Calling Mitt Romney's summer trip to Europe "gaffepalooza," Eugene Robinson writes in his Washington Post column that it revealed quite a lot about how the candidate sees himself and his place in the world.
How is Mitt Romney's summer vacation going? Fine, except for frequent pauses to remove foot from mouth.
He began his "Look At Me, I'm a Statesman" overseas tour by offending the people of the United Kingdom. To put it mildly, Romney is no genius at reading the mood of an audience. But even he realized things were not going well when he saw tabloid headlines such as "Mitt the Twit" and "Nowhere Man."..
Romney's purpose there was, let's be honest, to pander…
Romney did this pretty well, for a while. ..
But Romney strayed from the script at a fundraiser when he said culture was a prime reason why Israel was so much more prosperous than the occupied territories under control of the Palestinian Authority. "I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things," Romney said.
Palestinians noted that one of those "few other things" is the decades-long Israeli occupation that strictly controls the movement of goods and people. Romney's riff on culture "is a racist statement," said Saeb Erakat, a longtime Palestinian official.
Romney wants to project bold confidence. Instead, he radiates blind certainty. All around the world, people can tell the difference.
Read Eugene Robinson's entire piece at the Washington Post.
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