from domestic. far weaker if we don t have the political and economic power to back them up. richard haass is the author of foreign policy begins at home. richard, always good to see you. i love this lead from the washington post this morning, column on the foreign policy debate and the conundrum that this is an easy red versus blue. the problem is not the democrats are wimps or that republicans are war mongers or washington s halls of power are filled with the greedy and hapless, but rather that few foreign policy problems can be solved. most can at best be managed and just getting by is often the best we can do. that s a realistic approach that voters never want to hear on the campaign trail. sure, you want to hear the word solution as americans but that happens to be the truth and indeed in lots of the world i would say our interests are greater than our influence. and navigating this world is going to be difficult and
as far as i can tell. when you bore down. you made a point about essentially paul ryan endorsing the afghanistan strategy. yes. paul ryan said that president obama s afghanistan surge was a huge success, right? now that s probably for two reasons. a, you have a candidate saying the center piece was a huge success. b, it wasn t a huge success. on both grounds he was off base. and this to me strikes at something very deep about the politics of foreign policy, which is that the nation is war weary. one thing i think is positive sounds weird to say but one thing i think is progress in a certain way is that we ve become much less enthusiastic about the possibility of military intervention being a solution to foreign policy problems. you saw ryan have to constantly say, no, we don t want war. no one wants war. that was the sort of right. so that i think is progress in terms of how the american public opinion posture is. at the same time the republican
whether or not egypt is an ally, not sure about that at the moment. what does this say about the romney campaign in some ways if there is an argument to be made that foreign policy should not necessarily be a strong suit here for the president? look, he s up to being criticized for foreign policy problems. i think the relationship with israel has unfortunately suffered because of unnecessary slights to the prime minister, but on the other hand i think right now i m glad he said it s not clear that egypt is an ally. they are not acting like one, and i think that one is going to gain points with the american people. but, sure he s public to criticism on a lot of foreign policy issues as well. martha: we ve got to go but one thing you think the romney campaign needs to do right now. i do think there are gaps on this foreign policy issue there are vulnerabilities and making it a little more clear what they are is perfectly imbound for mitt romney. i won t be surprised if their
he says, now it s our time, referring to republicans who have promised to bring fiscal discipline to the budget, curb the debt and straighten out foreign policy problems that they are blaming on president obama throughout the world. bill: he was doing cbs on sunday morning but he would not say he would undue the president s order executive order from last friday. what more could you add about that. reporter: he claimed the president s decision to make this executive order on friday, the day after a fairly cooley received speech on the economy was pure politics in timing perhaps to over shadow what was considered to be by many a weak economic speech the day before, to play politics against pheup politics with regard to immigration. mr. romney did not say he would overturn or keep in place the president s executive order, instead what he s arguing is he ll come up with a comprehensive program, a piece of legislation with congress that will ultimately resolve the
bitter about everything. what s going on here? chris, senator mccain has not recovered from 2008. that colors everything that he says and does. and he is not pursuing complex, nuanced approaches to solving foreign policy problems. his answer is air strikes, air strikes, air strikes, and he has marshaled other surrogates for governor romney to have that same party line. it s unfortunate and i am delighted to hear ambassador rice and the subtlety with which she speaks. thank you so much. i agree with you, general eaton, because nothing that the neocon intellectuals like more than an empty shell. they found it in dan quayle, that they used very effectively. they found it in w., who had a vacate experience with foreign policy at all. and they used these guys to be super hawks. and they have this new candidate for super hawkdom and they ll feed him and script him and you won t nowhere he came from because he will be created in the months to come by the