After President Obama's moving UN General Assembly speech that started with a story of who U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens had been in terms of his life's passion for the Middle East and North Africa, the Romney camp issued a statement from former Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky:
In his 2009 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, President Obama called for progress on the Peace Process and for an end to Iran's nuclear weapons program. Three years later, he's failed to deliver. As has too often been the case with President Obama, the rhetoric doesn't match the policy.
In a compelling but bleak New York Times assessment titled "Seven Lean Years of Peacemaking" by my New America Foundation colleague Daniel Levy, the negative results scream out. Levy writes:
Dobriansky tells only part of the story as it was in both 2009 and 2010 that President Obama committed substantial portions of his UN General Assembly addresses to the problems of Palestine and Israel. In 2010, he pointedly criticized the unwillingness of the parties to come together and pushed George Mitchell and others on his team to double down and get a deal done. Obviously, with the resignations of both Senator Mitchell and Dennis Ross who had been Obama's Middle East wrangler on his National Security Team (both of whom had often worked at cross-purposes), ended Obama's efforts thus far on securing Middle East peace.
These results deserve both to be highlighted and criticized -- so thanks to Ambassador Dobriansky.
That said, would her candidate Mitt Romney do any better?
Yesterday we were given what were perhaps some of the most thoughtful comments yet expressed by Governor Romney on the turmoil in the Middle East and what can be done in response. While his comments were not Palestine-specific and this may be the first time I have heard Romney address foreign policy and not make a single mention of Israel, his broad survey of the Middle East region and his assessment of the youth cover Palestine.
Romney makes the sensible point that jobs matter, that economics is a major driver of both hope and desperation.
The aim of a much larger share of our aid must be the promotion of work, and the fostering of free enterprise. Nothing we can do as a nation will change lives and nations more effectively and permanently than sharing the insight that lies at the foundation of America's own economy, and that is that free people pursuing happiness in their own ways, build a strong and prosperous nation.
So, Romney and the Obama administration actually are on similar tracks. But the scale of what is needed in the region is staggering -- and small US programs or bland talk about job creation by the GOP presidential challenger doesn't come near to the level of economic course correction the region needs.
The more disconcerting gap between rhetoric and action is not on Obama's docket, however, but on Romney's.
What it not Mitt Romney who said at a fundraiser regarding Israel-Palestine peace, "this is going to remain an unresolved problem."
As Bill Clinton said during his Democratic National Convention speech, "it takes some brass to criticize the president for something you have done yourself." In this case, it's out of place to take Obama down a notch on Israel-Palestine when your own candidate has no intention of trying to resolve the geostrategically significant ulcer.
And even more disconcerting were Romney's comments in Jerusalem about "culture" being the dividing line between the economic performance of Israel vs. Palestine. As reported by Ashley Parker and Richard A. Oppel Jr., Romney said:
It's easy to talk about jobs and "Prosperity Pacts", but tougher to put them into motion in addressing the economic needs of a growing MENA youth bulge that needed a massive number of jobs yesterday.
To make this interesting, I dare Mitt Romney to test his thesis personally in the way that former World Bank President James Wolfensohn did. Wolfensohn invested his own money in an effort to get Palestinian-grown strawberries to markets in Europe and worked out deals with the Israelis and established a greenhouse project and processing infrastructure at Israel's Karni Crossing. To make a long and sad story short, even the great James Wolfensohn failed to overcome Israeli arbitrariness in what it allowed and didn't in terms of earnest Palestine commerce with the rest of the world.
Let's see if Mitt Romney can devote a small bit of his fortune to getting a business up and running in Palestine. Perhaps he could meet with his new employees and hear what they have to do to connect with their families and what humiliations they go through trying to get their kids to school or trying to take products to market.
Perhaps Romney would succeed in ways others in Palestine have not, but until then, it seems that, as Dobriansky framed it, the gap between rhetoric and results on the Romney vision for the region seems insurmountable.
-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons