Mitt’s insults, mistakes, and blunders abroad aren’t gaffes. [View all]

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Mitt’s insults, mistakes, and blunders abroad aren’t gaffes. They actually represent his true worldview.

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How Romney should have behaved in London may have been obvious to Charles Krauthammer, who studies politics; it would have been obvious to politically ambitious businessmen from more traditional lines of work or from an earlier era. But as we have been graced to see this week, it is not necessarily obvious to Romney himself.

Already, Romney’s surrogates back home are spinning with frantic intensity. In the face of merrily savage media coverage of the candidate’s remarks and British officials’ rejoinders, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said, with as much nonchalance as he could muster, “The reality is, we’re not worried about overseas headlines … I think the focus needs to continue to be on what’s happening here at home. That’s what’s important to voters.”

This may be, but why then did Romney go abroad in the first place? It wasn’t to watch his wife’s horse trot and dance in the Olympics’ dressage competition (as he scoffed in another head-shaking remark, certain to anger a large number of wives who feel their husbands don’t take their interests seriously). The intent, obviously, was to demonstrate his comfort and capabilities on the world scene—a demonstration that, at least so far, has gone about as well as North Korea’s last few missile tests. And London, his first stop, was supposed to be the easy part of the trip, the place where the white, patrician candidate could forge bonds through, as one of his spokesmen put it, their common “Anglo-Saxon heritage.”

Not only did Romney fail at that no-brainer, he also put a foot through stateside customs. Before leaving on his overseas tour, he said that he would not criticize the current president on foreign soil, a long-standing, universally respected tradition in American politics. But then he spoke at an exclusive, closed-door fundraising dinner (tickets went for $50,000 to $70,000 apiece) sponsored by Barclays bank, which is currently in the middle of a whopping financial crisis. Eleven members of Parliament wrote a letter to the bank’s board members, demanding that they stop swelling Romney’s war chest and instead focus on repairing their own problems. Will Americans express outrage at this whiff of foreign influence? Obama catches hell when he raises money from Hollywood movie stars. What would happen if he flew to London or Paris and raised money from European movie stars (who don’t have as much influence as, say, European bankers).

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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2012/07/mitt_romney_s_insults_and_mistakes_while_at_the_london_olympics_aren_t_gaffes_as_much_as_a_fair_representation_of_his_worldview_.html?google_editors_picks=true