The US presidential elections are six weeks away. President Barack Obama has begun to build an advantage in most of the decisive swing states, including Ohio, Virginia and Florida.
Mr. Obama has taken the lead, according to public opinion polls, largely because voters find him more congenial than Mr. Romney, and because they believe that he is more likely to identify with their concerns; to protect their economic interests, including access to secure medical care; and to manage the country’s economy and foreign policy. Mr. Romney’s campaign has been hurt from the start by the contortions he undertook to capture the presidential nomination of the Republican party, with its base ever more dominated by social conservatives highly concentrated in the Southern states, and by a personality that converts his pragmatism into opportunism in the eyes of many voters.
As the competition heats up, Mr. Romney and his supporters have tried hard to reduce Obama’s incumbency advantage as the manager of US foreign policy. They have aggressively attacked the Obama administration for alleged vacillation and weakness in responding to Iran and its nuclear program, and to Syria and Libya; appeasement of Cuba and Venezuela; accommodation of China; and insufficient commitment to Israel, the international interests of US corporations, and core US values, especially unbridled freedom and democracy. Their critique is vigorous but largely rhetorical and hard to pin down; it has been relatively easy for Obama to counter with his own rhetoric, with specific and symbolic steps that he can take as president to undercut Republican critique, and with visual reminders of his roles as commander in chief and America’s face to the world.
Most likely, few votes will ultimately be determined by the candidates’ differences on foreign policy. Mr. Romney will derive modest gains from a few unhappy constituencies: a small fraction of the US Jewish community strongly aligned with the Netanyahu government in Israel, a fraction of the Cuban-American community critical of Obama’s modest loosening of sanctions against Cuba, and some generalized discontent about US “apologies” and openness to dialogue with adversaries. But these gains will be more than offset by broad public acceptance of the Obama administration’s calm, moderate and competently implemented policies, and by a widely shared instinct that Obama’s vision of American’s role in the world makes far more sense than the role of international sheriff his presidential predecessor personified, and which seems to many implicit in the current Romney critique.
The biggest difference the US election eventually will make to the world beyond has less to do with the candidates’ differences on foreign policy outlook than with their divergent approaches to strengthening the US and world economies. That issue will dominate the October 3 presidential debates.
