any evidence at all the Romney didn't have to pay attention to the facts on the ground as he went about these business enterprises, that he didn't get tested over and over by whether things actually did work?

Putin says: "That Mr. Romney considers us enemy number one and apparently has bad feelings about Russia is a minus..."

"... but, considering that he expresses himself bluntly, openly and clearly, means that he is an open and sincere man, which is a plus."

"We will be oriented toward pluses, not minuses... And I am actually very grateful to him for formulating his position in a straightforward manner."

Says a man who is not himself speaking in a straightforward manner, but who presumably perceives an advantage in portraying his opponent as straightforward.

Romney an open and sincere man?

This dog whistle whistles both ways.

"New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd set the Jewish political community on fire [Sunday] with a column about the Republican ticket's foreign policy proposals that, according to her critics, peddled anti-Semitic imagery," reports Politico.

You know all the racist things Republicans are always saying, as seen by Democrats? It's like that.

"Maureen may not know this, but she is peddling an old stereotype, that gentile leaders are dolts unable to resist the machinations and manipulations of clever and snake-like Jews," Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic columnist and leading journalist on Israeli issues, wrote.

Snake-like... because the title of the article is "Neocons Slither Back." Dowd may not write the headline, and though she does use the word "slither" in her text, she's quoting Paul Wolfowitz, and he was saying that Obama shouldn't be allowed to "slither through" without having to take — Dowd's words here — "a clear position on liberals."

Dowd proceeds to say "Republicans are bananas on this one." Of course, if a Republican said Obama was bananas, that Republican would probably be accused of racism, because bananas remind us of monkeys, and the monkey is an animal that is associated with some racist iconography, and it's assumed that anything you say about the President is said while thinking about his race — which makes it conveniently/absurdly dangerous to criticize the President.

If Obama talked like this in 2008...

... how can it be awesomely awful for candidate Romney to articulate his criticism of the present administration?

Video via Ed Morrissey ("I think that policy in Iraq and Afghanistan were perfectly acceptable topics for political debate at that time"), via Instapundit (FLASHBACK: Major-Party Nominee Uses War Deaths To Score Political Points. Yeah, but he was a Democrat, and black, and hence above media criticism.").

Can we get some consistency from the big-media pundits? Shouldn't the NYT, for example, have noticed by now that new media is dogging them, and we have YouTube? I mean, they've got to feel how it's screwed up the economics of newspapers. But to ignore the way they undermine their credibility — don't they see how damaging it is to the political power they clearly want? That is, if they want that power, they need to make sure it is not clear.

The more MSM lets their lust show, the less likely we highly selective swing voters will spend any time with you. You have to insinuate yourself into our minds, and you've triggered our resistance. We're turned off. Yes, the base loves what you're saying, but they didn't need to be seduced.

"Romney Offends the Pundits: Doesn't he know he's not supposed to debate foreign policy?"

The Wall Street Journal editorial.

His political faux pax was to offend a pundit class that wants to cede the foreign policy debate to Mr. Obama without thinking seriously about the trouble for America that is building in the world.

Faux pax? False peace? Once you get started with the silent x, it's hard to stop, isn't it? Anyway, what was Mitt's misstep — faux pas — in making a prominent statement on a day of foreign policy crisis?

Was it "awesomely awful"? — as Paul Krugman put it, sounding as if he'd like to write titles for Judith Viorst kid's books. Was it exactly normal, another day on the campaign, chewing through whatever comes up in the news, letting people see how the challenger would differ from the incumbent, who's stuck handling whatever happens as part of his job? Or was this a specific and important occasion for drawing attention to Obama's instinctive apologizing for America?

Yesterday was a key day — perhaps the day — in the campaign. Convention bounce and the Chicago teachers strike were instantly overshadowed. There was an opportunity to go for the win, and Romney took it. The media noticed, of course, and sprang into such intense, concerted action that it was obvious that they knew it was a day to be won and if the other side was going to go for the win, they had to act quickly and ensure that their guy won the day. Shock and awe, baby. Awesomely awful, indeed.

"Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others."

"But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence. None. The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts."

The full text of Obama's statement, released today. Refer to the full context and to the place where it appears at the end of a timeline of statements — from various individuals, including Romney.

"Dead Ambassador dragged through streets, MSM furious at Romney criticism of Obama."

The media strains "to shift the focus from the Obama administration’s failure to protect our embassies and for its apologies (both before and after the attack on the Cairo Embassy) to whether Mitt Romney was wrong to criticize Obama last night."

ADDED: Ridiculous NYT headline: "Many Republicans Join Democrats in Denouncing Attack in Libya." Everyone denounces it! What's this notion that the Dems are all one and some but not all Republicans "join" them? I think they're trying to separate Mitt Romney as the one who isn't joining. The item ends:

As those statements [from various Republicans] came out, Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, stood by his criticism that a statement from the American Embassy in Cairo condemning the intolerance of an anti-Muslim Internet video was tantamount to “an apology for American values.”

As if that means Romney doesn't denounce the attack! That's a way of flipping the problem, which is the Obama administration's insufficient denouncement, as if the murderers had some justification... which reminded me, on 9/11, of lefty chatter I heard on 9/11/01 that the terrorist attacks were provoked by racism in the United States.

Romney's Israel ad.

"The commercial then features footage of Romney appearing in the Jewish state, meeting with Israeli voters, wearing a yarmulke and visiting the Western Wall":

What do you think of that ad?
	Excellent! Clear and much needed.
	Good but a bit worrisomely heavy-handed.
	I'd rather he not push this sensitive issue. Keep the focus on the economy.
	This shows his inexperience, his clumsiness with foreign policy.
	A disgusting, inept pitch for the Jewish/Islamophobe vote.
pollcode.com free polls

Romney's foreign trip was a festival of gaffes.

That's the story MSM fell all over itself trying to tell. Here's Charles Krauthammer with the counternarrative: "Romney's excellent trip."

"It is a racist statement and this man doesn't realize that the Palestinian economy cannot reach its potential because there is an Israeli occupation."

"This man" = Mitt Romney.

ADDED:  Word is that Romney wasn't just comparing Israel to the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority. He also compared the U.S. to Mexico and Chile to Ecuador — other examples of countries that are geographically close and have "wide income disparities." Romney was using ideas in the books "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond and "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations" by David Landes. Fine. Let's have the transcript!

Romney: “It is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel.”

That was a powerful statement, Jennifer Rubin writes, since the Obama administration has "repeatedly put out documents suggesting that Jerusalem isn’t in Israel and has attempted to scrub from the White House Web site the reference to Israel’s capital."

More quotes from Romney's speech at the link, including:

I believe that the enduring alliance between the State of Israel and the United States of America is more than a strategic alliance: It is a force for good in the world. America’s support of Israel should make every American proud. We should not allow the inevitable complexities of modern geopolitics to obscure fundamental touchstones. No country or organization or individual should ever doubt this basic truth: A free and strong America will always stand with a free and strong Israel.

"God bless you.”/“Here comes the next president!”/“He is for Israel!”

Romney at Jerusalem's Western Wall.

"Romney book: Britain is a tiny island that makes stuff nobody wants."

That's the headline in Foreign Policy, which is getting attention (according to Memeorandum), especially after Romney supposedly said something that upset the Brits today. (Surveying the London Olympics, Romney saw "a few things that were disconcerting." The Brits are keen to mock, and the mockery is magnified here in the U.S., because American media is inclined to boost Obama whenever the opportunity arises.)

Let's look at the paragraph Foreign Policy highlighted:

England [sic/[FP's sic]] is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn't make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. And if it hadn't been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler's ambitions. Yet only two lifetimes ago, Britain ruled the largest and wealthiest empire in the history of humankind. Britain controlled a quarter of the earth's land and a quarter of the earth's population.

Oh, there's where they cut it off? Well, obviously he was in the middle of making a point. But you know the rule in journalism: Taking things out of context is okay when you do it to hurt conservatives. But I happen to have my Kindle copy of Romney's book "No Apology: Believe in America," so it's easy for me to give you the context. Here are the next 4 paragraphs:

Romney in London.

NBC reports:

Romney’s press-corps faux pas: During his meeting with Miliband, according to the pool report, Romney answered questions from British reporters but did not take any questions from the American reporters, which isn’t protocol. In fact, it’s considered a bit of an insult... [F]olks, those of us that have traveled overseas and been involved in these VERY limited press avails have rarely seen heads of democracies TOTALLY ignore their own press corps but answer ANOTHER press corps’ questions....

Drama! I hope you were stamping your feet and balling up your little fists to go along with the all-caps shout-y stuff.

ADDED: Protocols of the Journalists of London... I was moved to look up "protocol" in the OED:

1b. Ancient Hist. The first sheet of a roll of papyrus, bearing the manufacturer's official mark; such a mark.

1885 Encycl. Brit. XVIII. 233/1 The first sheet of a roll was named πρωτόκολλον... On the Arab conquest of Egypt in the 7th century, the manufacture was continued, with the substitution of Arabic in marking the protocol....

The meaning used in the NBC article is #6:

a. The official rules of etiquette to be observed by the head of state and other dignitaries in ceremonies and relations with the representatives of other states; the procedure governing diplomatic occasions, affairs of state, etc.; the observance of this....

c. In extended use: the accepted or established code of behaviour in any group, organization, or situation; an instance of this.

I think it's good for journalists to be fussy and adamant about the accepted or established code of behaviour for their group. Is it protocol to accuse a presidential candidate of a breach of protocol when upon arrival in a foreign country he gives exclusive preference to the reporters of that country?