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发帖数: 29846 | 1 GDANSK, Poland — Mitt Romney came to this iconic port city Monday for a
prized photo opportunity with former Polish President Lech Walesa that would
link him to the hero of Solidarity and perhaps catch the eye of the many
Polish-Americans clustered in swing states.
Romney got that and then some.
Walesa, in a clearly prepared move, effectively endorsed the presumptive GOP
nominee once reporters were let into their meeting here.
“I wish you to be successful because this success is needed to the United
States, of course, but to Europe and the rest of the world, too,” Walesa
said through a translator.
Then, with a bang of his fist on a wooden table, the Nobel Prize winner
urged the Republican to claim victory: “Gov. Romney, get your success — be
successful!”
Along with a pair of made-for-camera visits to Gdansk’s two civic shrines
— a monument that marks where the first shots of World War II were fired
and another in honor of Walesa’s legendary labor movement — it was all
Romney’s high command could have wanted.
The only hitch: Romney left quite a wake on his way from the Middle East to
Europe.
In a Jerusalem fundraiser he held Monday morning before jetting to Poland,
the presumptive GOP nominee reprised an argument he’s made before in
speeches about why he believes Israelis have more economic success than
their Palestinian counterparts.
Citing a book, “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” by Harvard economist
David Landes, Romney suggested at a breakfast at the King David Hotel that
“culture makes all the difference” to explain why Israelis have
outperformed Palestinians.
Palestinian officials, already irked that Romney had declined to meet with
President Mahmoud Abbas over the weekend, responded with fury.
“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,” Saeb Erekat, an Abbas aide, told The Associated Press, adding
that “this man lacks information, knowledge, vision and understanding of
this region and its people.”
Romney’s campaign was deeply unhappy with how AP handled the story, saying
Romney had used similar language in other speeches and even emailing
reporters the relevant part of his own 2010 book in which he highlighted the
“culture” passage from “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.”
“It was a point that he has made and made today about the differences
between such countries as Chile and Ecuador and United States and Mexico and
that the economic situations for prosperity are interesting to study and
important,” Romney chief strategist Stuart Stevens told reporters in Gdansk
. “This was not in any way an attempt to slight the Palestinians and
everyone knows that.”
What it was, however, was the second painful lesson Romney has gotten in the
course of a weeklong, three-country foreign trip that he has to be more
careful now about offering what he considers inoffensive, analytical points
in public settings.
The candidate doesn’t seemed to have grasped the importance of context and
setting, how the comments of a presidential candidate will be weighed.
Romney surely thought he was stating the obvious last week when he alluded
to Great Britain’s widely covered challenges preparing for the Olympics,
calling difficulties with security “disconcerting.”
And, similarly, the candidate probably never thought twice about riffing
again on the notion that culture matters in determining whether a country’s
economy is successful.
But saying such things on the eve of the Olympics during a TV interview at
the outset of his visit to London and to a group largely composed of wealthy
American Jews at a luxury hotel in Jerusalem will have impact.
Of course, Fleet Street took grave offense at his Olympics assessment,
prompting proud British politicians to follow suit. And, just the same,
Palestinian leaders — already feeling left out during a visit in which
Romney heaped praise on Israel, didn’t set foot in the West Bank and said
nothing about the peace process — were bound to feel aggrieved about an
American presidential hopeful playing amateur sociologist and analyzing
their difficulties.
Naturally, Democrats were delighted with Romney’s faux pas.
“Is there anything about Romney’s Rolling Ruckus that would inspire
confidence in his ability to lead U.S. foreign policy?” tweeted David
Axelrod, a top adviser to President Barack Obama.
Romney’s comments clouded an otherwise successful day for Romney here on
the Baltic.
He arrived in the center of Gdansk to find a crowd of hundreds, cheering,
waving and holding up cameras to snap his photograph.
“Wow, look at that,” Romney said, surveying the crowd as he walked up the
steps of the city’s old town hall to meet with Polish Prime Minister Donald
Tusk. “This is great.”
“This is like a local rally in the U.S.,” said his wife, Ann.
There were some “O-bama-a” chants when Romney emerged after meeting Tusk,
but the Republican quickly found another receptive audience with Walesa that
could prove helpful in Polish-heavy enclaves in Pennsylvania, Ohio and
Michigan in which Walesa remains an iconic figure.
“Poland and many other countries will certainly do their best for the
United States to restore its leadership position,” Walesa said. “And after
our conversation, I’m quite confident that you will be successful in doing
that.”
Walesa has been chilly toward Obama, and Romney aides have repeatedly
emphasized that they came to Poland at the invitation of the former labor
leader.
A Romney aide confirmed to reporters traveling from Jerusalem to Gdansk on
Monday that the campaign had hoped to visit Germany, as well, on the
candidate’s foreign trek but that Chancellor Angela Merkel was on vacation
during the journey.
The former Massachusetts governor concludes his trip Tuesday with an address
in Warsaw, where he’s expected to laud the strong Polish economy and speak
of the long-standing ties between America and Poland. |
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